We are living in a time in which the ‘made’ and the ‘born’ are fusing. Hypoallergenic cats are already on the market. Plants are used as sensors, information displays and chemical factories. Animals are being augmented and branded. Young girls are provided with hypernatural vaginas, modeled after the photoshopped vaginas seen in Playboy magazine. In response to donor organ shortages, researchers are working on a 3D organ printer. Real nature is not green. It is out of control. Games have become jobs. Second life is not sustainable. Digital world metaphors are boomerang into our physical environment. Everyday robots give massages and take care of the children. RFID chips open doors, they might be infected, but nonetheless are edible.

The extent to which new technologies are intervening in the constructive, material, aesthetic and social practice of everyday life can hardly be underestimated. Highways, airports and supermarkets are part of our natural environment. Our established image of nature needs to be updated.

Next Nature; the nature caused by human culture. Nowadays, children know more corporate logo’s and brands than bird or tree species. Our technological world has become so complex and uncontrollable it has become a nature of its own. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.

With: Manuel Castells, Kevin Kelly, Rob Schroder, Michiko Nitta, Tinkebell, Susana Soares, David Kremers, Rene Daalder / Folkert Gorter, Floris Kaayk, Julian Bleecker, Erik Davis, Peter Lunenfeld, Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Judith de Leeuw, Luna Maurer / Roel Wouters, Arnoud van den Heuvel, Rolf Coppens, Christian Bramsiepe, Helena Muskens, Quirine Racke and more…

In the weeks towards the Biggest Visual Power Show 2008 we post a few video’s of earlier power show presentations. Philosopher Prof. Dr. Jos de Mul – author of countless articles and books like ‘Cyberspace Odyssey’, ‘Domestication of Fate’ and ‘Database Delirium’ – was a speaker at the Biggest Visual Power Show 2005 in Paradiso, Amsterdam. Inspired by the images of Basia Knobloch and music of Lauri Anderson, professor De Mul decided to sing his lecture.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer will be presenting work in progress from her residency that explores the motion of knitting and the motion of code. Some of the work includes a knit zoetrope, interactive virtual knitting, knitting with the Nintendo Wii and others. She describes the interactive virtual knitting as demonstrating the motion from the knitting actions are tracked and translated into a visualization of knit code displayed on screen (and eventually on the web). The action of engaging or knitting with the piece naturally produces a physical cloth, while it also shows that code is constructed from the same types of patterns to create a type of virtual cloth (or software). Visually the piece will reflect our bodily interaction with machines, tracing the circular motion of the needles to our body’s give and take of working at a machine. Cloth is often seen as an element of comfort and protection. Machines are perceived to assist us with advancing technology and communication while they are also harming our bodies with carpel tunnel syndrome, back pain, sore eyes, and other strain as we interact with them. This piece explores that delicate space in-between.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer considers her Commodore 64 Computer and Fischer Price Loom to be defining objects of her childhood. She creates tactile representations of cyclical data structures in candy and knitting and is currently exploring the intersection of textiles, technology, and the body in contemporary art practice. Rachel Beth is currently working as an Artist in Residence at the University of Brighton, Lighthouse Brighton, and Furtherfield London as part of the Arts Council England Initiative, commissioned by Distributed South and curated by SCAN and Space Media.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer received her BFA from the Fiber department with a concentration in Digital Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and was an MFA fellow at the University of California, San Diego where she also was a graduate researcher at UCSD’s Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA). Her work has been exhibited internationally in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) London, the Banff Centre for the Arts, ISEA 2004 and others. She formerly worked on the editorial staff of Artbyte Magazine in New York City, and continues freelance writing on art, modern society, and media culture.

The /ETC is a unique tech skill-share that has been held annually since 2002. The emphasis has always been women sharing their experiences, knowledge and skills around free software, open hardware and universal interoperability of systems in a fun way. We are calling all women who are interested in the Eclectic Tech Carnival to register here. Registration closes at 23:59 on April 1, 2008.

Women Participate! Whether you want to follow the content of the event or whether you want to present a workshop, lecture, performance, playlab, intervention, exhibition, you name it (to a certain degree) at the /ETC you’re welcome.

In addition to the skill-share program, this year the Eclectic Tech Carnival will be focusing on a number of specific political issues: the “life cycle” of hardware - from mining, to labour practices in the manufacturing industry, to waste management. In addition we will explore why there seems to be so little public interest in Privacy, or lack of, on the Net. And what can we learn from the Creative Commons movement?

The participation fee of /ETC 2008 is as follows:For all seven days: a sliding scale of 30/60/120 Euros (at your own discretion).
Per single day: 6 Euros. The evenings will be open to the public and free of charge.

Our graded, scaled fee system aims to take into account that women are from varying contexts. This includes income, country of origin and personal priorities.

