Renowned composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda (Japan 1966) will create art projects for Dream Amsterdam. Ikeda’s hypnotic work plays with human perception through installations, performances, live concerts, recordings and album releases. Ikeda will use pure light as the material for his interventions in various secret locations across Amsterdam. Intensely bright light installations will appear mysteriously, connecting a constellation of points across the cityscape. The energy used for the light installations is generated from sustainable, recycled resources. The site-specific art projects can be viewed from June 6 until June 21, 2008 in the evening hours. A detailed map with the locations and a route can be found here from June 6.

His work has been exhibited and presented worldwide, including Tate Modern / Queen Elizabeth Hall (London) and Centre Pompidou / Museum of Modern Art (Paris). He has won important prizes, including the Ars Electronica Golden Nica (2001). Ikeda’s commission for Dream Amsterdam Foundation presents his first large-scale artworks for public spaces and marks a new direction in his artistic career.

On June 7, the SILENT NIGHT event presents a unique opportunity to experience the city as never before: Amsterdam switches off her lights. The darkness maximizes the contrast with the bright light of Ikeda’s installations spread over the city. Ryoji Ikeda and Dream Amsterdam Foundation invite residents of Amsterdam and visitors to actively participate in the SILENT NIGHT event and help contribute to the realization of Ikeda’s Dream, promising to deliver an extraordinary transformation of the city of Amsterdam for one night only.

A co-production by Dream Amsterdam and Forma Arts and Media

Arcade machine, 2 joysticks, 2 tvs, coin dispenser, 5 diy arduino based network, 26 led score display, 2 motors, 2 fans, 4 optocoupled h-bridges, 2 printer head mechanics, hair dryer, 2 infra-red sensors, 4 switches, 2 potenciometers, button, 220v 5v relay system, 2 fluorescent lamps, 8 power supplies, wood structure, tripod, video camera.

Pong is an analog recreation of the 70’s Atari arcade video game, relating the new technologies available for developing artwork and an investigation on physical interaction and natural processes. The recreation of a lengendary game reflecting today’s new media, post-digital and diy art creation.

Made by Atari and released in 1972 the Pong game was the first video game to achieve widespread popularity in both arcade and home console. Since then and more lately history has been giving it full credit for having launched the initial boom in the video game industry. This game can be seen as the first world known digital interactive experience, the artist’s idea was to re-build it using a different approach and excluding some of the stiff reaction that the programming algorithms had, replacing them for physical ones, more precisely the use of wind to control a light ball, for example, a ping pong ball. For its operation method Andre Gonçalves is using mechanical hardware instead of being solely a digital piece.

In some of his latest projects Gonçalves has been using a policy of recycling old obsolete hardware, using “dead-media” as the basic hardware for developing his projects. For Pong the most important parts in the operation method are old A3 printers, taking advantage of their mechanical sliding axis system, and replacing the printer head with a 12cm computer fan which is being used as the raquet that pushes the ball forth.The motors and most of the sensors and switches used were also taken from old printers. The arcade machine was bought cheap from an arcade games dealer.

Pong is a two-piece installation. The main piece is a self-made wooden structure where all the physical action of the game occurs, the game area seen on the arcade main monitor through a video camera. This structure also hosts all of the electronics behind its working method. The other piece is the traditional arcade wooden box with attached analog joysticks, buttons, coin dispenser and 2 tv screens, one showing the graphics and another with the game view. Both pieces are connected through a cable. The two joysticks will be attached for controlling the movement, up and down for the left and right motion of the fans, left and right for the amount of the wind power blown by the fans.

The game starts after inserting one coin and pressing one button, both the score numbers will flash on zero, the ball is released in the game and both joysticks activated to let users play the game, the scoring is increased as the ball falls off one of the ends of the table, replaced on game and carrying on until one player reaches nine points.

Pong was supported by the Ernesto de Sousa Fellowship.

