“_Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ explores concepts that shape and are shaped by an extensive range of online / synthetic encounters. These concepts are formed through principles generated internally within specific online environments. These environments include - among others - Massively Multiplayer Online Environments [World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Second Life], Social Networking Platforms [Twitter, Facebook, OpenSocial], Social Gaming [Passively Multiplayer Online Game, Parallel Kingdom] and Alternative Reality Games [I Love Bees, Perplex_City, Year Zero]. Entries will dissect post-geophysically defined notions of reality through a mixture of:

* Platform-specific case studies.
* Analysis of contextual behaviour sets.
* Construction of theoretical projections derived via synthetic, mixed and augmented formats.”

Mez is a Futurist who has had a sustained presence in synthetic realities for over two decades. She is also an established net artist and game theorist who practices _Poetic Game Interventions_ [the creative manipulation of MMO parameters in order to disrupt or comment on various aspects of augmented states]. She is a widely exhibited, award winning artist and we are extremely fortunate to be able to present her work here and enjoy her company as a member of our guild.

Ars Virtua is a New Media Center and Gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life, World of Warcraft and the World Wide Web. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. The Ars Virtua Foundation is a locus of research around the issues of reality within simulated environments.

Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Anything that can be made, can be made black.

Its theoretical basis lies in ideas of locative art and pyschogeography. The camera and descriptive text are its locative technologies, and the pyschogeography consists of the spaces we inhabit as a global community. Cityscapes is a browser-based application. It embeds mapping software and geographical locating services in a wiki framework, which enables multiple users to contribute texts and images to a common project.

Cityscapes is built entirely on open source components and cost-free Internet services, most prominently DokuWiki, Google maps, geonames.org, and the FCKeditor. This truly remarkable freedom of technical access is important to how Cityscapes has been conceived, as inhabiting a shared imaginative space made possible by the Internet.

We hope that you will visit Cityscapes and, even more, that you will take the time to contribute. The wiki is set up so that only you have editing access to your posts; you can always come back to them, revise them, even delete them. Read about the Cityscapes Aesthetic.

The Travel Office is also planning the second phase of our consultation, which is being planned as an exhibition and series of discussions at the University of North Florida sometime between Fall 2009 and Spring 2010. For more information about the Travel Office’s Not-In-Residence consultancy at the Preserve, go here.

Another reason Thayer released an online version is because of its “documentation.” The “about this work” link reveals the source-code for the work, which Thayer has open-sourced under a GPL license. He writes “The source-code is presented in a framework I’ve designed called CodeChat.”

Separated into three categories — (1) Visualizer client (what you see), (2) Image retrieval, image manipulation and network communication, and (3) Real-time seismic data retrieval — “it’s a web-based, threaded discussion forum that allows for separate discussion at each line of the code. What I do to start things off is put in a few comments, trying to focus mostly on the conceptual and aesthetic implications of the lines I choose to comment on as I want the discussion to be more at that level rather than a technical level. By doing this what I’m pointing out … is that everything you need to know about the work is in the code … (which) can easily be materialized … (W)hen galleries and museums are wondering how to preserve this type of art, they should be looking at preserving the source-code.“

In the idiom of maps and cartography, the tendency is to thoroughly identify as many attributes of the physical world and coordinate them to geographic, you know…coordinates, typically using latitude and longitude. Those attributes are usually other instrumental and worldly markers, like street addresses, nearly immovable physical markers like, you know…landmarks, buildings, franchise stores, and so on. The database tables fill in with this information, sorted, sifted, refined. Some deletes and updates.

In between the record sets are the most interesting possibilities for new services, new ways of experiencing the physical world and new kinds of adventures. What I’m thinking about are ways to creatively explore within a fully instrumented, surveilled and mapped world, with counter intuitive uses of this data. There are some excellent examples within the art-technology and design-technology communities, such as GPS Drawing, as shown above. This practice is intriguing because it couples measurement with expression and finds an alternative use for the devices involved — a GPS and a mapping application like GoogleEarth.

