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
—————
University of California, Berkeley
—————
2625 Durant Ave.
Berkeley, CA, 94720-2250
ph.510.642.5240
fx.510.642.5269

This year’s b.TWEEN forum has a range of creative and commercial opportunities on offer. To win a grand prize of £10,000, industry specialist development workshops and have your work screened in the Interactive Gallery, at the ICA, FACT and on Big Screens across Manchester: get involved. Submissions to be uploaded on the forum’s website.

EXPLODING NARRATIVE: Propose an original, exciting idea for an mscape and you could win one of five £1,000 development grants, a £10,000 grand prize and the chance to see your idea become reality. mscapes are location based mobile games, stories and educational journeys. They are experienced on GPS-enabled PDAs and based on easy to use software developed by HP Labs. We are looking for:

- ideas that engage with location-based collaborative gaming, learning or stories
- from artists, film makers, games designers, e-learning experts and creatives

INTERACTIVE GALLERY: Exhibit your engaging, interactive installation at b.TWEEN08. We are looking for Technology-enabled, life-enriching, glee-inducing works that will engage young and old alike. Every year at b.TWEEN we have a gallery of interactive installations that delegates and museum visitors can play with and be inspired by. Exhibits in the b.TWEEN08 Interactive Gallery will also be screened at the ICA, FACT and on Big Screens across Manchester. Past galleries have included Igloo, Squidsoup, Alexei Shulgin, Soda and Transmute Collective.

b.TWEEN08: Nowhere else will you find such a diverse mix of ideas-rich indies and ideas-hungry big industry players meeting on a level playing field to explore and exploit the creative and commercial potential of digital technologies. Book tickets. Supported by: Channel 4, BBC, New Media Age, HP Labs, NWDA, Technology Strategy Board, Museum of Science and Industry, Ambient Worlds, ICA, FACT, Creative Partnerships and the Arts Council of England.

Multiplace is a network of people and independent organizations interested in the interaction between media, technology, the arts, culture and society. The activities of this network culminate each year in this festival that simultaneously takes place within various independent organizations internationally. There are workshops, installations, discussions, concerts, performances, exhibitions, presentations, screenings and live streaming.

Multiplace is distinguished from other similar European festivals not only by content, but by its informal structure. It attracts visitors through its support of unexpected and creative connections between art, culture and new media as well as by its decentralized character and openness to participation. This year, it includes around 40 independent galleries, art schools, art centers, clubs and many unaffiliated individuals. Visitors can enjoy more than 100 events, some of them taking place at several locations at the same time.

Program selection: An unconventional music / internet performance; Ping Melody by Pawel Janicki from Wroclaw, and the premiere of the new local electronic group Bulkladung, will open the festival in Bratislava. A4 Zero Space prepares a dance / motion / kinetic dance performance working with the electromagnetic field of performers also in Bratislava, while an opportunity to listen to an LP made of neon light will be available in the former synagogue in Trnava. On the top of Iceland’s Blafjoll Hill with a view of the Atlantic Ocean, the First May Manifestation by Movement Freedom Sound group will take place. In the House of Art in Brno, online archives and new media education will be discussed. Brno will also offer the installation, Expogeneca, plastic figures which will melt if they do not get enough visitor’s attention. Additionally, this city will be the location for a survey of contemporary music-visual culture and communication called Uchoko and the! Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno will be the host of a virtual cafe that will connect favorite cafes in Brno, Praha, Hradec Kralove and Budapest through streaming. Nomad Space’s Soundbus, the nomad gallery, will wander around various festival locations to present a selection of contemporary Austrian sound art.

Performance Beer Barrel Polka Accordion Theremin Reunion will mediate through the internet a collective play on accordion and theremin in several other cities at the same time. Through skype you will be able to train a parrot to talk at FreeDom in Bahon. At this location as well, Ursula Endlicher will discuss new media art in the USA and introduce her project html_butoh, bringing the human body into the technical world of the Internet.

