Beginning May 23, artists and designers are invited to submit yard signs to MyYardOurMessage.com around the theme of what it means to actively participate in a democracy. Starting July 1, the public will be invited to vote on the artist-created design submissions.

The top 50 vote-getting designs will be announced August 1 and, subsequently, made available to order as a full-sized political yard sign for $20 including shipping. Top designs will also be available as free downloads. In addition, the Walker Art Center and mnartists.org will print the winning yard sign creations and place them in neighborhoods throughout the Twin Cities metro area, including those immediately surrounding the site of the Republican National Convention.

My Yard Our Message is a project conceived by Scott Sayre, is produced by the Walker Art Center and mnartists.org in collaboration with The UnConvention.

Key dates and deadlines:

Design submissions deadline: June 30, 2008
Public voting on yard sign entrants will run from July 1–27, 2008
50 winning designs will be announced August 1, 2008

Entries end July 1. More information: http://www.myyardourmessage.com/about/

Tantalum Memorial - Reconstruction€ is the first in a series of telephony-based memorials by the artists group Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji, to the people who have died as a result of the €coltan wars€ in the Congo. The installation is constructed out of electromagnetic Strowger switches, the basis of the first automatic telephone exchange invented in 1888. The movements and sounds of the switches are triggered by the phone calls of London’s Congolese community as they participate in €œTelephone Trottoire, a concurrent project also built by the artists in collaboration with the Congolese radio program Nostalgie Ya Mboka.

Since August 1998 there have been 3.9 million deaths in the €œcoltan wars€ and there are currently over 35,000 Congolese refugees in the UK alone. Coltan is mined for the metal tantalum, an essential component of mobile phones and other communication devices that is now more valuable than gold and coveted by dozens of international mining companies and warring local militias. This work weaves together the ambiguities and consequences of globalization, transnational migration and refugees and the impact of our addiction to constant communication.

Telephone Trottoire is a €œsocial telephony€ network that calls Congolese listeners, plays them a phone message and invites them to record a comment and pass it on to a friend by entering their telephone number. This builds on the traditional Congolese practice of €œradio trottoire or pavement radio€, the passing around of news and gossip on street corners in order to avoid state censorship.

Tantalum Memorial Residue (courtesy Manifesta7) will be the second in the series, this time utilizing a 1938 telephone exchange rescued from the old Alumix factory in Bolzano, Italy. This is also the site of Manifesta 7 - the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, 19thJuly to 2nd November, 2008.

Tantalum Memorial Reconstruction will next be shown at The Science Museum in London UK in October 2008. This version will be triggered by the phone calls of a new telephony project created during workshops that will bring together young people from a Greenwich school with Congolese asylum seekers. The installation will then travel to Chalkwell Hall in Southend-on-Sea, Essex where it will launch the new centre for international arts organization Metal.

Tantalum Memorial Reconstruction May 10 - August 31, 2008 is A FUSE Commissioned Residency for the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, ZERO1, CADRE Laboratory and the Lucas Artists Program, Montalvo Arts Center.

The artists Harwood, Richard Wright and Matsuko Yokokoji have worked together since 2004, firstly as €œMongrel€ - an internationally recognized artists collective. Previous projects include the first online commission from the Tate Gallery, London, a BAFTA award nomination and work in the permanent collections of the Pompidou Centre Paris and the Centre for Media Arts in Karlsruhe (ZKM).

For more information contact: Harwood,Wright, Yokokoji at:
richard@mediashed.orgor
harwood@mediashed.org
matsuko@mediashed.org

http://www.mongrel.org.uk
http://www.mediashed.org

Telephone Trottoire: http://www.telephonetrottoire.net

ZERO1 Biennial: http://01sj.org

Manifesta7:http://www.manifesta7.it

Dialup Radio has been designed specifically to meet the needs of human rights activists in the developing world. The system can be installed locally or may be operated across national borders. Particular attention has been paid to system security and to minimizing costs of operation.

Dialup Radio consists of a web-based content management system written in Ruby/Rails, and an Asterisk-based telephony server. All software is open-source, and will be released to the public in the fall of 2008.

