For When Absence Becomes Presence, the next installment of the WPA’s Experimental Media Series, curators Sonja Simonyi and Niels Van Tomme have organized an exhibition of international sound and video art at the WPA’s new headquarters. Dealing with issues of memory, meaning and representation, the exhibition is a play between two separate, but inherently linked conditions: absence and presence. Both states can be mediated through representations in images and sound; what is absent can become present and presence can be experienced through the realization that something is not there.

“We have known at least since Magritte that when we look at an image of a pipe, we are regarding not a real pipe but one that has been re-presented. The pipe as such isn’t there, it isn’t present; instead, it is depicted as being absent.” - Boris Groys

For a screening accompanying this exhibition, the curators are calling all video and sound artists to submit works that explore these notions in innovative ways. A selection of the received video and sound works will be presented along with works from the show on December 4, 2008 in the framework of a public screening. Selected artists will be notified during the last week of October. Additionally, two artists submitting the most compelling entries, as reviewed by the curators and based on overall quality and innovation, will be awarded the Kraft Prize for New Media of $750 and the WPA Experimental Media Prize of $750 on the night of the event. Please note that the WPA Prize will go to an artist living and working in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Sonja Simonyi is a film researcher, currently pursuing a PhD in Cinema Studies at NYU. Previously, she has worked at the National Gallery of Art’s film department where she organized the film series Modernity and Tradition: Film in Interwar Central Europe, which traveled to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, among other venues.

Niels Van Tomme is a curator and researcher. His exhibitions and screenings are shown internationally and investigate the sociopolitical aspects of contemporary audiovisual culture. Since fall 2007, he is the Curator and Director of Arts and Media at Provisions Library in Washington, DC.

DOWNLOAD FULL CALL FOR ENTRIES AND ENTRY FORM HERE: For more information please call the WPA office at (+1) 202.234.7103.

Our current era of prolonged and profound transition is surely as media-driven as the historical cultures Innis describes. His division between the durable and the portable is perhaps problematic in the age of the computer, but similar tensions define our contemporary situation. Digital communications have increased exponentially the speed with which information circulates. Moore’s Law continues to hold, and with it a doubling of memory capacity every two years; we are poised to reach transmission speeds of 100 terabits per second, or something akin to transmitting the entire printed contents of the Library of Congress in under five seconds.

Such developments are simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. They profoundly challenge efforts to maintain access to the vast printed and audio-visual inheritance of analog culture as well as efforts to understand and preserve the immense, enlarging universe of text, image and sound available in cyberspace.

What are the implications of these trends for historians who seek to understand the place of media in our own culture?

What challenges confront librarians and archivists who must supervise the migration of print culture to digital formats and who must also find ways to preserve and catalogue the vast enlarging universe of words and images generated by new technologies?

How are shifts in distribution and circulation affecting the stories we tell, the art we produce, the social structures and policies we construct?

What are the implications of this tension between storage and transmission for education, for individual and national identities, for notions of what is public and what is private?

We invite papers from scholars, journalists, media creators, teachers, writers and visual artists on these broad themes. Potential topics include:

• The digital archive
• The future of libraries and museums
• The past and future of the book
• Mobile media
• Historical systems of communication
• Media in the developing world
• Social networks
• Mapping media flows
• Approaches to media history
• Education and the changing media environment
• New forms of storytelling and expression
• Location-based entertainment
• Hyperlocal media and civic engagement
• New modes of circulation and distribution
• The transformation of television — from broadcast to download
• Cosmopolitanism backlashes against media change
• Virtual worlds and digital tourism
• The continuity principle: what endures or resists digital transformation?
• The fate of reading

Submissions: Abstracts of no more than 500 words or full papers should be sent to Brad Seawell at seawell [at] mit.edu”> no later than January 9, 2009. We will evaluate abstracts and full papers on a rolling basis and early submission is highly encouraged. All submissions should be sent as attachments in a Word format. Submitted material will be subject to editing by conference organizers.