Organisers:

Bahon: FreeDom
Banska Bystrica: Tvor
Berlin: Lady Gabi
Bratislava: Multiplace, A4 - asociacia zdruzeni pre sucasnu kulturu (A4 ? Associations for contemporary culture), Atrakt Art, 13 kubikov, SPACE projects | residency lab | store, Film club 35 mm, Open Design Studio, Urbsounds Collective, Polish Institute, Goethe-Institut Bratislava, Itchy bit, Jurgen Rendl, Urban Flow
Brno: Hucot, Dum umeni mesta Brna (The Brno House of Arts), Dum panu z Kunstatu (House of the Lords of Kunstat), Kavarna Kunstatska trojka, FaVU VUT (Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Fine Arts), Chernobylmusick, Anymade, Fiume initiative, Galerie G99, Jan Zalesak, Ars Publica, Lenka Dolanova and Michal Kindernay, klub Desert, club Fleda
Budapest: Transformers Hacklab, PsyShip Medialab
Glasgow: Glasgow School of Art
Kosice: IC Culture Train
Nitra: Nitra gallery (Bunker)
Novi Sad: Open Design Studio
Ostrava: Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Ostrava
Praha: Mlok, Institut Intermedii, Circle of Curators and Critics, CIANT ? International Centre for Art and New Technologies
Reykjavik: The Lost Horse Gallery
Trnava: Galeria Jana Koniarka
Wroclaw: WRO Center Sztuki
Zilina: Stanica Zilina - Zariecie

The advances in computer entertainment, multi-player /online gaming, technology-enabled art, culture and performance have created new forms of entertainment that attract, immerse and absorb their participants. The phenomenal success of such a “culture” to initiate a mass audience in patterns and practices of its own consumption has supported the evolution of an enormously powerful mass entertainment, digital art and performance industry extending deeply into every aspect of our lives, leading further to major societal and business contacting changes.

The International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (DIMEA), in cooperation with ACM, is the premier forum for the presentation of societal, business and technological advances and research results in cross-disciplinary areas related with digital interactive media in entertainment, art and creative technologies. This conference is dedicated to build common ground between research, design and development, learning and collaboration in its myriad digital media forms: one of its many objectives is the exploration of ‘play & learn’, demonstrating new arenas and applications for digital gaming and incorporating leading edge technologies, designs and models in our changing views about what is involved in gaming.

DIMEA 2008 is jointly organized by Athens Information Technology (AIT), ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI, Singapore Chapter) and the Society for Excellence and Innovation in Interactive Experience Design (InExDe).

DIMEA 2008 will bring together academics, technologists, artists, designers, and industry representatives to address and advance the leading edge of new digital and interactive media.

Who should attend:

Academics, Animators, Artists, Designers, Developers, Educators, Engineers, Game Designers, Industry Professionals, Media Industry, Video Producers, Directors, Writers, Performers, Photographers, Videographers, Researchers, Students. Anyone who wants to be inspired to adopt advanced ways in industry, society, business, research and teaching, expand their knowledge on a wide variety of topics within the field of digital media, network with cross-disciplinary experts from digital media professionals to academic experts, and evolve with this ever-changing field!

DIMEA 2008 is one of the few conferences that combines full technical papers as well as artwork / game / demo submissions, to accommodate, after evaluation and selection, both technical oral sessions as well as artwork / game / demo exhibition sessions. For each one of the two tracks of the conference further information is separately provided below.

Technical Conference Track: The following, non exclusive, topics are called for:

Entertainment, Art and Technology - Location-based and Pervasive Gaming, Mobile Entertainment, Digital Games in Practice, Computer Entertainment Research, Open-Source Gaming Engines, Implications for Multimedia and Web Design, Artistic Games, Commercial Games, Edutainment, Educational/Serious Games, Interactive Games, Games as Pedagogy, Analysis of Games, e-Performance (e-Opera,e-Theatre, e-Concert, …), Virtual Exhibitions and Museums

New Media Emerging Technologies - Personal Broadcasting (Podcasting and Vlogging), Novel Applications for Mobile Phones, Social and Interactive Computing Applications, Collaborative Spaces/Environments, Innovative Applications of Technology in the Arts, Mixed Reality and Enhanced Visualization, Context-aware Environments and Devices, Immersive Learning Experiences, Communication Technologies and Systems for Digital Media, Advanced Authoring and Composition of Media, Advanced Interaction, Targeted/Personalized Media, Adaptable Media and AI

Code Art - Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Tangible Computing, Sonic Art

