With the historic Santa Monica Pier and adjacent world-famous Santa Monica Beach as their space, a number of unique and inviting works by artists will illuminate the area for twelve celebratory hours.

Inspired by the wildly successful Nuit Blanche in Paris, Glow takes its spirit from the fabled grunion that live in locl waters and come ashore several times a year to spawn in the same creating a momentary sensation or iridescence.

Participating artists include Shih Chieh Huang and Usman Haque.

For more information: http://www.smgov.net/smarts/glow/index.html

Come out and see one of the outcomes of our research group! After 10 weeks of talking to collectives from San Diego and Tijuana about collective practice, online public space and social engagement, we would like to share with you a performance at the intersection of the borderlands of Tijuana and San Diego and the virtual environment of Second Life.

This performance engages with the following questions:

- What are the borders of online public space? how do they relate to the borders of our “first life”?
- What are the relationships between borders and prisons? How are these separate but related modern features a part of the infrastructure that separates the global north from the global south?
- How do borders produce gender and how are those dynamics affected by the seeming gender freedom online public space inhabited by avatars? How is gender deviance perceived and discussed in online spaces, in prisons, in borders?
- Is synchronized dancing as fun in second life as it is in first life?

…or join us for the sneak preview live performance in the main auditorium at Atkinson Hall at UCSD, Wednesday, June 4th, at 7pm. Directions at http://atkinsonhall.calit2.net and also in Second Life,
the SLURL will be posted at http://sharingissexy.org/wiki/CollectivePracticeClass

Supported by UCIRA, CRCA, CalIT-2, UCSD Visual Arts Department

The Collective Art Practice Research Group is Jade Lantana, Matthew Riederer, Adelina Tancioco and Angelica Tolentino, facilitated by Micha Cárdenas, C(a)lit2 Researcher, http://bang.calit2.net

“_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. These environments include - among others - Massively Multiplayer Online Environments [World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Second Life], Social Networking Platforms [Twitter, Facebook, OpenSocial], Social Gaming [Passively Multiplayer Online Game, Parallel Kingdom] and Alternative Reality Games [I Love Bees, Perplex_City, Year Zero]. Entries will dissect post-geophysically defined notions of reality through a mixture of:

* Platform-specific case studies.
* Analysis of contextual behaviour sets.
* Construction of theoretical projections derived via synthetic, mixed and augmented formats.”

Mez is a Futurist who has had a sustained presence in synthetic realities for over two decades. She is also an established net artist and game theorist who practices _Poetic Game Interventions_ [the creative manipulation of MMO parameters in order to disrupt or comment on various aspects of augmented states]. She is a widely exhibited, award winning artist and we are extremely fortunate to be able to present her work here and enjoy her company as a member of our guild.

Ars Virtua is a New Media Center and Gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life, World of Warcraft and the World Wide Web. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. The Ars Virtua Foundation is a locus of research around the issues of reality within simulated environments.

Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Anything that can be made, can be made black.

This show will feature new and experimental works in dance, music, and video art. Each artist/team came up with a work based on meditations on the word “SPACE.” The artists with works being shown are:

Nina Barnett & Robyn Nesbitt, Jessica Feldman, David Jensenius, Hiram Navarrete, Jessica Noe & Kate March, Blithe Riley, Kathleen Stanard, Carl Testa.

Luisa’s present research reflects about mobile technologies and several objects / gadgets, particularly the wearable systems, that explore other orders / configurations of the body in the space, as they introduce a digital context that overlaps / creates the physical domain and that bring not only social consequences but also other spatial and temporal dynamics of perception and action. In order to contextualize this research, it will presented project of several artists and personal experiences that discuss the understanding of body-space as a process cultural and technologically elaborated.

Luisa is PhD in Multimedia and MA from the Arts Institute of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Professor at the UNISC (University of Sorocaba) in the postgraduate program of Communication and Culture and also in the graduation courses. Reviewer of Leonardo Digital Review. Invited researcher at CAiiA-STAR, Plymouth, England, where she researched wearable computers. Artist and researcher in the field of art and technology, participating of several international exhibitions and conferences.

Featuring: Tiziana Terranova (IT), Christoph Wachter (DE), Mathias Jud (CH), Yolande Harris (UK), Bureau d’etudes (FR), and Di Mainstone (UK).

Topology is often mentioned as an ultimate example of the same subject being studied in parallel within various branches of science and art, each branch approaching the subject from its own background and with its own methodologies. Today, there are numerous initiatives on the radar in which representatives of the various branches of topology explicitly state a desire to exchange ideas and methodologies related to the topic. But do all these diverse branches even share a common understanding of what topology is?

In practice, it seems that there is still a fair amount of confusion surrounding the notion of topology, and that its definition is a matter of debate rather than consensus, with a single commonly agreed-on defining characteristic: topology deals with the qualitative properties of geometrical structures. Should the confusion surrounding the notion of topology discourage topologists from trying to unify the field? Or could it perhaps serve as a commonly shared ground for collaboration and exchange?

This topology edition of Test_Lab will feature several new and exciting artistic Research and Development (aRt&D) projects within the artistic topology tradition and will investigate the common understanding of the notion of topology in the arts. Audience members are invited to actively involve themselves in the practices of topological aRt&D and, on the basis of this involvement, discuss what defines the field and whether the proposed exchange and collaboration with other topology branches is justified.