Email is preferred, but submissions can be mailed to:

Brad Seawell
MIT 14N-430
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

Please include a biographical statement of no more than 100 words. If your paper is accepted, this statement will be used on the conference Web site.

Please monitor the conference Web site for registration information, travel information and conference updates.

Abstracts will be accepted on a rolling basis until Jan. 9, 2009.

The full text of your paper must be submitted no later than Friday, April 17. Conference papers will be posted to the conference Web site and made available to all conferees.

The REBRANDING ACTS project encourage artists to perform and document “rebranding acts” that directly intervenes with the hegemony of this excluding narrative and presents a radical re-thinking of it. In other words, acts that aims to “rebrand” the national identity in question.

The specific context and method of the rebranding act can take any possible form but the act must be documented and submitted via WOOLOO.ORG in VIDEO FORMAT.

From all the rebranding videos submitted, the REBRANDING ACTS project will select the most intelligent, powerful and humorous documentations and present them as official part of TINA B. - The Prague Contemporary Art Festival taking place in Prague, Czech Republic from September 25 - October 15, 2008.

Furthermore, the selected videos will also travel to New York to be shown in the exhibition Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding taking place at the New School - Vera List Center for Art and Politics from October 15, 2008 to January 30, 2009.

REBRANDING ACTS explore questions of cultural identity in a time where national belonging is becoming an increasingly discussed topic in political debates throughout the world. Facing the challenges of an increasingly globalized economy, combined with internal demographic questions such as the issue of aging populations, and a growing number of immigrants and refugees, a large number of nation states are currently undergoing vast transformations. Often, these transformations include a strong rise in new forms of xenophobia, fueled by the media and capitalized upon by populist political parties.

In 2006, Wooloo Productions (the artists collective behind WOOLOO.ORG) performed our first rebranding act with outset in the case of contemporary Denmark. We did this exactly one year after the infamous publishing of Muhammad caricatures by the Danish nationwide newspaper Jyllands Posten and we launched the campaign Defending denmark as “an international campaign to rebrand the country of Denmark”. The Defending denmark project included 18 months membership of the ultra-right Danish Peoples Party, several video interventions, as well as a worldwide media frenzy with national identity at its center. Please go to www.wooloo.org/defendingdenmark to read more.

Wooloo Productions will personally be traveling to Prague to intervene live with the Czech public as part of the TINA B. Contemporary Art Festival. Simultaneously, the selected REBRANDING ACTS videos will be presented throughout the festival at the prominent Italian Cultural Institute located in Prague’s famous Malá Strana. Through these individual, transnational responses to the widespread nationalistic upheaval taking place throughout the world, REBRANDING ACTS aim to offer alternative ways of thinking about who we are and how we can live together today.

DEADLINE for submission is August 31, 2008.

Nowadays, the popularity of cartographic and earth visualization tools such as Google Maps and Google Earth has become an increasingly tangible component of how we experience the Web. Moreover, the use of geolocalization systems, such as GPS, is spreading and increasingly present in the digital world. Artists are appropriating these technologies to create travelogues, to reflect on urban space, and to conceive collective psychogeography and locational media projects.

Artists interested in this theme, and by the production context offered by Agence TOPO are encouraged to submit their proposals. The projects could also include an “off screen” component, such as performance, installation, exhibition or mobile networks, that complements and expands the Web features and possibilities.

In order to respect the foreseen deadlines, projects currently under development and those demonstrating a strong commitment from the artists will be given priority. The selected artists and projects will benefit from technical support for a period of 4 to 8 weeks within a residency program that can be spread out over time depending on the artists’ needs and specific project requirements.