Digital Visual and Auditory Media - Digital Photography, Digital Imaging as Art, Advances in 3D Modelling, Digital Printing, Non-Photorealistic Rendering, Digital Sound and Music, Digital Music Synthesis and Composition, Graphics and Animations, Digital Comics

Moving Media - Digital Video, Distance Collaboration/Performance, Computer Animation, Interactive Movies

Culture of New Media - Network Culture, Philosophy of New Media, Digital Identity

Interactive Stories - Digital Narrative, Digital Asset Management, Semantic Web Technologies, Interactive Television and Cinema, Game Design and Storytelling

Full Paper Submissions: Prospective authors are invited to submit full technical papers of not more than 8 pages, including tables, figures and references at the conference online paper submission system. Prospective authors should adhere to the conference full paper submission guidelines. Full Papers should present original research related to the above mentioned scientific areas, not published elsewhere. Please refer to the conference Web site for detailed submission guidelines. Full papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three reviewers from the International Technical Program Committee in a single-blind process, judging on their relevance, novelty and technical quality.

Art Work / Game / Demo Exhibition Conference Track: DIMEA 2008, with the participation of the MEDIATERRA FESTIVAL, aims to offer the opportunity to artists, independent creators, multimedia authors, programmers and theorists to exhibit their digital interactive rich-media works in art and entertainment, and at the same time to create a forum of communication, discussion and collaboration on advances in the already deployed practices.

We cordially invite artists, creators, designers, game developers, generally practitioners working with digital interactive media to submit their original contributions to the DIMEA2008 Artworks / Games / Demos exhibition track, in the context of the following five DIMEA 2008 subject art-related areas:

Entertainment, Education, Art and Technology: Location-based and Pervasive Gaming, Mobile Entertainment, Digital Games in Practice, Computer Entertainment Research, Open-Source Gaming Engines, Implications for Multimedia and Web Design, Artistic Games, Edutainment, Educational/Serious Games, Interactive Games, Games as Pedagogy, e-Performance (e-Opera, e-Theatre, e-Concert, …), Virtual Exhibitions and Museums

New Media Emerging Technologies - Personal Broadcasting (Podcasting and Vlogging), Novel Applications for Mobile Phones, Social and Interactive Computing Applications, Collaborative Spaces/Environments, Innovative Applications of Technology in the Arts, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Enhanced Visualization, Context-aware Environments and Devices, Immersive Learning Experiences, Communication Technologies and Systems for Digital Media, Advanced Authoring and Composition of Media, Advanced Interaction, Targeted/Personalized Media, Adaptable Media and AI, Semantic Web Technologies, Digital Identity

Code Art - Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Tangible Computing, Sonic Art, Artificial Entities

Digital Visual and Moving Media - Computer Animation, Interactive Movies, Advances in 3D Modeling, Semantic-based Approaches, Real-time 3D

Interactive Media - Digital Narrative, Interactive Television and Cinema, Interactive Drama, Interactive Storytelling

“… What are the challenges of curating and exhibiting works of new media art today?

I think that there is presently a very exciting turn happening in new media, with respect to both the art world and the context of “traditional media.” It used to be very important to carve out a separate space in which to show, discuss, and teach new media. Nowadays these spaces are sometimes seen as ghettos, but at the time, they were safe havens championing under-recognized forms. Things are more co-mingled now. Not everyone will agree with me about this, but I think it’s great that some people no longer even know new media when they see it. I know curators who turn their nose up at that phrase, but they love Cory Arcangel or Paul Pfeiffer. There doesn’t seem to be a need to distinguish, any more, whether technology was used in making the work–afterall, everything is a technology, and everyone uses technology to do everything. What is even more interesting is the way in which people are starting to make what I’ve called “Post-Internet” art in my own work (such as my Monitor Tracings), or what Guthrie Lonergan recently called “Internet Aware Art.” I think it’s important to address the impacts of the internet on culture at large, and this can be done well on networks but can and should also exist offline. Of course, it’s an exciting challenge to explain to someone how this is still internet art… If that really matters… ” From Interview with Marisa Olson by Regine Debatty, We Make Money Not Art. [Related discussion: The Rematerialization of Art on Rhizome.org]

4-ICOM brings together leading international scholars from a range of disciplines (i.e. linguistics, social semiotics, communications & new media, digital media art, history, mathematics, science, computer science and education) to explore the ways in which technology enables and constrains the ways knowledge, social relations and culture are constructed and enacted, with a special focus on interactive digital media. The aim is to explore the functions of language, visual imagery, three dimensional objects, space, sound, music and so forth, and to develop new approaches to understanding how these resources integrate in the world of new interactive digital media.