The UrbanSpaceStation (USS) is a device designed to sequester the carbon dioxide emissions from buildings (which account for 80% carbon dioxide emissions in Manhattan and 35% of the national average) and return oxygen-enriched air to the building. It provides an intensive urban agriculture facility, coupling and reusing building waste streams locally, and potentially providing significant food. Called the USS because it appropriates materials, power generation and closed system engineering of space stations to significantly increase the environmental performance of urban buildings, it creates new urban space that can service a 10x building volume. The Trusset Space-frame and ETFE system is designed to be built and deployed as a barn raising, rather than through the traditional construction industry and pre-engineered to require no substantial structural modification of support building, circumvent permitting and perform in 100-year storm events; the USS nonetheless operates at a scale of small collectives (of students for instance) and in a DIY tradition. Maximizing participation in the deployment is an investment in the distributed capacity to improve, maintain and redesign these systems. The designs details are presented and discussed.

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Jeremijenko’s projects—which explore socio-technical change—have been exhibited by several museums and galleries, including the MASSMoCA, the Whitney, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. A 1999 Rockefeller Fellow, she was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine. Jeremijenko is the director of the environmental health clinic at NYU, assistant professor in Art, and affiliated with the Computer Science Dept.

The artists visit freebee sites throughout the virtual world and bring the detritus back to their space, and also encourage other users to drop their garbage at the site. Snippets of chat sessions with other avatars posted to the Second Life Dumpster blog reveal the humorous social challenges of keeping such an operation running. The project received a 2008 Rhizome Commission and their original proposal was to carve out a new type of behavior on Second Life. The site’s owners, Linden Labs, say that exploring the world (including crafting one’s persona and visage), creating objects, and selling those objects are the primaries forms of activity there, but eteam wanted to ask what happens after self-actualization and the ultimate disposal or withering of the ephemera exchanged in this process. After all, virtual junk is still junk, and its weighty presence online is but a mere token of the refuse our high tech lifestyles generate in “first life.” If you’re in the real world city of Brooklyn, this weekend, you can visit Smack Mellon to see the artists’ physical rebuilding of decaying Second Life objects. Otherwise, check them out online or even consider joining the cadre of dumpster divers now hanging out at Fearzom. - Marisa Olson, Rhizome.

GAULON’s project also points out how an increasingly spreading technology of surveillance can be smartly used to acquire data from other surveillance technologies. The detournement as a way of creating conflict within society was a practice widely experimented by the situationist movement (whose theories directly inspire RECYCLISM). But actually the theories of Michel De Certau and his ‘practices of everyday life’ are maybe more appropriate to interpret 2.4Ghz experience. It changes usage patterns whose consumption is normally assigned to, converting an establishment tool into a weapon potentially useful for our daily practice of liberation.

Surveillance cameras were also at the core of the Interception performance, where the cameras’ physical hijacking and its use in other more explicit contexts pushes people to easily realize their privacy invasion. But 2.4Ghz tries to make more explicit those signals freed in the air, claiming their accessibility by anyone with a wireless video receiver being not only an observation target but also a more conscious observer. It’s interesting the way the whole RECYCLISM™ project is publicly presented: the device is attached to street lamppost, to reveal live the presence of cameras around broadcasting video signals. The project is somehow making a statement about the open economy of the trash (defined as material without owner), which allows people and artists to acquire new stuff and transform it into something with a value. Nevertheless, this position is sarcastically contradicted with all the ™ symbols accurately added to any project’s name, establishing a private property claim that trash had originally lost.” - Tony Canonico, Neural.