The selected artists will have the following benefits:

- Production fees
- Access to a computer and audiovisual equipment
- Web design assistance (programming and multimedia integration)
- Organization of a launching event in Montréal (Fall 2009)

Publication Submissions / Due date: August 15, 2008:

- Project proposal
- Description of technical needs
- Proposed work timetable (Spring - Summer 2009)
- Summary of artistic approach
- Press kit
- Curriculum vitae
- Visual/audiovisual documentation
- A stamped addressed envelope for the return of the documents

We do not accept proposals sent by email or only available through a website.

Sylvie Parent is a freelance curator and writer living in Montreal. Over the last ten years, she has been involved in numerous electronic publications. From 2002 to 2004, she was the French editor of HorizonZero, an online magazine published by the Banff New Media Institute. Before that, she was the chief editor of the CIAC’s Electronic Magazine (1997-2001). Ms. Parent has written texts for many publications and contributed to websites such as Archée, MobileGaze, The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA 2006. She curated the Web art component of the Biennale de Montréal 2000. With Valérie Lamontagne, she co-curated Location/Dislocation for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 2001.

At the Crossroad of Visual Arts, Literature and New Media Agence TOPO is an artist-run centre dedicated to the creation, dissemination and distribution of independent multimedia works. Founded in 1993 to encourage and promote photographic creation in all its forms of, TOPO now initiates, produces and supports Web art projects while acting as a promoter and distributor of independent art CD-roms, DVD-roms and video DVDs.

Send your projects to Agence TOPO
Michel Lefebvre, General Director
5455 de Gaspé, suite 1001
Montréal (Québec) H2T 3B3
T 514 279 8676 - agence [at] agencetopo.qc.ca

Travel one trail to many places. Ever tried to make it to a friend following his instructions? »Go there… turn left… turn right… hey look up it’s me in the window…« Ever had the feeling that the path so clear to your friend was in fact very very ambiguous and you could reach several different endpoints following the very same trail of instructions?

Make a choice on every corner. This is exactly what Synchroni-Cities is about. This project is bringing together the multiplicity and cultural diversity of different places. It is based on the idea of international exploration, dialogue and unity.

Find familiar areas in different cities. This is a kind of game which is shaped as an urban exploration quest based on the idea of creating »synonymous places«. It gives urban communities the opportunity to engage in an intercultural dialogue that simultaneously stresses upon identity and openness.

Show your point of view. So pick a trail. Follow it, and take some pictures or even videos on your way. Upload it, compare them to trails done by others and wonder how people could be in all those different places following the very same instructions. Rate the trails you like. Your trails will be rated, as well. Win a prize! Then explore more trails.

Pick, upload, rate and find more info here.

Project by: The AltArt Foundation (Cluj, RO) // partnered by: TMA – Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau (Dresden, DE) / Atrakt Art (Bratislava, SK) / CIANT – International Centre for Arts and New Technologies (Praha, CZ) // supported by: Ministerul Culturii si Cultelor Romania / EuropeanYear of Intercultural Dialogue / Education and Culture DG – Lifelong Learning Programme

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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

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.

The International Prize for Performance, organized by the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento, in collaboration with Centro Servizi Culturali Santa Chiara and with the support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio of Trento and Rovereto, can be characterized as the first and only prize for performance that exists in the world and proposes the same formula as last years, which saw high participation numbers from both the public and the artists.

All artists of all nationalities, from all formative backgrounds (visual arts, dance, music, poetry, etc.) and born from January 1st, 1973 are invited to participate. The first prize is fixed at 5,000 euros and there will also be minor prizes awarded.

At least one place will be reserved amongst the finalists for the artists born or resident in Trentino - South Tyrol, the province of Verona or the Austrian Tyrol. The initiative aims to select among the participants twelve young performers from all over the world, who are invited to realize a previously unseen performance on the evenings of October 10th and 11th, 2008 at the Teatro Sociale of Trento. Performances will run under the eyes of a jury composed of some of the most absolute names in the Italian and international contemporary art world, one of whom will be president, the artist and performer Carlos Amorales.

