The Australia Council for the Arts is offering up to $30,000 for a collaborative, embodied art project in a massive multi-user virtual environment (MMUVE). The grant aims to give Australian artists the opportunity to creatively and critically explore interactive, virtual worlds, with a particular focus on the body and interfaces facilitating ‘mixed realities’. The grant allows for a collaborative team of up to three artists (including a digital visual media practitioner) to develop inter-disciplinary artwork in a MMUVE of their choice. Continue reading

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

To complement the exhibition Synthetic Times: Media Art China 2008, a Beijing Olympics Cultural project opening at the National Art Museum of China in June 2008, media art pundits debate imminent topical issues revolving around the exhibition themes: Beyond Body; Emotive Digital; The Recombinant Reality; and Here, There and Everywhere at Synthetic Times: Media Art Now. With an introduction by Zhang Ga, artistic director and curator. The evening event kicks off a pre-exhibition symposium (April 15) held at Parsons, the New School for Design, and EYEBEAM, in conjunction with the National Art Museum of China. 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

desktopperformance deals with the relationship between the synthetic space[1] and the body. I am travelling several hundred kilometres from the place where I actually live to the place where I grew up several years go. this time I am not travelling by car or train. I am travelling by googles map with the power of my mousehand.

Moving a mouse with your hand can be one of the most powerful actions a man can do in the beginning 21 century. Its one of the most common actions of modern everyday life work. The proletarian of the 21 century has not to deal with big machines, he transfers billions of dollars over the world - with one mouseclick. Continue reading

Laurent Duthion: Coefficients de réalités :: until April 27, 2008 :: La Criée center for contemporary art, Place Honoré Commeurec – Halles Centrales, 35000 Rennes, France.

Based in Rennes, artist Laurent Duthion is a confirmed experimenter with sensations, objects and environments. Intensely curious about scientific research, he works with soil and crop researchers and has spent time in the Antarctic collecting samples of odours and discovering new vegetable and animal species. For Duthion the question is not one of blindly applying scientific experiments to the sphere of art, nor of claiming to revolutionise science with an artistic vision. Continue reading

Ars Virtua presents Need, an emerging artists exhibition in collaboration with the ICAM program at the University of California San Diego :: March 20, 2008; 7 pm SLT :: Second Life (Teleport).

The idea of a separate set of needs for ones Second Life is both absurd and fundamental. Abraham Maslow provides an interesting hierarchy for us that other than a few differences lays over the synthetic world very nicely, however avatars are not the people they represent and as such do not have the same needs. The Virtual Environments class at UCSD takes a look at the difference and similarity in this space, this borderland between avatar and human and reflects on different aspects of need for both. Continue reading

Computational Aesthetics 2008 :: Call for Artworks and Performances :: June 18-20, 2008 :: Hotel Riviera, Lisbon, Portugal :: Keynotes by Pat Hanrahan, Stanford, CA; and Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology, Sydney.

Computational Aesthetics bridges the analytic and synthetic and integrates aspects of computer science, philosophy, psychology, and the fine & performing arts. In particular it focuses on the mathematical and information theoretic aspects of both connectionist and symbol processing methods by humans and computers. Computational Aesthetics seeks to facilitate both the analysis and the augmentation of creative behaviour. Continue reading

SCI-Arc presents, Quasar, a new site-specific installation by the LA/NY-based design/media firm slap!, founded by architect Jean-Michel Crettaz, and produced in collaboration with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and Stanford’s Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. “Quasar is an immersive light and sound space made from prototype membranes realized as an interactive light/sound object and comprised of a dense array of interlinked elements describing an intricate three-dimensional structure.”

The exhibition draws on SLAC’s continued interest in developing an awareness of the interconnectedness of space and material, with a goal of extending established notions of volume and scale. Continue reading

Speaking at the wall - interactive video installation by Chiara Passa (2008) - This interactive video installation synthesises the voice into virtual architecture. The spectator’s voice is recorded from a microphone and live time audio-video processed through the software Quartz Composer. Speaking at the wall develops itself on two walls and the floor. The three screenings around the corner of the three Cartesian axes reconstructs one central illusory perspective. [Quicktime Video]

While the spectator is inside the room and speaks close to the walls, he modifies with his voice (volume and spectrum) the whole environment around him. The words he pronounces draw a new atmosphere… a virtual desert. Continue reading