The registration fee is collected from all participants, contributors and organisers. It covers, among other things, vegan food for all.

We cannot accept payment on-line so please be prepared to pay cash, in Euros when you arrive.

We have reserved a limited number of beds in a Youth Hostel, which will be filled on a first come, first served basis. If there are more people in need of accommodation, we will do our best to find a bed among our friends and acquaintances in Amsterdam.

There is a discreet amount of money for those who need a travel grant. Please keep in mind that we do not reimburse flights but only [cheap] 2nd class train or bus tickets. One condition is that you need to register before April 1st 2008. We will look at each request individually.

Please feel free to contact us at any time starting immediately.

C o n t a c t : info2008 [at] eclectictechcarnival.org

The /ETC 2008 is organized by the Genderchangers and EYFA.

Curated by Tommaso Tozzi, Alessandro Ludovico and Francesca Marianna Consonni the conference will feature among its speakers: Siegfried Zielinski, internationally recognized media theorist and founder of the “Variantology” research project, Amanda McDonald Crowley, director of Eyebeam arts and technology center in New York, Antonio Caronia, teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera, and Tommaso Trini, writer and art critic.

The conference is scheduled on 7th March at the Sala Martignoni in Gallarate (Italy), and it’s co-organized with the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts and the Civic Modern Art Gallery in Gallarate. In the same place a personal exhibition of Bianco Valente artist duo will open the day after the conference, titled “Visibile Invisibile” (Visible Invisible). - Neural.

France Cadet (Artist / Robotic Teacher), born in 1971, is a French Artist whose work raises questions about various aspects in science debates: danger of possible accidents, observation of animal and human behavior, artificialisation of life, side effects of cloning… She has run several robotics courses for many years now and teaches robotics at Fine-Arts School of Aix-en-Provence. She first studied sciences before coming to fine arts. Her work meets those two interests. She had shows in Tokyo, ARS Electronica Linz, Lille2004, ARCO 04, Roger Pailhas gallery, La Vilette and Palais de Tokyo. She was awarded the VIDA 6.0 competition in Madrid (1st Prize) and Digital Stadium Awards in Tokyo (1st Prize). MEIAC, the Badajoz contemporary art museum, Spain, bought from her a robotic piece.

Pascal Glissmann is a professional artist and designer. He holds a BFA in communication design from the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf and an MFA in audiovisual media from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. After working as an art director and freelance designer he joined the faculty of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as a researcher and teacher. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of Media Art, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptiste University.

Martina Höfflin, born 1971 in Kenzingen, Germany, studied Computer Science at the Academy of Applied Sciences in Furtwangen and the San Francisco State University focusing on interaction design, usability and internet applications. After 2 years of freelancing as a media designer for different companies and customers in Berlin and Munich, she is now working in research at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne since 2002. She is also the co-founder of the Büro für Brauchbarkeit, a studio for media, art and fashion in Cologne. Martina and Pascal are working together at the Academy of Media Art Cologne. After several workshops with students on the topic of experimental electronics and simple robotics, they developed the installation elf - electronic life forms and exhibited the work in international shows and festivals in Norway, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Korea, Austria, Finland, Japan, Germany, Canada and the United States.

INFORMATIONLAB: Auke Touwslager received his design degree from the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In 2001 he co-founded Anderemedia, a Dutch design studio dedicated to designing innovative concepts, web applications and information mapping tools. In the same year he became a principal affiliate of Govcom.org, an Amsterdam-based foundation dedicated to creating and hosting political tools on the Web. Some of these tools where featured at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in 2005, in an exhibition entitled “Making Things Public,” curated by Bruno Latour. In 2004, Auke Touwslager founded Informationlab. The group was initially meant as a reflection of his personal interests, but has grown into an international network for research, collaboration, exchange of knowledge and concept development. Its main goal is to create new ways of interfacing the diversity of information flow and the public space and its constructions as architecture.

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1975, Roman Kirschner has studied philosophy and art history at the University of Vienna and has attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. Together with Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe, he co-founded the artist collective fur in 2001. In 2005, he became a research artist at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. He currently lives and works in both Cologne and Vienna.

Sabrina Raaf is a Chicago-based artist working in experimental sculptural media and photography. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Mejan Labs (Stockholm), Stefan Stux Gallery (NYC), Ars Electronica (Linz), Opel Villas Foundation Art Center (Rüsselsheim), Museum Tinguely (Basel), Espace Landowski (Paris), Artbots 2005 (Dublin), San Jose Museum of Art, Kunsthaus Graz, ISEA (Helsinki), Klein Art Works (Chicago), The Lab (San Francisco) and Painted Bride Center (Philadelphia). She is the recipient of a Creative Capital Grant in Emerging Fields (2002) and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2005 & 2001). Reviews of her work have appeared in Art in America, Contemporary, Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Leonardo, http://www.lab71.org , The Washington Post, and New Art Examiner. She received an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1999) and is currently Assistant Professor in the S chool of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

CeC & CaC is an annual global occasion to collectively seek out, manifest, learn from, connect with and enjoy a studied broad canvas of cutting-edge participation & content from India and the world, addressing the Creative Empowerment of Individuals by the burgeoning spread of Technology across multiple streams of human endeavour.