Surveillance Camera Players using CCTV cameras as a site for performance opportunities

Younghee wonders, in this context, what are the ways of minimizing “digital traces” — those indications of where you are, and where you have been, in a surveillance world. She says,

That leaves another interesting question: How would people drop out of, or at least minimize their digital traces and minimize contributing to create others’? We are probably not expecting stickers and badges showing “this person does NOT have cameras” or “this person will NOT use cameras”. One of the memorable Ubicomp conference talks was on the interesting concept of creating capture-resistant environment, preventing camera phones to take photos by overexposing photos attempted in the region covered by this technology. While I am sure there are certain types of places this technology would be very useful, I do have my doubts if there would ever be any technology successfully controlling people’s digital behaviors.

Similarly, in a reverse mode, Life: A User’s Manual by Michelle Teran captures the signals leaked into public space by RF-based video cameras and reveals intimate spaces in a very DIY and performative fashion.

Minimzing traces is one possible perspective. I think, perhaps in this era where digital kids do not reflect so much on how much of a trace they leave behind, and indeed have entirely different perspectives on the meaning of surveillance and its implications. How many digital kids (the next “us”) have read “1984″ for example?

In contrast to the Surveillance Camera Players and their performances — where they are maximizing their impact and traces for counter-intuitive purposes, and counter-systemic purposes — groups like the Institute for Applied Autonomy have constructed — years ago, pre-Google Maps — a digital map system called iSee of surveillance cameras that would allow one to plot a course that does precisely what Younghee wonders about — minimizing one’s impact. In other words, the mapping system plots routes that avoids surveillance cameras.

It may be that the question is no to much avoiding “capture” but how to turn that space into something where your voice can be heard. I’m not convinced, but it seems that we (a bit older people) think of surveillance in one way that digital kids (the next “us”) will see as an opportunity for a new form of living.

Beyond this, I am interested in a kind of Personal Positioning System that points out the absences in my experiences in the world. For example, showing me where I have not been rather than showing the entire world from above, as if its fully prepared for my exploration. I’m interested in finding things like longer route between two points, rather than the minimal route. Or routes that are deliberately constructed based on streets or regions I have not been. Purely as a form of creative, digital-era perambulation or motoring. Exploration in a world that is pretty much completely mapped, indexed, databased and optimized. What is exploration in an optimized, instrumented world? [posted by Julian Bleecker on Near Future Laboratory]

The group exhibition No Place - like Home: Perspectives on Migration in Europe features eighteen Belgian and international artists. Their videos, photographic works and installations take a closer look at what lies under the surface of the migration issue. Migration is a thing of all ages. Where Europeans once colonized various continents and emigrated en masse to other lands both in and beyond their own continent, movement from the opposite direction has now taken hold. Capital, goods and information circulate freely in the late-capitalist, globalized world economy. For people, however, mobility is arranged somewhat differently. Borders and territories are still the primary expression of national sovereignty, however multi ethnic populations may have become. For Europe – which permanently shifts between regulating, even attracting, and then repelling strangers – these are the outer borders, the so called Schengenland regions. No Place - like Home (mark the hyphen) investigates how inner and outer space, how ‘we’ and ‘they’ maintain complex relations with one another and the frictions this generates. The media, like tourism – a phenomenon that on the Italian island of Lampedusa vacillates with the refugee issue – have little to do with transparency. By way of the varying perceptions of 18 artists whose work focuses on the illegal refugees who are today’s modern nomads, this exhibition hopes to help visualize an issue that cannot be summarized in black-and-white contrasts: an interwoven, variegated tale of migration networks and refugee trafficking, cartography and geographical military data, migration management and border infiltrations, international rights, lack of rights and lawlessness.