Other members of the jury are specialists with different backgrounds, in order to guarantee the Prize a multidisciplinary character; they are: Carlo Antonelli(music critic and Director of “Rolling Stone” Italia), Helena Kontova (Co-director “Flash Art”), Gian Marco Montesano (artist, Artistic Director of Teatro Stabile dell’Innovazione, Pescara), Catherine Wood (Curator of Contemporary art and performance at Tate Modern, London), Franco Oss Noser (Director of Centro Servizi Culturali Santa Chiara of Trento) and Fabio Cavallucci (Artistic Director of Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of rento).
Applications must include all materials, as specified in the official announcement, and be sent via email to performance@galleriacivica.it (posted materials will not be accepted).
The deadline for the application form and materials is fixed at 12:00 PM on Sunday, August 31s t, 2008 (Italian time).

For us, we like a project like this because it can demo really well the activity of the community, and it’s a great chance to meet face to face and work closely together, since many of us are spread out in different locations. The space and scale of the project is quite big, so we could use tons of help to pull this off. In addition to the work done on site, much of our research and development will occur online so that folks who can’t make it to Linz can also participate, help out and keep track.

So, we are recruiting for the lab …

The Cultural Association, MADRID ABIERTO, announces the start of the presentation of projects period for the 6th edition of its international public art programme which will be held in 2009 and 2010. The programme will hold debate sessions on public art and will generate a series of interventions of an ephemeral or temporary nature in the centre of Madrid, whose authors will mainly be selected through this open call for presentations. A specific call for presentations of sonorous work, which includes collaboration in the audiovisual TV Interventions project, is also announced. PARTICIPATION BASES:

1. Reflecting from the stance of contemporary art practice on cultural, social and political environment, the purpose of this call for applications is to select artists to produce interventions of a temporary or ephemeral nature aimed at contributing to activate the public space. The initiative includes two specific projects for the Casa de América and Círculo de Bellas Artes buildings, which will be incorporated into Madrid Abierto with other invited projects and selected sonorous and audiovisual works.

This edition of Madrid Abierto will be dedicated to emerging practices that critically engage with the urban environment. Madrid Abierto 2009-2010 aim to include a wide variety of practitioners and art forms that establish their strengths in an expanded role, and that work in the social realm of art practice and audience participation. The idea is to produce and show work that connect various disciplines and that opens up for collaborations between, for example, artists, architects, designers, computer programmers, social scientists and urban planners.

For cities to thrive, to be communicative and alive, and to function as catalysers of public life, it is necessary to stimulate civic participation and community involvement. Given the current framework, where society often fail to negotiate some of the most immediate challenges, how can pooling resources such as the ones found in interdisciplinary groups, develop alternative work methods? How can inertia and nostalgia be substituted by visionary and inspiring tools that act as catalysts for change?

2. The programme schedule is as follows:

- Application deadline: until September 10th 2008.
- Selection of artists: until October 31st 2008.
- Preparatory meetings and seminars: February 2009.
- Elaboration of final projects: until April 30th 2009.
- Assessment of projects and installation permits: until June 30th 2009.
- Execution of artistic interventions and transmission of sound and audiovisual works: February 2010.

3. Coinciding with ARCO, the interventions will be take place in February 2010 in Madrid, with some form of presence or reference in the junctions Paseo de la Castellana-Recoletos-Prado and Calle de Alcalá-Gran Vía.

The sound works will be transmitted by Radio 3, Radio Nacional de España in February 2010. Audiovisual works will be presented during this time too.

4. Artists of all nationalities are encouraged to present their applications (except for the Casa de América project, which is open to Latin American artists only), either individually or as a team. In the case of team application, one representative must be appointed.

5. A) Artistic interventions.-Each participant must include:

* Curriculum of no more than 2000 characters with a photocopy of the author or authors’ National Identity Document (or equivalent).

