DRHA 2008: New Communities of Knowledge and Practice :: September 14-17, 2008 :: Cambridge, UK :: Call for Papers and Performances :: Deadline: April 30, 2008

The DRHA (Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts) conference is held annually at various academic venues throughout the UK. The conference theme this year is to promote discussion around new collaborative environments, collective knowledge and redefining disciplinary boundaries.

The aim of the conference is to: * Establish a site for mutually creative exchanges of knowledge * Promote discussion around new collaborative environments and collective knowledge * Continue reading

Creative Commons Salon LA: Share, Remix, Reuse - Legally with Rex Bruce, Holly Willis, Jack Lerner, Chris Weisbart and Michael Wilson :: April 16, 2008; 7:30 pm :: Found Gallery, 1903 Hyperion Ave., Los Angeles, CA.

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.” Rex Bruce, director of the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, will be screening a video he directed that uses public domain imagery from the US Military (also playing at the Centre Pompidou). Continue reading

[Image: Operation Urban Terrain (OUT): 2004-6 by Anne Marie Schleiner] “Due to its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the Situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.” Guy Debord (Contribution to Situationist Definition of Play, Internationale Situationniste #1, June 1958)

In recent years, commentators on game culture and ludology have undertaken the task of analyzing and structuring play. Such work has been strongly influenced by the Dutch researcher Johan Huizinga’s 1938 study of play, Homo Ludens and Roger Callois’s later structuralist elaborations of Huizinga’s research. Continue reading

Babelswarm — by Justin Clemens (Writer), Christopher Dodds (Artist/Designer), and Adam Nash (Musician/3-D Real-Time Artist) :: Opened April 11, 2008 :: Lismore Regional Gallery, 131 Molesworth Street, Lismore NSW 2480 + Second Life.

Socrates: What a lucky morning this is turning out to be! I was looking for one virtue and have found a whole swarm of them. — Plato, Meno

In September 2007, the Australia Council for the Arts announced the recipients of its $20,000 artists residency in the 3-D online virtual world of Second Life. Dodds, Nash, and Clemens were awarded the grant to develop an inter-disciplinary artwork which explores the possibilities of literary, music / sound art and real-time 3-D arts practices within the virtual world. Continue reading

From Cinema to Machinima — Software, Database, and the Moving Image - Panel Discussion with Lynn Hershman Leeson, Christiane Paul (Moderators), Henrik Bennetsen, Char Davies, Scott Kildall and Second Front, Howard Rheingold (via Second Life), Scott Snibbe, and Camille Utterback :: April 14, 2008; 7:30 - 9:30 pm :: San Francisco Art Institute, Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street campus :: Free and open to the public.

A panel discussion and virtual performance event, From Cinema to Machinima will explore the many ways in which the digital medium has reconfigured, even transformed, the moving image and thereby redefined concepts of cinema. Continue reading

Invisible Threads by Jeff Crouse and Stephanie Rothenberg :: April 15, 2008; 8 -10 pm :: Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, 540 West 21st (between 10th & 11th) :: Free event + performances by current Eyebeam artists.

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. Continue reading

Cantata Park 1 (2006) [Teleport to Mashup Park, Marni (206, 35, 23)] — by Metamatic (Christopher Dodds and Adam Nash) — is an interactive, spatialised sound sculpture built in the virtual world Second Life. The sculpture is made from 256 individual nodes in a 16 x 16 grid. Each node is embedded with a single word, triggered by a participant’s movement through the work. Each participant creates a random narrative, assembled on-the-fly, and in real-time.

Cantata Park explores the notion of a “cut-up narrative”. By disassembling and reassembling a passage of text, the participant is free to extract unseen meaning from an existing text. Continue reading

Until May 3, 2008, Improbable Architectures is at Translations|Traduções, WARC Gallery, Toronto :: part of the 21st Images Festival.

Improbable Architectures deals with Second Life as a space without parallel in the material world. It is a project developed by Noema Gallery team for the exhibition Memory of the Future, produced by Itaú Cultural. In different terrains, we build improbable architectures: in suspension, transparent, without columns, using only liquid and aerial sources to compose original forms which allow to anyone to navigate in its interior and exterior spaces, crossing its walls and merging with its structures. Continue reading

As part of their Talking about the Weather project — where they are collecting the world’s biggest collection of breath, to blow back global warming — Maria Miranda, Norie Neumark and Malcolm Smith (aka Misconstrue Masala, Misdemeanor Maximus and Rubix Tomorrow) will be collecting breath in Second Life :: April 6, 8:00 pm Sydney, Australia time (which is Sunday 6:00 am EDT and 12 noon Berlin and Cape Town); and April 7,  8:00 am Sydney, Australia time [which is Sunday 6:00 pm EDT, midnight Sunday/Monday Berlin and Cape Town). For your local time go here]

Sites / Places / Spaces of collecting breath: These are website based entries into SL: it seems to work better with Safari. The locations may get flexible as we get going. We’ll be taking photos and machinima for Gallery exhibitions. You’ll recognise us, we’re the Breath Collectors! Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: No Matter by Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott (Part of the Mixed Realities exhibition, on view until April 15, 2008) - NO MATTER is an interactive installation that activates the transformation of imaginary objects through the Second Life virtual economy into physical space. Second Life builders construct replicas of famous buildings, luxury goods and custom-designed objects, first reproducing, then inverting the notion of value itself. With zero cost for gathering resources, production of goods and transport of finished product, these items proliferate widely and quickly. Continue reading