International artists, and compilations from festivals: Transmediale, Epica Awards, VIDA 9.0, NewMediaFest2007; Global Art-Video organized by The Digital Gallery, Pace University (New York Usa); National Centre For Contemporary Arts (Moscow. Russia); Heart Electronico (Mexico), Namastic (Helsinki / Finland); Colectivo D_Forma (Spain); La Sala Naranja (Spain); Videoart Center Tokyo / Vctokyo (Japan). Retrospective of Select Digital-Still-Imaging Artists from The IDEA series of CD-Gazettes (2000-2005).

Among the artists: Shrikant Agawane, Aditya Anand, Curtis Bahn, Shankar Barua, Ansuman Biswas, Jenny Brown, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Caterina Davinio, Aleksandra Dulic, Ashhar Farooqui (Aka ‘Toymob’), Patrick Fontana, Martin Gotfrit, Matthew “Hardoff” John Davey, Parvez Imam, Arun Jethmalani, Ajay Kapur, Arun Mehta, Brinda Chudasama Miller, Katherine Moriwaki, Thomas Munz, Kenneth Newby, Aparna Panshikar, Ruchira Parihar, Rishab Parmar,Jerome Soudan, Florian Thalhofer, Marco Villani,Bettina Wenzel, Prashant Yashpal.

National Institute of Design, “Potpourri” (or “Retroforesight”); Brevi lavori realizzati da studenti e giovani artisti dell’ Institute of Design - Ahmedabad / Short pieces created by students and young artists of Institute of Design - Ahmedabad. Ruchira Parihar Curator.

Patronage: India International Center New Delhi, The Academy of Electronic Arts

On February 4, the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will launch the 2008 program of its new Gallery at Calit2, an art-meets-technology space on the first floor of Atkinson Hall on the La Jolla campus. The art showcase reflects the nexus of innovation implicit in Calit2’s vision, and advances the understanding and appreciation of the dynamic interplay among art, science and technology.

The first exhibit in the space, An 8-bit Moment in Gameplay: [giantJoystick] will run through March 17. The play sculpture is a working, large-scale game interface designed for collaborative play, by artist and media theorist Mary Flanagan.

Video games have been around for over forty years, and have redefined our reality with classics such as “Pac-Man”, “Asteroids”, “Centipede” and “Missile Command”. As video game consoles, which offered low-resolution graphics known as 8-bit, were introduced in the 1970s. But it wasn’t until the early 1980s that they became wildly popular, moving 8-bit graphics from the arcade into the home with the Atari 2600 game console. That console featured a distinctive joystick, and Flanagan takes visitors back to the seminal period by turning the Atari joystick into a super-sized work of art that she considers a form of social sculpture.

Flanagan investigates everyday technologies through critical writing, artwork, and activist design projects. “Mary Flanagan makes art and popular culture become one, following in the tradition of pop art,” said Ricardo Dominguez, a visual arts professor and member of the Gallery at Calit2 programming committee. “She also explores the aesthetics of gameplay, which today has extended beyond video games to influence media and culture at large.”

An interview with the artist about [giantJoystick] can be viewed online [Quicktime only].

Calit2 is a partnership between UC San Diego and UC Irvine, and houses over 1,000 researchers organized around more than 50 projects on the future of telecommunications and information technology and how these technologies will transform a range of applications important to the economy and citizens’ quality of life. The institute has integrated new media arts into its cross-disciplinary agenda.

Mary Flanagan investigates everyday technologies through critical writing, artwork, and activist design projects. Flanagan’s work has been exhibited internationally at museums, festivals, and galleries, including: the Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum of American Art, SIGGRAPH, The Banff Centre, Central Fine Arts Gallery NY, Artists Space NY, the University of Arizona, University of Colorado-Boulder, as well as venues in Brazil, France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Flanagan holds MFA and MA degrees from the University of Iowa, a BA in Film from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in Computational Media focusing on activist game design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UK. She teaches in the Integrated Media Arts MFA program in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, NYC. Her research group and laboratory in New York is called TiltFactor, a lab focused on the design of activists and socially-conscious software.

For more information about the Gallery at Calit2 and the [giantJoystick] exhibit, contact Gallery Coordinator Eduardo Navas at enavas[at]ucsd.edu.