There is an online demonstration of the content management system here. Login as “duradmin”, password “duradmin”. The demo will revert to default settings every 30 mintues or so. You can dial in to the demo on 1-206-456-0817.

Thanks to Cati Vaucelli

Our world is continually shaped and reshaped by patterns of mobility. In the United States, motorization and single-use zoning are the principal components of a system that depends upon long distance travel and cheap energy. In the developing world, the wasteful patterns of the West are being repeated in places like China and India where increased automobile and fuel use are quickly becoming the norm. In all parts of the world, city governments struggle to keep pace with the energy and mobility needs of their expanding populations. Tourism, migration, military conflict, and environmental disasters all keep human beings on the move. Many choose their destinations, while others are forced towards them. Our 21st century world may ride the precarious line between the temporary and the permanent, and the ecosystems plundered by our unquenchable energy needs might have the final word. Art, and other forms of cultural reflection, can help to make accessible the structures and! systems that propel us. It falls to all of us as global citizens to redirect our governing institutions and cultural perceptions ? or we may find ourselves facing the end of the road.

Presentations on the theory & practice of surveillance and contemporary protest art, by graduate students in the ITP program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The presenters’ talks will be grouped into four panels, to be moderated by their Professor, Marisa Olson (Curator at Large, Rhizome), on topics ranging from voyeurism and play to intervention and networks of control. These panels will consist of both artist talks and critical essays, and audience members will be invited to give feedback on a few works in progress.

Program:

11:45 Open Seating
12:00 Welcome & Introduction, Marisa Olson

12:05-1:15 Voyeurism vs. Exhibitionism: Online and In the Streets
Panelists: Allistar Peters and Meng Li, Ana Maria Gutierrez, Heather Rasley

1:15-2:00 Watchful Intervening: From Scientologists to Spy Shops
Panelists: Amanda Bernsohn and Kacie Kinzer, Syed Salahuddin

2-3:30 Playtime: Games, Toys, and Entertainment
Panelists: Oscar Torres, Scott Hoffer, Shlomit Lehavi and Leah Gilliam

3:30-5 Looking at Control: From Candidate Self-Surveillance to Wireless Subversion
Panelists: Michael Clemow and Tom Jenkins, Alberto Tafoya, Emery Martin

The Change You Want To See is the gallery and convergence stage run by the activist arts collective Not An Alternative.

Location One presents its first ever Virtual Residency Project in the form of a call to artists and other creative individuals with the express purpose of fostering collaboration and creativity across geographical expanses and areas of expertise around the topic of the 2008 US Presidential Election. The goal of this residency is to find 3 participants who are not necessarily physically proximate but who are willing to collaborate with other artists / engineers / scientists / writers / musicians / poets / activists to develop a project using such non-F2F (face to face) interfaces such as webcams, email, chat, video, blogs, Second Life, MIDI, skype, walkie-talkie, snail mail, radio or POTS (plain old telephone service), tin cans on string, or any other means of collaboration to develop a project that will be presented at Location One in the fall of 2008, in advance of the US Presidential election.

Please send CV, url or any materials to virtualresidency [at] location1.org.

Think virtually. Buy locally. Invisible Threads - a virtual sweatshop - will be operating live from Second Life and Eyebeam as part of the Synthetic Times Beijing Media Arts Symposium closing reception. The mixed reality performance explores the politics of virtual labor through the creation of a designer jeans sweatshop in the online, 3-dimensional world of Second Life. Simulating a real life manufacturing facility that includes hiring Second Life workers to produce real world jeans sold for profit, the project provides an insiders view into current modes of global, telematic production.

During the evening visitors will be able to order a pair of Double Happiness Jeans through the factory’s just-in-time telematic manufacturing process. Customers in the real world place their jean orders to the workers in the virtual factory via streaming audio and video. The workers, avatars controlled by humans sitting at computers around the globe, operate textile machines on an assembly line that produce the jeans. Styles include “MyPants”, “No Pants Left Behind” and the “LowRider”. Video.

