A project of Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses, Lumens is an installation of lamps networked across three spaces: Greylock Arts, MCLA Gallery 51, and Turbulence.org. Scores of personal lamps that usually inhabit and illuminate the interiors of homes and shops have been borrowed from the residents of Adams and North Adams, Massachusetts, filling two gallery spaces: Greylock Arts in Adams and MCLA Gallery 51 Annex in North Adams. In addition, their images and stories are represented on turbulence.org, which also serves to connect the two locations telematically.

Clusters of lamps have been outfitted with proximity sensors and arduino microcontrollers. Lamps illuminate in response to a visitor’s presence and simultaneously illuminate lamps in the counterpart spaces. Thus, an individual in Adams can communicate his/her presence to an individual in North Adams, and vice versa. Additionally, as visitors investigate the history of a particular lamp online it will also illuminate in the physical gallery space.

Lumens (re)connects North Adams and Adams — originally a single community — through an exploration of location, influence, history, and the present.

Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses is a collaboration of Greylock Arts, MCLA Gallery 51, and Turbulence. Lumens has been made possible through the generous support of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the LEF Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Physical interaction consultant Tom Igoe.
Special thanks to: Larry Alice, Michael Chapman, Abbi Hermosa.

Two seemingly unconnected copper plates in two different locations. When a someone places a hand on the first plate, the second will begin to warm up.

The Association of Lebanese Artists presents Lebanon Now, the art exhibition of the new media. Sponsored by USAID, this exhibition shows works done with the latest technological means. These works question Lebanon today, which is more disconcerting and intriguing than ever. The artists experiment with the binary code and look at Information and Communication Technology from a new perspective. There is no doubt that the sociocultural and the sociopolitical are featured. The artists « tell » their Lebanon through the elements of their numerical world, i.e. images, sound, and words. This event transposes the observer (turned into user) into a new esthetic experiment. It is the long-awaited occasion both by the artists and an art (and technology)-loving public to experience together a form of contemporary art involving not only the observer but also an important team of scientists and computer engineers without whom the new media art would simply be disembodied.

The participating artists:

Message not delivered by Jean-Louis Eddé and Hayla Saab Demelero

Through their « Message not delivered », the two artists build a representation of themselves in society, where elements from their respective lives in relation with their real-life experiences are featured. They deal with the issues of immigration and long-distance relationships through a telepresence system.

6 O’clock by Charbel Haber and Yara Raffoul

The work of these two artists is defined as a leisurely walk that can be perceived in two manners. On the one hand it is a graphic and visual stroll accompanied by music, noises, and sound patches. This same road can also be perceived in the opposite direction: it is the graphic that represents the music. This walk remains a free walk of traditional page layout, proportion, typography, and even readability.

How he lost his right hand finger by Mansour El-Habre

Mansour El-Habre presents a website where the user browses around and collects elements aiming to answer the question: « What did he do to lose his right hand middle finger as a child? ». The reply is attained through a labyrinthine navigation that puts the user in front of numerous disturbing possibilities that question the reality of the civil war of 1975.

Lebanon everywhere by Rabih Khalil

The artist presents a Search Engine under the name “Lebanon everywhere”. It is a letter collector that searches exclusively for the letters composing the word “Lebanon”. In any text appearing on any website, the letters that constitute the word “Lebanon” are automatically selected, reassembled, and displayed.

Digital visuals from Lebanon by Ricardo Mbarkho

Ricardo Mbarkho presents « Digital visuals from Lebanon », a series of digital images printed on large format photo papers based on the numerous agreements signed by the Lebanese State since the independence of Lebanon. In order to obtain these images, the artist made the computer “believe” that the files containing the texts of these agreements are image files. The computer calculated the binary code of each text file and generated the corresponding image. The series comprises images of binary codes of texts such as: the Doha agreement, the Taef accord, the Lebanon-Syria Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination, the tripartite agreement, the Cairo agreement, the national pact, the Lebanese constitution, as well as the word « Lebanon » itself.

