In 2002, the late world artist Nam June Paik lent his name together with a drawing to this most important award for media art in Germany. The drawing, which reads: „Paik NRW okay“, commemorates Paik’s 19-year activity in this German federal state – particularly in the two cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf – of which he spent more than 10 years as a professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of arts.  1963, the year the „Exhibition of Music“ was held in the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, is considered the year of birth of media art. With this award, the Kunststiftung NRW intends to revive the enormous creative energies which are active until this day within the works of this global artist, and to encourage a young generation of artists to break new innovative ground. The award includes an exhibition of the nominated, during which the first prize amounting to 25,000 euros will be awarded as well as a junior prize for an artist from North-Rhine Westphalia for finishing a project amounting to 15,000 euros.

The nominating experts met on the spot in Cologne at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corbout, with its extraordinary collection from medieval art to impressionism: Solange Farkas, Videobrasil and MAM-Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (Sao Paulo/Salvador de Bahia), Yukiko Shikata, NTT InterCommunication Center ICC (Tokio), Walid Raad, artist, (New York/Beirut), Miklos Peternak, C3 Center for Culture & Communication (Budapest) and Udo Kittelmann, Museum of Modern Art (Frankfurt/Main).

They selected the following artists and artist groups for the award:
The Speculative Archive / Julia Meltzer and David Thorne (Damaskus/Los Angeles); Biopresence / Shiho Fukuhara and Georg Tremmel (Tokyo/London); Attila Csörgo (Budapest); Tatiana Blass (São Paulo) and GIA Grupo de Interferência Ambiental from Salvador de Bahía”

Thanks to Marcus Baston and e-flux

Sorry about the inactivity on Networked Performance. I’m having back surgery tomorrow and will return to posting as soon as I am able.

Best,
Jo

The project explores the notion of flow. Rather than fixing the digital in a responsive relationship to the user, where every call defines a reply, Slow Furl finds its temporality outside the immediately animate. The thick skin envelops the space in a deep furl. Like a glacier, this robotic membrane, is formed by its slow action, reacting imperceptibly to its inhabitation.

Slow Furl is playful environment that engages the physical presence of its guests. Users are invited to touch, to sit, or lie within its soft skins. As they do they feel the slow pulse of it’s movements. As a landscape, a cloud formation or an ice wall, it forms and reforms around the body of its user. Slow Furl is the making of a cybernetic environment that holds its own patterns of action and reaction. Conceived as an organism of interacting subsystems, the architecture holds an own motility, an own language of movements that defines its behavioural patterning. The skin clads a dynamic armature creating the possibility for movement. The armature is understood as a distributed computational system where separate parts hold their own potential for actuation. Each arm is controlled by a stand alone micro-controller that activates its mechanical movements. The skin acts as a unifier. Cladding the whole of the surface, the skin joins the movement of the individual arms into one fluid surface.

The skin also acts as a sensory system. Active patches are embroidered into the skin. These patches act on touch. As the skin moves, it activates the micro-controller. The simple shift between self activation (through the movement cycles of the armature) and interaction (through touch and movement of the users) allows the organism to engage an inherent indeterminacy. The architecture is behavioural rather than interactive, motile rather than animate.

Slow Furl has received funding from the Arts Council England, Lighthouse (Brighton) and RIBA (Sussex Branch). INTERArChTIVE is a consortium of Lighthouse (Brighton), Architecture Centre Network, interactivearchitecture.org and RIBA (Sussex branch). [via Interactive Architecture dot org]

1st Place - Yeas & Nays: A ShiftSpace widget for calling representatives by Christian Croft ($2000) - A ShiftSpace that allows a citizen to call her representative from any webpage, record her call and publish it on that very page. Yeas & Nays attempts to promote civic responsibility and a democratic discourse and make our citizen duty just a bit easier. This space combines ShiftSpace’s power to layer commentary above existing contexts with advances in VoIP telephony to build a tool for informed civic action. It layers the citizen’s act of calling an official on top of online information substantiating her argument. The proposed space enables a phone call with a representative from a webpage that politically concerns you. Type shift + space, enter a location, and Yeas & Nays fetches your matching representatives. Next, enter your phone number, and the system initiates a call that bridges your phone to that of the representative’s office. After the call, the widget updates to include a recording of your call whose URL you can send as proof of your civic action to all your friends. Read on >>

We’ve encountered some technical problems with our blog. We hope to have them resolved soon and we appreciate your patience.

Regards,
Jo

From a hip-hop, multi-media meditation on Antarctica to robot art, from conversations with artificial intelligence to operatic performances of Google headlines about the environment, from avant-garde cinema to new musical forms – more than 100 projects will be featured at 01SJ. Festival organizers expect it to be a perspective-altering experience that entertains, enlightens, educates, and involves attendees in a new understanding of our changing world.

Among the many events at this year’s Festival will be a Youth Participation Program sponsored by Adobe Systems. The program includes an exhibition of selected works - funded through a special micro-grant program – developed by young people from around the world. Of the artists participating in 01SJ this year, several have recently been featured in the New Frontier program at the Sundance Film Festival, while others have garnered major national and international achievement awards.