PITCH the WGBH Lab and P.O.V. your ideas for a compelling, 3-minute video short. Be creative — we want to be surprised! If selected, we’ll give you $2,000 to make it happen. Afterwards we’ll feature it online and we may broadcast it on national TV! Your story could be about an ongoing national or local issue, memories of elections past, or insight on how our NEW president can make a change — you decide! The WGBH Lab will post your idea online, ask the Lab community to vote for their favorites, and discuss your progress as you move forward. This is your opportunity to create content that voices your opinion, tells your story, and shows the world what issues matter to you.

In June, P.O.V. will begin broadcasting their slate of films for the 2008 season, including five documentaries related to the 2008 Presidential election: “Traces of the Trade” by Katrina Browne, “Election Day” by Katie Chevigny, “Campaign” by Kazuhiro Soda; “The Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez” by Kieran Fitzgerald; “Critical Condition” by Roger Weisberg; and “Soldiers of Conscience” by Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg. The programs tell stories that deal with critical election issues like voter turnout, healthcare, the Iraq war, race relations, election reform, immigration & border security, and the health of democracy both in America and around the world. As these films roll out, YOUR short may become a part of the conversation taking place around these issues.

City Without Walls (cWOW) seeks a curator (or co-curators) for an upcoming group exhibition dealing with issues and ideas about democracy. The exhibition opens in September 2008, taking the pulse of democracy in America and around the world just prior to the Presidential election.

City Without Walls (cWOW) seeks artists and artwork for a group exhibition dealing with issues and ideas about democracy, and scheduled to open this fall just prior to the Presidential election. The exhibition will take the pulse of the state of democracy in America and around the world.

cWOW is a non-profit urban gallery for emerging art that advances the careers of artists while building the audience for contemporary art. cWOW’s gallery in downtown Newark is a state-of-the-art facility with over 1,600 square feet of exhibition space, including a main gallery, a new-media project room, 9-foot screen, several flat-screen TVs, and other video projection equipment (see attached floor plan). cWOW is New Jersey’s oldest not-for-profit alternative art space, founded in 1975, and a three-time recipient of the prestigious NJ State Council on the Arts “Citation of Excellence.”

Call: Evonne M. Davis at 973.622.1188 with questions. Email: info [at] cwow.org

“There are no countries now.” From artist Alan Bigelow’s When I was President :: Theory+ Practice is an acknowledgment, interrogation and fete of the void between what the world could be and what it is. Web artist and writer Alan Bigelow’s piece, When I was President is an interactive projection that details a presidency ended by a suicide bomber: ‘a high school teacher from Des Moines.’ ‘She said it was the only way to make the world right again.’

Artists: Andrew Leo Baron, Alan Bigelow, Deric Carner, Robert Ladislas Derr, Nisha Drinkard, Katarina Jerinic, Darren Jones, Tracie Lee, Paula McCartney, Tori Purcell, Stephanie Standish, Alina Tenser, Matthew Verdon, Brian Wondergem

According to independent curator and video artist Donna Kessinger, the world of networked art is expansive and constantly evolving daily with new technology and applications. Networked is an effort to take into consideration both literal and physical interpretations based on an open call for networked art on a local and international level. This small group survey is an attempt to look at the manifestation of net-based interactive projects, and physical attempts to escape from virtual realities, resulting in work with a more personal connection - going back to an idea of networks having to do with people and the way we live and work, both alone and in community.

Artists: William Brovelli, Doris Cacoilo, Beatrice Coron, The Coalition for Daring Behavior, Sean Hovendick, Visakh Menon, William Oliwa, Gunter Puller, Katherine Sweetman, Amanda Thackray, Michelle Wilson, Jody Zellen

Kevin Darmanie’s oversized comic panels each function independently but can be read as part of an ongoing narrative. Set between Trinidad and a city not dissimilar to Newark, NJ, the series is notable for the humor, honesty and sly queries posed by Darmanie?s alter ego, Kedar. If So, Then So! is the culminating exhibition of Darmanie’s 07 studio residency at Aferro.