Dialogue by Nadia Oufrid

Nadia Oufrid presents an online play entitled « Dialogue ». Once the user is connected to the project’s website, he is greeted by two virtual actors on a virtual stage. They recite texts taken from two URL addresses randomly selected by the system. The user can change the URL addresses to his liking and therefore change the dialogue of the actors, as by drawing from various Lebanese sites (political, artistic, or other). The various emotions that characterize the lines are rendered by the tone of the voice, the noises, and the music.

Construct Lebanon by Shawki Youssef

Shawki Youssef’s project is an online game on the possibilities of a potential « construction » of Lebanon, based on the daily political speeches. The screen displays the pieces of a puzzle that constitutes the map of Lebanon. The player has to manually assemble the pieces, but his success depends on the choice of the “words” of politicians that are published in newspapers. Some “words” might lead the player to victory and end the game whereas others would lead to a higher difficulty level and thus extend the game’s duration.

From June 12 - June 21, 2008 (with an “opening” on June 18, from 4-7pm) the storefronts of Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner, Brookline and Stash’s Grill in Dudley Square, Roxbury will be transformed into large video screens, providing pedestrians of each neighborhood with a portal into one another’s worlds. Running 24/7, life-size screen images and AV technology will enable real-time chat between residents of the two neighborhoods. Though only 2.4 miles apart and connected by the Route 66 bus, few people from either neighborhood ever visit the other. Using technology developed to bridge geographical distances, Virtual Street Corners instead traverses the social boundaries that separate two cultural and transportation hubs with important historical connections.

Some exchanges will be arranged - such as conversations among elected officials, youth groups, religious leaders and arts performances (including Ron Jones and Larry Tish ofwww.theblackjewdialogues.com). But the majority of the interactions will be left open to spontaneous conversations between passers-by and residents. Ewing hopes people will use Virtual Street Corners as an opportunity to share their personal experiences and reflections on their neighborhoods.
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John Ewing is a digital media artist with a focus on public art that creates platforms for social dialogue. Local projects include Symphony of a City (which was covered by NPR, PBS, Art News and Fox TV among others-Boston Globe article attached). Symphony of a City portrayed Boston from 8 different perspectives by installing “headcams” on residents and projecting the resulting video footage 30 feet high on Boston City Hall and streaming it on the web. (www.symphonyofacity.org).

Virtual Street Corners was developed during a “Public Art Incubator” residency at The Berwick Research Institute, and supported by MIT Community Fund, Prudential Foundation and the Tomfohrde Foundation. Also thanks to ACT Roxbury and Councilor Chuck Turner.

A special thanks to Videre Conferencing for donating HD videoconferencing equipment; Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP for legal advice;

Brookline Booksmith, Stash’s Grill and Nuestra Comunidad for hosting the project.

Go to the opening if you can, or check it out over the next two weeks if you can’t.
For more information or to schedule a more formal exchange on the Virtual Corner, contact John Ewing 857-719-4877, www.virtualcorners.net or www.johnewing.org

Artists of diverse backgrounds are involved, working mainly through performative strategies. Sceneries involving the passers-by in every city are created. For example you may see four people of four countries at the same time on four screens, communicating via webcam their wishes oder questions as a sort of statement.

The artists are still in dialogue about the common strategies. Given the same rules, the differences of the mentalities in the participating countries are going to be shaped more clearly. A Day in a Life is an international networking project. It gives a lot of space for discoveries, pushes accidental development in communication, letting emerge irritating and surprising connections.

The performances will take place on 19th and 20th of July 2008 at Wittelsbacher Platz. At the same time at ZKMax, Passage Maximilanstrasse / Altstadtring, video works of the participating artists will be shown. Sponsored by the Department of Culture of the Bavarian Capital Munich. Some participating artists are supported by the „Artist-in-Residence“ programme of Villa Waldberta.

A DAY IN A LIFE builds bridges, highlighting the familiar in the foreign and the foreign in the familiar.
Curation and Coordination: Horst Konietzny

CALL FOR PROPOSALS/PROJECT PARTNERS

Further development of a streaming event between nodes of Upgrade! International. The first version was held between Munich, Istanbul, Boston and Oklahoma City as part of the annual Upgrade! International gathering on November 30, 2006.