Today, illegal migration into Europe comes primarily from southeastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa. One exceptional focal point of the exhibition is the sanitary cordon being placed around that last continent. Peripheral locations such as the Strait of Gibraltar and a number of Sicilian islands, almost perpetually besieged by refugees, connect several contributions to the exhibition. Miguel Abad and Herman Asselberghs are showing images of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, where Europe is establishing part of its migration policy outside its own borders. Pieter Geenen, Raphael Cuomo and Maria Lorio, Federico Baronello and Takuji Kogo indicate how, on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the reality of tourism runs hand in hand with that of asylum seekers, being repatriated or otherwise, without the two worlds ever touching. In her comprehensive installation, Sahara Chronicle, Ursula Biemann highlights the sub-Saharan exodus to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Schengen, the Castle by Xavier Arenós, charts how things move on from there. His work is not only a typology of the streams of mobility to Spain, but also reveals the underlying macro-economic space. Cartography is also found in the contributions of the Migreurop network and the magazine collective, An Architektur: on the one hand a map of all possible transit, relief or detention camps connected with European territory, and on the other hand as a specific analysis in the form of an architectural dissection of Polish refugee centres.

The fact that European political space is not consistent with European immigration is a subtext in the work of Erzen Shkololli, Yves Mettler, Herman Asselberghs and Thomas Locher, as is the question of what common value systems still mean on this continent from a cultural, historical perspective, once stereotypes are set aside. The paradox of an interior European space that defends its borders versus a world where nothing stops at national frontiers any more is evidenced in the photographic work of Armin Linke. His work draws attention to the most diverse effects of globalisation and serves as a kind of resonance chamber for the exhibition, as does an ironic installation by Pravdoliub Ivanov with some thirty different cooking surfaces and pots. What remains is the individual voice of the migrant, which is generally kept out of the media. Its tone is allegorical for Hans Op de Beeck, a naked testimony in the work of Ursula Biemann and in the participatory documentary, Pour vivre j’ai laisé. In this last project, initiated and directed by Bénédicte Liénard, asylum seekers at the Petit Chateau refugee centre in Brussels take the camera into their own hands in an introspective document that does not lack humor and is made from a non-voluntary, and therefore powerful perspective, in a plea for a world as a place that can still be created by mankind.

Thinking about migration means making a close examination of oneself. With No Place - like Home, Argos lays claim to a trans-national political space. What public space, what identity stands counter to this? What and where is ‘home’? These are questions that will be further investigated in a parallel programme of lectures and video presentations.

Curated by Paul Willemsen with contributions by Miguel Abad, An Architektur, Xavier Arenós, Herman Asselberghs, Federico Baronnello, Ursula Biemann, Raphaël Cuomo, Maria Iorio, Provdoliub Ivanov, Pieter Geenen, Takuji Kogo, Bénédicte Liénard, Armin Linke, Thomas Locher, Yves Mettler, Migreurope, Hans Op de Beeck, Erzen Shkololli.

Imaging Beijing is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Mixed Realities exhibition. It was made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Teleport to Imaging Beijing in Second Life.

BIOGRAPHY

John Craig Freeman’s work has been exhibited internationally including at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing, the Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich, Eyebeam in New York, City, the Zacheta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki (the national gallery of Warsaw), Kaliningrad Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Russia, Art Basel Miami, Ciberart Bilbao and the Girona Video and Digital Arts Festival in Spain, La Biblioteca National in Havana, the Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, the Nickle Arts Museum in Calgary, the Center for Experimental and Perceptual Art (CEPA) in Buffalo, Art interactive, Mobius and Studio Soto in Boston, the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, Ambrosino Gallery in Miami, the Photographers Gallery in London, and the Friends of Photography’s Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco.

In 1992 Freeman was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has been published in Leonardo, the Journal of Visual Culture, and Exposure, as well as a chapter in the book Electronic Collaboration in the Humanities. His work has been reviewed in Wired News, Artforum, Ten-8, Z Magazine, Afterimage, Photo Metro, New Art Examiner, Time, Harper’s and Der Spiegel. Lucy Lippard cites Freeman’s work in her book The Lure of the Local, as does Margot Lovejoy in her book Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age.

Freeman received a Bachelor of Art degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1986 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990. He is an Associate Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston. The focus of his academic activities throughout the last decade has been to integrate computer technology and theory of electronic culture into visual art curriculum and to explore interdisciplinary approaches to education and technology.