Test_Lab: Topology will reveal censored areas on Google maps and the true networks of the world s power structures, and will include a sonic navigation walk and a fashionable artist intervention. The different branches dealing with topology will be represented by international experts participating in the project A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics (ATACD).

Test_Lab is a bimonthly public event organized by V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, that provides an informal setting for the demonstration, testing, presentation, and discussion of artistic research and development (aRt&D).

Preceding this edition of Test_Lab, the Piet Zwart Institute will organize a seminar on mapping as a medium of cultural reflection and critique with presentations by artists, activists, and theorists, titled: The Map is not the Territory?! April 16, 2008, 19.30.- 21.30, Mauritsstraat 36, Rotterdam.

Presenters: Bureau d’Etudes, Theo Deutinger, Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud, with an introduction and moderation by Florian Cramer.

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.

Specific zones such as a city, a mountain range, or simply a piece of paper are central to the artworks in this exhibition. Territorial Phantom is about not only physical, but also virtual and symbolic spaces. Spaces can be shaped and changed in character by political, cultural or personal interventions. In addition, places are often linked to personal and collective memory. They involve boundaries, or perhaps to put it better, thresholds, which extend beyond physical barriers or time. Territorial Phantom examines the ways in which the significance of a place changes through acts, emotions, dreams and memories. Or is it perhaps only our perspective which shifts? How do we ourselves deal with space, with occupying space, and how do we define our own position in a country and in regard to various territories?

MA: Soliton is a typological inquiry about Solitonism, commissioned by Ministère de l’Architecture. In this research, Ministère de l’Architecture has demanded to continue the work of some eminent physicists about non-linear waves, by proposing to extend the analysis of Solitons to the field of the politics of space, and more precisely for reading activities like design or the erection of buildings. MA: Soliton has been produced for Multitudes Icones (http://multitudes-icones.samizdat.net), a collective website contributing to the Documenta 12 Magazine project.

Société Réaliste is a Paris-based cooperative manages the development of several research and economical structures in fields such as territorial ergonomy, experimental economy, political design or counter-strategy.

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.

During two workshop days we will think, talk and work around four thematic issues:

LOCAL-GLOBAL: The media has brought the global world closer to us. They focus our attention on our local environment as it exists in a globalised world. The concept of place can no longer be naively fenced off from homogenous global networks. Globalisation processes have a number of negative effects, but this is no reason to suffer them. In that sense, artist s strategies to reveal the richness of diversity in a global society are very valuable. Via their acts in spaces, they can show us that there are still opportunities to claim our own space in a world that we do not always seem to have a grip on.

PRIVATE-PUBLIC: Technology enables us to be constantly in contact with places from a distance. This gives us enormous freedom. The shadow side is that the same technology allows us to control more. Artists try to draw attention to controlling networks that are not always visible to us, such as databases, RFID (radiofrequency identification) of surveillance cameras. This enables us to interact with them more consciously and maybe even break the connection now and again.

VISIBLE-INVISIBLE: The phenomenon of ubiquitous computing is about the fact that technology is being integrated into our surroundings ever more seamlessly . In many cases we no longer know where technology is concealed, let alone how to manipulate it ourselves. Our air is full of (polluting) radiation. Artists can reveal these invisible networks in interesting ways using maps, visualisations or photos.

NARRATING-CREATING: Immersive environments, interactive story telling or mapping tell us stories about our place in space. Artists often use low-tech technologies in their work, as a reaction against the glorification of technological intelligence. As a rule, these works function more transparently or are easy to work with. They bring the possibility of shaping your own space within reach, hereby stimulating a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture.

Sharing and mapping experiences, thoughts and visions around creative expressions of hybrid space are the central goal. Every thematic issue will be introduced by an international speaker who explains and highlights the issue from his or her own experience, and a national reporter who reflects upon the situation and possibilities for Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium).The exhibition Place@Space at Z33 functions as material for study during this workshop.

In general, traditional conferences, workshops, symposia, tend to a bit of a bore: keynote speakers are the central element and more often than not little time is spent on an interesting discussion / conversation with all participants on the topics dealt with. Most interesting talks are held during the coffee break, the lunch or in the bar afterwards. Besides this, these meetings are generally limited to only text and minimal forms of visual expressions.

The Cowboy Methodology asks for an active engagement of each participant in his/her own language/medium (text, still or moving image). In this way the group of individuals are equally important as the keynote speakers in front of the audience.

Keywords for this methodology are:
* openness
* the individual is empowered, but finds its value in connection to the group
* passion
* transdisciplinary approach
* ad hoc connections generate long lasting relations
* meetings in real life are as equal as meetings in the virtual
*

The Cowboy Methodology heavily relies on the Open Space Technology which proved its value in user generated conferences as BarCamps or Unconferences. And, of course, this methodology could not have existed without the prototypical image of a cowboy: energetic, engaged, in solitude, but aware & depending of the others in his community, Yihaa!

The findings, conclusions, new questions and other output of this workshop will be brought together on the website and in a printed publication.