“It’s the Transmediale at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Somewhere, something in this cavernous Marshall Plan edifice is flickering. Closer at hand in the exhibition hall, half-tilted black boxes on the floor solicit you to crawl under them and encounter others of your kind watching videos. The fauna underneath are warm and resistant, though you would expect to encounter something rather more cold and slimy when lifting a rock, which is what the black-box bivouac viewing situation feels like. Continue reading

Netacronyms by Marisa Olson (2007).

Territorial Phantom with AES+F Group (RU), Yael Bartana (IL/NL), Cao Fei (CN), Yolande Harris (UK), Marine Hugonnier (F), Karen Lancel (NL), Lucas Lenglet (NL), Raqs Media Collective (IN), State of Sabotage (SoS), Artur Zmijewski (PL) :: March 29 - May 12, 2008 :: Opening March 28, 5:00 pm :: Netherlands Media Art Institute, Keizersgracht 264, 1016 EV Amsterdam.

Employing a whole mix of attitudes, viewpoints and forms, the artists in Territorial Phantom respond to occupying and possessing space. In today’s culture, based around claiming and possession, organizations, businesses and countries appropriate ever more space, by privatizing public space or bringing ‘democracy’ to countries, and where necessary eliminating opponents. Continue reading

Spacecowboys - a workshop about hybrid spaces :: May 6-7, 2008 :: Z33, Hasselt, Belgium :: 15-20 participants within a wide range of disciplines Free.

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. Continue reading

First Monday: Volume 13, Number 3 :: Preface: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 by Michael Zimmer; Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0Web 2.0: An argument against convergence by Trebor Scholz; by Matthew Allen; Interactivity is Evil! A critical investigation of Web 2.0 by Kylie Jarrett; Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation by Søren Mørk Petersen; The Externalities of Search 2.0: The Emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets Web 2.0 by Michael Zimmer; Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance by Anders Albrechtslund; History, Hype, and Hope: An Afterward by David Silver. Continue reading

[Image: “The Cornfield” – Second Life’s prison simulator] “Abstract: This Exegesis and accompanying artworks are the culmination of research conducted into the existence of surveillance in virtual worlds. A panoptical model has been used, and its premise tested through the extension into these communal spaces. Issues such as data security, personal and corporate privacy have been investigated, as has the use of art as a propositional mode. This Exegesis contains existing and new theoretical arguments and observations that have aided the development of research outcomes; a discussion of action research as a methodology; and questionnaire outcomes assisting in understanding player perceptions and concerns. Continue reading

ANEMICodeCINEMA by Andy Deck - Media Player Haters Unite :: ANEMICodeCINEMA is a free interpretation of privatized data streams, digital encryption and encoding mired in secrecy and exclusivity. It’s a premonition of future histories lost in translation. Already video and audio are often unusable and scrambled for people who do not use the dominant operating system. As time passes and data encryption secrets are forgotten, this fractured experience of today’s audio and video may become the norm rather than the exception. Continue reading

“”Who would know how to love without having read novels?” This saying seems to take on a new meaning with the multiplication of virtual worlds, even though the adjective “virtual” may be greatly misleading. It would be very odd to say, when thinking of the young hero of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, who spends whole days utterly absorbed in the fictional landscapes painted by his favourite novelists, that he resided in a “real” world, while a youngster of today who buys rather expensive equipment to play with buddies on the other side of the planet through wireless and satellite connections would be said to be living in a “virtual” landscape.

It would be much more reasonable to argue that it was Proust’s narrator who lived his adventures “virtually” while his 21st-century counterparts have to embed their imagination in so much hardware and software paraphernalia that they clearly end up in a more real, more connected, more technical world. Continue reading

Performing Space - A hybrid event organized by Frank Abbott, School of Art and Design, The Nottingham Trent University :: February 22, 2008 :: Nottingham.

Speakers / Presenters: Steven Benford, Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham :: David Crouch, Cultural Geographer, University of Derby :: Jonathan Hale, Architect, University of Nottingham :: Angharad Wynne-Jones, Director of Lift International Festival of Theatre :: John Newling, Artist, Nottingham Trent University :: Heath Bunting, Artist :: Active Ingredient, Artists :: Andrew Brown, Artist :: Mirjam Struppek, Researcher, Urban Screens :: Anette Schäfer, Curator, Trampoline / Radiator Festival :: The WiMAX Forest :: Open City :: Tour Of Tokyo. Continue reading

Party Dress - by Dana Karwas and Karla Karwas - is a roving performance that is part living architecture: part monumental fashion. It functions as a pavilion worn exclusively by five women that seamlessly injects architecture into fashion by using the body as space. The dress begins as a shared, bustled garment that gradually unfolds to create a temporary, inhabitable structure. Each seam, each dress, and each body are interconnected by a single, amorphous surface of flowing material. Continue reading