Artists whose works will be showcased include: Cory Arcangel, Jim Campbell, Bruce Charlesworth, Daryl Cloran, Paul DeMarinis, DJ Spooky AKA Paul D. Miller, Anita Doron, Toni Dove, R. Luke DuBois, Kota Ezawa, Daniel Faust, Free Soil (Amy Franceschini, Corrine Matesich, Nis Romer, Stijn Schiffeleers, Adam Wight), Jason Freeman, Genevieve Grieves, Mateo Guez, David Haines, Joyce Hinterding, Shih Chieh Huang, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jane Marsching, Jennifer + Kevin McCoy, Mongrel (Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, Matsuko Yokokoji), Adam Nash, Ed Osborn, Qiu Zhijie, Red 76 (Sam Gould), Favianna Rodriguez, Rova, Eddo Stern, Lian Amaris Sifuentes, Piotr Szyhalski, Terreform (Mitchell Joachim), Ruben Ortiz Torres, Craig Walsh, Marina Zurkow.

“This year’s Festival will be as provocative and participatory, and even more focused and multi-disciplinary than the original,” said Steve Dietz, Artistic Director of ZER01. “We’ll present new commissions from some of the world’s most inventive artists as they explore the frontiers of creativity made possible through new and old technology. What these artists share in common, is that they’re crafting compelling experiences and expanding our understanding of how technology impacts every aspect of the way we live today.”

Tickets: Tickets to the festival are available at www.01sj.org/tickets. Museum passes, which provide access to the major exhibitions, are $15; Day passes are $75 and Festival passes are $125. Early bird specials – 20% discount or 2fer ticket offers are available now through April 1.

Sign up for the 01SJ e-newsletter to get updates on artists and events at www.01sj.org.

Rumsey started collecting maps about 20 years ago. In 1997, he began digitizing his maps, many of which now appear on his website. Launched in 1999 with 2,000 maps, the website now features more than 17,500 maps.

The island features a gallery in the center where visitors can view maps and receive free maps and other digital souvenirs. Surrounding the gallery is a topographical rendering of an 1883 map of Yosemite Valley; users can toggle between two-dimensional and 3-D displays. Along the skyline, two great globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, turn, animated by an enormous clockwork that can provide front-row seats for avatars who fly inside. Visitors can also travel through an 1836 map of Old New York by J. H. Coton.

It’s this map that Rumsey says is his favorite place on the island. “There’s something about walking on it that is just fantastic,” he says. “I love walking from Battery up to Harlem and feeling the history.” …” Continue reading Historical Maps in Second Life - David Rumsey’s antique maps feature in an innovative build in the virtual world by Erica Naone, Technology Review.

Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media. Bringing together the worlds of contemporary art, experimental cinema, new media, documentary film, and the academy (to name only a few), Light Industry looks to foster a complex dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city. See the calendar for more details.

Turbulence, MCLA Gallery 51, and Greylock Arts are collaborating to create an interactive art and technology project that connects physical spaces in Adams and North Adams Massachusetts via the Internet. Over the past several months, they have been working together to bring forward a series of exciting events, exhibitions, and opportunities to Northern Berkshire County. This collaboration, entitled Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses, has been made possible through the generous support of Turbulence with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

As part of this project we are exploring the concept of re-connecting the Town of Adams and the City of North Adams through the Internet. Adams and North Adams, once a single settlement in Western Massachusetts with communities in north and south Adams, split in 1878. Through Turbulence, we will connect physical spaces in the two locations with virtual spaces on the Internet. MCLA Gallery 51, Greylock Arts, and Turbulence have been collaborating with local artists, including Ven Voisey, Sean Riley and Matthew Belanger, as well as other local arts organizations, to make these upcoming events and exhibitions a reality.

Opportunities:

Turbulence Commissions: As part of Networked Realities Turbulence is offering commissions to artists living in Adams and North Adams to produce Net Art. The subject matter and medium is open and projects need not only exist online. However, projects must include an important and compelling internet experience or component. Visit Turbulent Works, a curated exhibit of previous Turbulence commissions, to see examples of net art. Selected projects will be featured in a future exhibit at Greylock Arts and on turbulence.org. Commissions will range from $300 – $1000 depending on the scope of the proposal. Proposals should include: a paragraph describing the project; the technical needs of the project; a budget; an artist bio; and a link to the artist’s website (if you have one). Group projects are welcome. Selections will be made by Turbulence. Submit your proposal by email to: turbulence@turbulence.org. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Greylock Arts at info@greylockarts.net. The deadline is March 31, 2008.

Arduino Workshop with Tom Igoe: April 5, 2008; 1 – 5 pm :: FREE :: Greylock Arts, 93 Summer St. Adams, MA
Note: Reservations are extremely limited. Contact us at: info@greylockarts.net to reserve your spot today.

Tom Igoe is area head for physical computing classes at New York Universities Tisch School of The Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program. Igoe is also a coveted technology consultant and guest speaker at technology conferences around the world. Igoe’s recently published book, “Making Things Talk”, is a do-it-yourself guide to networking ordinary household items. Ardunio is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. In this workshop Igoe will demonstrate the basic techniques and concepts needed to get started with an Arduino. The workshop is FREE, however, If you wish to go home with your own Arduino kit (which we recommend if you want to continue your work) the cost is $65.