The project A DAY IN A LIFE (DIAL) locates the global in the local. The peculiarities and characteristics of each location are contrasted with those typical and atypical to other locations, other cities, other countries, coalescing their similarities and differences into a poetic fusion. Enabled by the growing power of the Internet - all locations are networked together via broadband technology.

DIAL was begun as a multimedia bridging of peoples and locations world-wide. Its second version will be specially aimed at the theme of Munich’s 850th birthday: “Building Bridges.” Artists in various places will interpret the theme in cooperative interventions in daily life both in their home locations and on-site in Munich. The 3rd annual gathering of Upgrade! International can help to bring oversees artists to Munich as stopovers on their way to the gathering in Skopje, Macedonia. The following is a description of the basic concept which should be further developed by the participating artists.

THE SETTING

Publicly accessible spaces in participating cities around the world will be connected via Internet for a span of several hours. At any given time, streaming video and audio from at least two participating partner locations can be seen and heard in these spaces, projected next to each other on screens or monitors and audible over speaker systems.

The spaces should be locations that play a role in the typical everyday life of each country – cafes, squares, city streets. These snapshots of daily life from diverse cultural backgrounds are given meaning by the selective eye of the streaming camera, the defining frame of the screen and the juxtaposition with similar but different scenes from another city. Stimulated by the tendency of the viewer to fill a formal frame of reference with meaning – in Marcel Duchamp’s words, “It is the viewers who make the pictures.”

Meaning is constructed not only by the formal framing, but also by focusing the action on specific themes. This is done through targeted media interventions and actions that take place at both locations simultaneously and which at pre-arranged times react to a common theme.

The simultaneous artistic interventions bring the snapshots into sharp juxtaposition with each other. The performance creates a medial and performative bridge of prepared performance, chance occurrence and the inevitable intercultural differences between the locations.

THE ACTION

The events in each location are structured spatially by the eye of the camera and the image frame, and the chance occurrences are given meaning via medial interventions such as a soundtrack or subtitles. Interactions between the local and the distant participants are particularly interesting and stimulating, as our event last year in Oklahoma City has shown. For instance a simple sandbox of red earth served as the site for a lively exchange for visual and textual feedback as artists in both locations mirrored and developed on each other’s words and images drawn in the sand.

The interventions may make use of various formal methods, but all will deal with the common theme “bridges” and the intervention from each city will illuminate characteristic local references to this theme.

The interventions may be executed using differing formal strategies but will all treat the common theme “bridges.” The interventions from each city will reflect on characteristic local references to this theme.

Examples of possible performances:

All performances should incorporate direct interaction with participants in another location. This can be visual, textual or audio, but the mutual interaction should be directly recognizable to non-participants watching only the screen view showing the two streams.

* Annotating everyday life: Participants and passers-by write or draw on a glass surface (for instance a café window) while a camera records the scenes of daily life visible through the glass frame.

* Bridging texts: The streaming camera records text banners as they are unfurled across the two participating locations. In each location only a fragment is visible; the full meaning only becomes clear when the videostreams of the two locations are viewed simultaneously on a screen.

* Express yourself: Passers-by are requested to jot down personal wishes for changes in the political, economic, private, ecological etc. situation and drop the notes into collection boxes. These texts can be held directly in front of the camera as the streaming image itself, or inserted as “subtitles” into the streaming video of the scene.

* Do it yourself political protest: Passers-by are requested to demonstrate spontaneously for or against something, or can write their own slogans on placards.

* Street happenings: Passers-by are handed leaflets requesting them to perform specific actions. Within the anonymous stream of pedestrians new patterns of motions and behavior arise.

* Multi-local choreography: Dancers are linked to each other with a common time code. The complete choreography is only visible when viewing both videostreams together on the screen.

ACCOMPANYING EVENTS For those who are able to come to Munich, we will arrange art talks and if possible workshops and an exhibit in cooperation with institutions in Munich.