Questions which arise include the following. What is the relationship between technology, multimodal representation and knowledge? How is interactive digital media changing our view of the world and each other? What are the implications for teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences? What directions have research & development in digital technology taken, and for what reasons?

We encourage papers which address the conference themes from different theoretical perspectives. Papers which address more general issues in semiotics, multimodality and multimodal analysis are also welcome.

4-ICOM is run in conjunction with the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA2008). 4-ICOM participants will have access to ISEA2008 exhibitions and galleries at no charge from 25 July to 3 August 2008. Information on the exhibitions, galleries and combined events will be provided soon.

In Wrestling with the Blob Beast, Johnson presents a collection of sixteen animated screensavers. Derived from painting, they cover a wide field, ranging from formal studies where color is a primary concern, to quiet nature scenes like a campfire at night, to vignettes where figure and abstraction appear to be in active battle, as in several pieces where hands appear to wrestle with paint which morphs into a dog’s face and then reverts to paint strokes. While the wrestling pieces serve as humorous metaphors for the sometimes arduous endeavor of painting, others suggest a more serene relationship, such as Fly, in which a tiny painted airplane inches across a wet, painted sky.

Johnson uses digital technology to record and assemble his animations, yet his imagery retains a low-tech, painterly feel, with the paintstrokes providing unexpected physicality in a medium where motion is typically video or computer-generated animation. For the artist, paint is his primary focus, with the animation serving less as the end rather than another means of looking at painting.

The artists’ first well-known work, “What Visions Burn” from 2006, was a 22-minute dvd which mixed painting and cinema in an entertaining and self-referential heist film. The brief looping scenes which comprise the screensavers for Wrestling with the Blob Beast continue Johnson’s painterly exploration of cinematic conventions while using animation to look a new possibilities in painting.

Ezra Johnson was born in 1975 in Wenatchee, Washington, and lives in Brooklyn. He received a BFA in painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco in 2000 and completed an MFA in painting in 2006 at Hunter College in New York City. During his MFA studies, he participated in an exchange program with the Universitat der Kunst in Berlin. His work has been shown at numerous exhibitions including solo gallery shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Torino, Italy. His first solo museum show was at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2007.

Since its inception, Dia has defined itself as a vehicle for the realization of extraordinary artists’ projects that might not otherwise be supported by more conventional institutions. To this end, it has sought to facilitate direct and unmediated experiences between the audience and the artwork. Beginning in early 1995, Dia initiated a series of artists’ projects for the web by commissioning projects from artists who are interested in exploring the aesthetic and conceptual potentials of this medium.

The archive contains works by Wilfredo Prieto, Maja Bajevic, Ana Torfs, Allen Ruppersberg, Marijke van Warmerdam, Glenn Ligon, Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, Jeanne Dunning, Shimabuku, James Buckhouse and Holly Brubach, Feng Mengbo, David Claerbout, Stephen Vitiello, Gary Simmons, Francis Alÿs, Diller + Scofidio, Kristin Lucas, Claude Closky, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), Cheryl Donegan, Molissa Fenley, Susan Hiller, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, Constance DeJong + Tony Oursler + Stephen Vitiello.

Dia Art Foundation: A nonprofit institution founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is internationally renowned for initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects. Dia presents public programs and its permanent collection of works from the 1960s through the present at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, in New York’s Hudson Valley. In the fall of 2007 Dia initiated a partnership with The Hispanic Society of America in which Dia presents commissions and projects by contemporary artists in the Hispanic Society’s galleries. Dia is actively engaged in a search for a permanent home for its New York City initiatives. Additionally, Dia maintains long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and in Bridgehampton on Long Island.