* Description of a project already executed and the draft of a project for Madrid. In both cases no more than 4000 characters.

* A maximum of six sketches or images of the project or draft project in jpg format with a maximum resolution of 72 dpi.

* Description of the technical set up and needs of the draft project.

* Estimated and broken down budget of the draft project, including details of items that could possibly be self-financed.

* All the files must be PC compatible. Files sent from an Apple computer must have adequate extensions (doc, xls, pdf, jpg, tif, etc.).

* Should the above-mentioned information fail to be received in full, the participation will be rejected.

* The maximum budget for each selected artist is 15,000 euros. In all cases this sum includes expenses derived from the preparatory meeting in February 2009, as well as travel, accommodation, production, transport and set up of the intervention in February 2010, the author or authors fees (up to a maximum of 2000 euros) and any applicable taxes.

B) Sound Art.- Each participant must include:

* Curriculum of no more than 2000 characters and a photocopy of the author or authors’ National Identity Document (or equivalent).

* Description of the proposed piece, not exceeding 4000 characters.

* Maximum length of work is10 minutes per author and must be sent on a CD.

* Selected artists will receive 500 euros. A direct master copy of the work will form part of the documentary collection and public archives of Madrid Abierto. The work may possibly be placed on the website, for non-profitable purposes and with prior consent of the authors.

C) Audiovisual work.- The audiovisual work selected in the 2008 and 2009 calls for applications for TV Interventions will form part of the Madrid Abierto 2009-2010 programme in collaboration with Fundación Rodríguez and Centro Cultural Montehermoso (and may be transmitted by Canal Metro). Those selected will receive 500 euros and a direct master copy of the work will form part of the documentary collection and public archives of Madrid Abierto. The work may possibly be placed on the website for non-profitable purposes and with prior consent of the authors.

Audiovisual applications will not be accepted through the Madrid Abierto application procedure.

6. All the proposals must be sent by electronic mail to abierto [at] madridabierto.com prior to September 10th 2008.

7. The advisory committee of Madrid Abierto, presided by Programme Director Jorge Díez and comprised of Cecilia Andersson, Guillaume Dèsanges, Ramon Parramon, Mª Inés Rodríguez, Fito Rodríguez and artist group Democracia, participates in the various phases of this edition. Casa de América and Círculo de Bellas Artes will appoint a representative for the task of selecting each institution’s intervention.

Cecilia Andersson will be this edition’s curator. In collaboration with the advisory committee of Madrid Abierto, she selects the participating artists on the basis of their track record, the quality and viability of the proposals and the total reversibility of the interventions. The organiser may round off the selection with invited artists, up to a maximum of 50% of the total number of selected artists in the open invitation. Since these projects will occupy public spaces, Madrid Abierto will obtain the necessary municipal permits to the set up the interventions.

Should the selected artists use images or elements belonging to third parties, they must provide authorisation of the proprietors for the use of images or extracts in the project.

8. Madrid Abierto reserves the right to publish and reproduce the selected artistic interventions for all purposes associated with the promotion of the programme, and shall incorporate all generated documentation into its documentary collection and public archives. The selected projects and works are the property of the authors and, as the case may be, the promoting institutions shall have a preferential right to purchase them.

9. Participation in this call for applications entails full acceptance of the conditions of entry.

Direction: Jorge Díez
Curator: Cecilia Andersson
Adviser Committee: Cecilia Andersson, Democracia, Guillaume Dèsanges, Jorge Díez, Ramon Parramon, Fito Rodríguez and Mª Inés Rodríguez
Coordinator: RMS La Asociación
Graphic Design: 451
Organize: Asociación Cultural Madrid Abierto
Sponsors: Fundación Altadis, Comunidad de Madrid and Ayuntamiento de Madrid Collaborators: Fundación Telefónica, ARCO, La Casa Encendida, Ministerio de Cultura, RNE3, Canal Metro, Círculo de Bellas Artes and Casa de América