Location One presents its first ever Virtual Residency Project in the form of a call to artists and other creative individuals with the express purpose of fostering collaboration and creativity across geographical expanses and areas of expertise around the topic of the 2008 US Presidential Election. The goal of this residency is to find 3 participants who are not necessarily physically proximate but who are willing to collaborate with other artists / engineers / scientists / writers / musicians / poets / activists to develop a project using such non-F2F (face to face) interfaces such as webcams, email, chat, video, blogs, Second Life, MIDI, skype, walkie-talkie, snail mail, radio or POTS (plain old telephone service), tin cans on string, or any other means of collaboration to develop a project that will be presented at Location One in the fall of 2008, in advance of the US Presidential election.

Please send CV, url or any materials to virtualresidency [at] location1.org.

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. Simulating a real life manufacturing facility that includes hiring Second Life workers to produce real world jeans sold for profit, the project provides an insiders view into current modes of global, telematic production.

During the evening visitors will be able to order a pair of Double Happiness Jeans through the factory’s just-in-time telematic manufacturing process. Customers in the real world place their jean orders to the workers in the virtual factory via streaming audio and video. The workers, avatars controlled by humans sitting at computers around the globe, operate textile machines on an assembly line that produce the jeans. Styles include “MyPants”, “No Pants Left Behind” and the “LowRider”. Video.

MINDTouch explores ideas of non-verbal transference, telepathic collaboration, and the participant as performer, using biofeedback and mobile phone technology under meta-goals of studying “liveness” within mobile networked environments. MINDTouch involves creating a mobile networked performance that utilizes a database of streamed and/or archived video-clips created by video-enabled mobile phones, to then be retrieved, streamed and remixed during (a) live visuals performance(s). The participants invited to contribute to the video blogs are asked to explore their own consciousness, non-verbal emotional /affective senses and dream states, embodiment and communication.

CAMILLE BAKER is a Ph.D. Candidate at SMARTlan, University of East London, conducting research on Networked Performance Media, funded by BBC R+D.

Making DICOM Dance: Marilene Oliver’s practice-based research looks at medical and laser imaging technologies that scan bodies and break them down to bytes. Oliver examines from an artist’s perspective, the processes needed to convert flesh to pixel (digital photography), flesh to voxel (MRI, CT and PET) and flesh to xyz co-ordinates (3D laser scanning). Oliver will present a selection of artworks made using MRI data (where the subject of the scans is bespoke) and CT data (where the subject of the scans are either infamous or anonymous). The presentation will be both technical and theoretical, concentrating on the performative puppeteering activity that emerges when working with MRI and CT data.

MARILENE OLIVER is currently a research student in the Fine Art Print department at the Royal College of Art. Oliver has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Academy, Royal Institution, Science Museum (UK). Oliver was awarded the Royal Academy print prize in 2006 and the Printmaking Today prize in 2001.

The Chronovisor is a machine for viewing past and future events. It was invented in the ’40s by Father Pellegrino Ernetti together with a group of twelve world famous scientists. The Chronovisor was portrayed as a large cabinet with a normal cathode ray tube for viewing the received events and a series of buttons, levers, and other controls for selecting the time and the location to be viewed. It worked by receiving, decoding and reproducing the electromagnetic radiation left behind from past events. After Ernetti’s death, The Chronovisor was never found. The French Theologian Francoise Brune reckons that the machine has been seized and hidden by the Vatican itself.

We have reasons to think that The Chronovisor, or a very similar machine, began to function autonomously again and it’s disseminating online messages coming from a parallel universe. In fact, using the keyword cronovisore, we have found a certain number of mysterious videos disseminated in several online public archives. Many of this videos are apparently filmed in abandoned industrial areas and we think that the surrounding is not casual. If you try to interpret the messages which are hidden in the footage, you will sense that the telepresence is trying to establish a contact, search for a feedback, call to reactivate the abandoned areas of the brain.

We kindly ask you to help us in giving some feedback to this mysterious call, using audio, video or texts that may create a transmission on the dismissed frequencies of the mind or simply tell us which are the abandoned areas of the brain.

We engage ourselves in setting up a broadcasting station in an abandoned industrial area in the north of Italy. We hope in this way to be able to establish a contact between us and “them.”