Shift - 2009: In the past ten years the digital information revolution has shifted the way we go about teaching, learning, making art, doing business, even shopping. Tennessee State University has established a space for thinking, working and serving, (reinforcing the University’s motto) through its Space for New Media, a physical space to contain exhibitions that promote shifts that education can foster — thoughts, ideas, change, all while honoring history. Along with the (traditional) Hiram Van Gordon Memorial Gallery, the Space for New Media will serve the digital media community as an educational resource for students on the rich history of African American involvement in technology-driven projects. The digital age allows for the Space for New Media to rely on current technology and programming mirrors efforts in the “traditional” Hiram Van Gordon Memorial Gallery. The Space creates a presence of a dedicated space to African American efforts in New Media/technology and the arts.

Pause - 2010: A facet of modern humankind is reflexivity or the notion that one can be self-reflexive. Innovators and artists, in many ways, serve the public. In their best moments, they lift a mirror up to our society. They show us where we succeed and where we fail. They provide society with a needed touchstone of perspective. The Mission of the Space for New Media is to both introduce and educate students and visitors to new media and technology-driven projects by African Americans. Seeing the historical precedence of the importance of geography throughout history (e.g. the civil rights movement) the gallery has opened up programming specifically to local Nashville area artists to submit curatorial proposals for summer exhibitions that support existing programming missions. In addition to serving the arts community, the mission echoes the historic imperative set by Historically Black Colleges to serve their immediate neighborhoods. The Gallery endeavors to serve area Middle Schools and neighbors, allowing access and an ownership of the art space by community members.

Play - 2011: New Media can be seen as a metaphor for the innovation of African Americans in the arts. Programming will reflect the sometimes playful irony of digital media, hackers, game theory and video culture. The art spaces serve a community of scholars, artists and students through the art spaces. TSU’s Hiram Van Gordon Memorial Gallery, a “brick and mortar” traditional gallery space that houses student, faculty, and special exhibitions. With the 2009 addition of a Space for New Media (African American advances/innovations in Technology, Arts and Sciences), audiences are, at the very least, threefold: community/students, the regions’ artists, and the immediate neighbors.

Application Deadlines:

July 1, 2008 for SHIFT 2009
October 1, 2008 for PAUSE 2010
December 1, 2008 for PLAY 2011

Application and information questions submitted to:

Jodi Hays
Director, Hiram Van Gordon Memorial Gallery and Space for New Media
Tennessee State University Department of Art
3500 John Merritt Blvd., PO Box 9562
Nashville, TN 37209

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.” Rex Bruce, director of the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, will be screening a video he directed that uses public domain imagery from the US Military (also playing at the Centre Pompidou).

Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, will be presenting on art in Second Life, focusing on creators who are cognizant of the formal and ideological implications of virtual worlds.

Jack Lerner, Acting Director at the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, will give a talk on research he has been conducting in relation to music sampling that looks at defects in the market and proposes changes.

Finally, we will be joined by multimedia designers Chris Weisbart and Michael Wilson who will explain how they are using open source technology in museums and will give a live demonstration of a holographic projection system they’ve recently built into an interactive exhibit.

All the presenters of course will touch upon the interaction their various topics play with CC licensing. So come out and join us for what is bound to be an eye opening night, and yes, there will be free (as in beer) drinks.

Ronen is an artist, writer and activist. He has participated in many self-organized exhibitions and festivals, founded and edited over five cultural, art and political journals / magazines and produced many events linking art, culture and grassroots politics. For the past ten years Ronen has been active in anti-occupation and anti-capitalist direct action groups.

Visual Foreign Correspondents is also set in the context of an international program of public debates — The Globalised Crystal Ball — in which aspects of the new phase of globalisation is explored by panels of distinguished commentators. This month’s issue is The Military-Strategic Future Predicted - In 2004 the United Nations published A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, which advised the international community how to tackle common threats. The report suggests that it is time for a new security consensus, one in which “we all share responsibility for each other’s security. And the test of that consensus will be action”. Speakers are:

- Thomas P.M. Barnett is senior Managing Director at Enterra Solutions.
- Andrew Small works for the German Marshall Fund in Brussels since 2006 as the co-ordinator of work on China and transatlantic relations.
- Awil Mohamoud is a political scientist and the founding director of SAHAN research & advice bureau.

De Balie, Klein Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam :: April 15, 2008; 8:00 pm