To create a double image of space and place, Esther Polak used the “mashup website” VeoGeo.com. The website combines images of GPS registrations with YouTube route-footage. Combined and synchronized, tracks and video’s can be followed step by step resulting in an extremely realistic experience of armchair traveling.

Esther Polak is best known from her earlier prize winning GPS projects like AmsterdamREALTIME and MILKprojec.

Our feeling of space and place changes and refreshes constantly through the interaction and communication possibilities of new media. Locations and environments may be altered from public to a private and from concrete to virtual through mobile technologies. These hybrid spaces create emotional and aesthetic possibilities for artists to experiment with. How do artists work with hybrid space and how do they make us aware of the social and cultural implications?

This workshop will be moderated by John Hopkins. Speakers & guests: Armin Medosh, Anne Nigten, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Eric Kluitenberg, Kurt Vanhoutte, Peter Westenberg, Maja Kuzmanovic and Pieter van Bogaert.

During two workshop days we will think, talk and work around four thematic issues:

LOCAL-GLOBAL: The media has brought the global world closer to us. They focus our attention on our local environment as it exists in a globalised world. The concept of place can no longer be naively fenced off from homogenous global networks. Globalisation processes have a number of negative effects, but this is no reason to suffer them. In that sense, artist s strategies to reveal the richness of diversity in a global society are very valuable. Via their acts in spaces, they can show us that there are still opportunities to claim our own space in a world that we do not always seem to have a grip on.

PRIVATE-PUBLIC: Technology enables us to be constantly in contact with places from a distance. This gives us enormous freedom. The shadow side is that the same technology allows us to control more. Artists try to draw attention to controlling networks that are not always visible to us, such as databases, RFID (radiofrequency identification) of surveillance cameras. This enables us to interact with them more consciously and maybe even break the connection now and again.

VISIBLE-INVISIBLE: The phenomenon of ubiquitous computing is about the fact that technology is being integrated into our surroundings ever more seamlessly . In many cases we no longer know where technology is concealed, let alone how to manipulate it ourselves. Our air is full of (polluting) radiation. Artists can reveal these invisible networks in interesting ways using maps, visualisations or photos.

NARRATING-CREATING: Immersive environments, interactive story telling or mapping tell us stories about our place in space. Artists often use low-tech technologies in their work, as a reaction against the glorification of technological intelligence. As a rule, these works function more transparently or are easy to work with. They bring the possibility of shaping your own space within reach, hereby stimulating a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture.

Sharing and mapping experiences, thoughts and visions around creative expressions of hybrid space are the central goal. Every thematic issue will be introduced by an international speaker who explains and highlights the issue from his or her own experience, and a national reporter who reflects upon the situation and possibilities for Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium).The exhibition Place@Space at Z33 functions as material for study during this workshop.

In general, traditional conferences, workshops, symposia, tend to a bit of a bore: keynote speakers are the central element and more often than not little time is spent on an interesting discussion / conversation with all participants on the topics dealt with. Most interesting talks are held during the coffee break, the lunch or in the bar afterwards. Besides this, these meetings are generally limited to only text and minimal forms of visual expressions.

The Cowboy Methodology asks for an active engagement of each participant in his/her own language/medium (text, still or moving image). In this way the group of individuals are equally important as the keynote speakers in front of the audience.

Keywords for this methodology are:
* openness
* the individual is empowered, but finds its value in connection to the group
* passion
* transdisciplinary approach
* ad hoc connections generate long lasting relations
* meetings in real life are as equal as meetings in the virtual
*

The Cowboy Methodology heavily relies on the Open Space Technology which proved its value in user generated conferences as BarCamps or Unconferences. And, of course, this methodology could not have existed without the prototypical image of a cowboy: energetic, engaged, in solitude, but aware & depending of the others in his community, Yihaa!

The findings, conclusions, new questions and other output of this workshop will be brought together on the website and in a printed publication.