FatherBoard, The SuperAvatar @ Share 2008 - Robot Art

A 4 Day Cultural Festival

HABITATS: a 4 day Cultural Festival :: Artists, scientists, and cultural commentators are joining together to create a collective vision of a sustainable habitat. The Habitats conference and festival is a 4 day event organized to promote an exchange between art, technology, and environment. With public and private cooperative efforts leading to cleaner water, the Gowanus Canal area has experienced an increase in wildlife and improved prospects for commercial and cultural revitalization. Habitats celebrates this process. Instigated by Eidolon Culture, The Habitats conferences will include speakers such as best-selling author Steven Johnson (“Emergence” and “Mind Wide Open,”); long-standing community organizers such as the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (GCCDC) ; electronic artists such as Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening Foundation) ; site specific sound and video recordings, live music performances, site specific installations, collaborative projects, recycled art, workshops and active audience participation.
The placement of the artworks in their site-specific rendition, the sharing of thought provoking ideas of contemporary cultural relevance, and the active role of audience interaction all create a “Habitat” — a place defined by the indispensable nature of everyone and everything within it. Habitats is being Presented by Eidolon Culture and Sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Polytechnic University: Integrated Digital Media Institute (IDMI), CEC Arts Link, New York State Council on the Arts, and Material for the Arts.

Date: November 9th – 12th , 2006
Time: Programs begin daily at 12:00pm until 11pm
Location: The Brooklyn Lyceum 227 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215
N Train to Union Street, Corner of President Street
Contact: mwarren[at]eidolon.org
Admission: $5 for environmental + cultural conferences, $15 for live performance program
www.global-habitat.net

ArT. ENVirONMENT. CULTUrE. COMMUNiTY. gOWANUS

CONfirMED CULTUrAL SPEAKErS

Steven Johnson – author of “Emergence, the connected lives of ants, brains and cities”
Douglas Rushkoff – author of “Media Virus”
Peter Principle of Tuxedomoon
Daniel Pinchbeck – author of “Breaking Open the Head”

ENVirONMENTAL CONfErENCE

Coordinated by: Gowanus Canal Community Development Corp

COMMUNiTY ArTS AND WOrKSHOPS

Carol Caputo, IRUBNY
Walking Tours of Gowanus with NY Acoustic Ecology
Workshop with the Prospect Park Zoo

iNSTALLATiON/ PErfOrMANCE ArTiSTS

Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening Foundation
Amoeba Technology, NYC
Kim Holleman, NYC
David Linton of Unity Gain
Bill Etra, NYC
Michael Schumacher of Diapason Gallery
free103.9, NYC
Share, NYC
Keiko Uneshi, NYC
Disney NasaBorg, NYC
Harlan Emil, NYC
2012, sponsored by CEC Arts Link
Project503, Russia
Antartic Project, Russia
Efi Amantidou, Greece
Luis Maurette, Argentina
Klauss, Argentina
Eva Sjuve, Sweden
Ken Hiratsuka, Japan
AlsoÂ… Zarah Cabanias, Hans-Christoph Steiner,
Kathi von Koerber, Marianna Ellenberg, Lary Seven,
Zemi17, Peripheral Media, Claire Barrett, Ne(x)twork

GCCDC is a neighborhood preservation non-profit organization dedicated to the revitalization of the Gowanus Canal area in South Brooklyn, New York, for twentyfour years. A community-based group with an extensive record of initiatives and involvement in the physical improvement of the Gowanus Canal, Red Hook and Carroll Gardens communities. GCCDCÂ’s efforts are focused on the environmental remediation of the Gowanus Canal, housing, economic development, and commercial revitalization.

Eidolon Culture is a Brooklyn based non-profit arts organization, directing and producing onsite and online platforms for interdisciplinary projects, bridging the gaps of specialization between disciplines and geographical distances. Eidolon Culture focuses on the potential for creative activity at the intersections of art, technology, and culture. Eidolon Cultures identity is based on interactive sustainable business practices, promoting collaboration and partnerships between government, industry, foundations, non-governmental organisations and the general public.

FOR aDDitiONaL iNFORMatiON pLease visit www.global-habitat.net. Day aND eveNiNg pROgRaM scHeDuLe aND DetaiLs wiLL sOON be avaiLabLe.