Ars Virtua is pleased to announce _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ by Mary-Anne (Mez) Breeze. Mez has initiated this work as part of her ongoing interrogation of the space, place and language of synthetic worlds. This text brings Mez’ prodigious talents and experience to bear on several fundamental issues relating to the nature of game and social space:

“_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. Continue reading

“[…] The idea of this work more than its execution is the compelling element. Anyone who has clipped articles out of a newspaper, saved snippets of poetry or edited together their own home videos has experienced the process that is re-created in “Dolls”. But (Kate) Armstrong cleverly nurtures a circumstance of wry tension that illustrates the fraying tether between traditional literary and neo-digital expression. The same page never appears twice but the user can capture and save a favorite page. This is an intriguing re-enactment of the experience of reading a narrative book where particular passages haunt the imagination and are saved to our cognitive hard drive. Continue reading

The New Normal - works by Sophie Calle, Mohamed Camara, Hasan Elahi, Eyebeam R & D/Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Kota Ezawa, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Trevor Paglen, Corinna Schnitt, Thomson & Craighead, Sharif Waked :: April 25 - June 21, 2008 :: Opening Reception: April 25, 6-8 pm :: Artists Space, 38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY :: Curated by Michael Connor; Co-organized with iCI (Independent Curators International).

The New Normal brings together thirteen recent artworks that use private information as raw material and subject matter. The concept of privacy, though widely invoked, is difficult to define. Continue reading

Pat Kane wrote: A general, not-too-technical review for mainstream paper in the UK of Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, and Leadbeater’s We-Think, but it may be a departure point for the IDC community. One thing I would add: the tension between these books’ approach to the same phenomenon - what Shirky calls ’social tools’, what Leadbeater calls ‘mass collaboration’ - lies in the role of the state as having an input into internet governance.

Shirky takes a largely hands-off line - these are historical rapids, made turbulent by a Gutenberg-level of social transformation, in which the best we can do is to ’stay upright on our kayak’. Leadbeater believes that there are elements of mass collaboration - open source biology? ‘we-think’ between terrorists or criminal networks? - that politicians and citizens need to try and police, through some intervention in the enabling network infrastructures. Continue reading

Call For Artists: Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities :: Deadline: March 31, 2008.

In Modernity, the Flaneur, while strolling around his streets, participated in the depiction of the changing city, playing a simultaneously active and detached role. The Flaneur and his city maintained a symbiotic relationship, where one helped (re) define the other. In view of current trends in globalization, immigration and technology (i.e., Web 2.0), one’s positioning to one location is more fluid than ever before. 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

Turbulence Commission: The ShiftSpace Commissions Program by Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv - Turbulence has commissioned ShiftSpace and now ShiftSpace commissions you. ONLY 5 DAYS LEFT TO APPLY!

Ten development grants of up to $2,000 will be awarded to individuals and collectives using ShiftSpace as a platform to create new “Spaces” and “Trails”.

About ShiftSpace: While the Internet’s design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. The web is undergoing a transformation whose promise is user empowerment - but who controls the terms of this new read / write web? The web has followed the physical movement of the city’s social center from the (public) town square to the (private) mall. ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web. Continue reading

[Image: Kate Armstrong & Michael Tippett / Grafik Dynamo / 2004-2005] Kate Armstrong is a Vancouver-based artist and theorist with a panache for new media powered permutational storytelling. Her work questions the nature of narrative in light of computation, social media and contemporary urban space. She has exhibited widely and is currently en route to Turkey for the March 8th launch of PATH, a bookwork generated by “an anonymous individual living in the city of Montreal between 2005-2007″ at the Akbank Art Centre in Istanbul. Above and beyond her creative practice, she is the author of Crisis and Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture, sits on the board at The Western Front artist-run centre and is a lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts + Technology. Continue reading

Last summer, Cati Vaucelle at Architectradure tipped me off about Meta-Markets, a project which created a means to buy and sell units of social media. I penned an enthusiastic review of the project in the fall and continue to be engaged by this ongoing thought-experiment. Meta-Markets was authored by Burak Arikan, a graduate of the MIT Media Lab who is currently based in Brooklyn. This Friday, Burak will be taking part in a panel discussion entitled Real World Implications of Virtual Economies at the Turbulence Mixed Realities Exhibition and Symposium in Boston (and streaming live in Second Life). Continue reading

Massive Change - Australasia_2008 C-M.TV: Media Arts Network - Call for Proposals :: Australasia_2008 C-M.TV: Media Arts Network is a curated new media web site in the context of global change. Proposal Australasia_2008 is ‘glocal’ responses to events that are happening around the world. From a ‘local’ viewpoint to a ‘global’ distribution feed. Current issues around forms of change that are effecting the planet: carbon counting, climate change, social networking, weather and ‘live’ data aesthetics…

The arena of Massive Change - since environmental tipping points are interconnected with other spheres that may have ramifications beyond the environment, into social and political systems - we open up that dialogue with you to interpret and make a proposal. Continue reading