Pierre Lévy is a philosopher who has devoted his professional life to the understanding of the cultural and cognitive impacts of the digital technologies and to promote their best social uses. His work is focused around the concept of collective intelligence and knowledge-based societies, and he is a world-leading thinker on “cyberculture”. His recent works focus on the development of an Information Economy Meta Language (IEML) based on semiotic concepts. IEML is designed to provide a semantic coordinate system for the addressing of concepts on the Internet.

Lévy is one of the major philosophers working on the implications of cyberspace and digital communications. As early as 1990 he published a book about the merge of digital networks and hypertextual communication. Lévy’s 1995 book, Qu’est-ce que le virtuel (Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age) develops philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s conception of “the virtual” as a dimension of reality that subsists with the actual but is irreducible to it.

Scott Lash is author of Sociology of Postmodernism, Another Modernity, A Different Rationality and Critique of Information. He is co-author of Global Culture Industry: the Mediation of Things, The End of Organized Capitalism, Economies of Signs and Spaces and Reflexive Modernization. His books have been translated into eleven languages. Lash is currently principal investigator for Risk Cultures in China: An Economic Sociology. He is currently working on a book on intensive culture and has been involved with Theory, Culture and Society for the past fifteen years.

Robert Zimmer has carried out research related to computing in relation to art and design. This involves: a return to thoughts of abstraction, connecting painting and computing; systems for reasoning about archiving contemporary art with Tate Modern; large-scale public artworks; a web-based artwork centred on brain function and development; systems for making interactive digital films with BT, Cambridge University, the BBC and others; and digital access to art and artefacts. He is currently writing a book on the Machine and Human Haptics for MIT Press.

Nature Version 2.0 is a survey of artists who reinvent environmentalism for a digital age in a number of ways: by examining how digital technologies can make ecological problems more salient, by reusing and recycling obsolete technologies for new uses, and by exploring how digital spaces and the public domain may require environmental protection much like nature. Re-imagining the relationship between nature and technology, Nature Version 2.0 suggests an ethics of the network and an environmentalism of natural, built, and digital spaces.

This exhibition is in conjunction with Environmental Art and New Media Technologies: Imagining Sustainable Futures, a two-day symposium on interdisciplinary, digital, and networked art and research that draws upon environmental science, computer science, design, hacking, gameplay, engineering, and ecocriticism. Following the Nature Version 2.0 artists’ reception on February 8, keynote speaker Natalie Jeremijenko will launch the symposium. 90 Degrees South, a multimedia performance by Andrea Polli will follow at 9pm in the Clifford Gallery.The symposium will resume in Golden Auditorium on February 9 for a day of talks and presentations by critics and exhibiting artists, 9am-5pm.

Nature Version 2.0 was curated by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir (aka EcoArtTech.net).

For artists working with media/technology who are interested in the social implications of technology and working in the public domain. Hosted by specialists in their field, sessions will raise questions and facilitate approaching relevant and personal answers. Attendees will enhance key communication and negotiation skills whilst contributing to the wider debate of realising the impacts of technology for opening up participation in art. Outcomes will feed into On the Margins of Technology symposium day on February 29, 2008.

Session 1: Developing projects with communities
February 7, 2008, 11am - 4pm
Why develop projects with communities? What do communities get from working with artists?
Hosted by Loraine Leeson (Art for Change, cSPACE) and Mukul Patel (AmbientTV.net)

Session 2: Media and Methods
February 8, 2008, 11am - 4pm
How can methods such as humour or invitations to participate be used to open up the potentials of working with communities and media technology?
Hosted by James Stevens (Backspace, SPC, Boundless) and Chris Dawley-Brown (Artist, Interact placement BBC)

Session 3: Ownership and Ethics
February 15, 2008, 11am - 4pm
Do artists have obligations when working with communities? Who owns the work? Should the ethics affect the aesthetics?
Hosted by Evelyn Wilson (London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise) and Emmy Minton (Artist/producer running long term project with sex workers)

Session 4: Conflict Transformation
February 20, 2008, 11am - 4pm
How can artists handle conflict? Being able to approach group, dual and personal conflict can be a major skill in all arts practise.
Hosted by Newham Conflict and Change

Session 5: Accessible Promotion
February 22, 2008, 11am - 4pm
How can you write friendly and informative promotional material to explain complex concepts and events that haven’t happened yet?
Hosted by Dave Jones (Freelance PR, formerly Lateral)

There are only 12 places per session so booking is essential.
- 10 per session
- 25 for 3
- 40 for all the sessions
Prices include refreshments and lunch.

To book please email mail[at]spacestudios.org.uk with ‘The Not Quite Yet Workshops’ in the subject line and your preference of workshops and contact details.