For Internal Message Search: A Performative Installation, opening Friday, April 18th, pioneering video and internet artist Nina Sobell will install her Location One artist residency studio in the not-for-profit art center’s project space, where she will carry on her practice for the duration of the show. Visitors will be able to see Sobell’s recent wax sculptures and drawings, interact freely with the artist, and even accompany her for impromptu musical sessions (Sobell is a skilled improvisational guitarist and keyboardist). Continue reading

Building Bridges is the motto of Munich’s 850th birthday. The project A Day in a Life is going to establish virtual bridges: Munich is linked via livestreaming with some parts of the world. The public place Wittelsbacher Platz is connected via image and sound with – since now - the following cities: Curitiba / Brazil, Skopje / Macedonia, Wellington / New Zealand, London / England, Sendai / Japan.

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. Continue reading

From Cinema to Machinima — Software, Database, and the Moving Image - Panel Discussion with Lynn Hershman Leeson, Christiane Paul (Moderators), Henrik Bennetsen, Char Davies, Scott Kildall and Second Front, Howard Rheingold (via Second Life), Scott Snibbe, and Camille Utterback :: April 14, 2008; 7:30 - 9:30 pm :: San Francisco Art Institute, Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street campus :: Free and open to the public.

A panel discussion and virtual performance event, From Cinema to Machinima will explore the many ways in which the digital medium has reconfigured, even transformed, the moving image and thereby redefined concepts of cinema. Continue reading

Test_Lab: Topology :: April 17, 2008; 8:00 pm :: V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam :: This event will be streamed live.

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? Continue reading

Call for Proposals: 080808 UpStage Festival - Following on from the success of 070707, the second UpStage festival of live online performances will be held on 080808 (8 August 2008). The call is now open for performance proposals. The deadline May 16, 2008; selections will be announced on June 1.

The 080808 Upstage Festival aims to create a participatory space for collaboration, creation, and for the presentation of current cyberformance. The festival provides a platform (and shares the technical expertise) to enable artists to experiment with the new medium, and to have their work seen alongside performances by internationally renowned practitioners - in a celebration of the evolution and diversity of online performance practices. Continue reading

Upstage Walk-Through :: March 5, 2008; 9 pm European time (find your local time here).

The next open walk-through will be held in French, kindly led by Suzon Fuks (Belgium/Australia). To participate, go here. If you want to log in and learn how to use the tools, you must email helen [at] upstage.org.nz for a log in prior to the session. The open walk-through is an opportunity for interested people to get an introduction into how UpStage works, and how you can use it to create live online performances.

There is now less than a month before night 1001. Please tune in as often as you can http://1001.net.au. If you’ve been thinking of writing for the project but just haven’t gotten around to it, there is one more chance. Night 1000 (March 16) will honour the size of that number and all the stories and writers that have led there. So this is an open invitation extended to you and also to anyone who hasn’t written whom you have a suspicion might really like to. There is also nothing to stop you from collaborating with another writer, known or unknown to me. Please feel free to forward this on. Continue reading

Continental Drift - with Brian Holmes, Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore, Andy Bichlbaum, Claire Pentecost, Neil Smith, Hakan Topal, Marty Lucas, Jeff Halper, Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester, Nicholas Wisniewski :: February 15-17, 2008 :: 16 Beaver Group, 16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl., New York, NY :: Free and Open to all.

In 1845, Karl Marx, in his short fragments published posthumously as the “Theses on Feuerbach,” wrote the following oft quoted statement: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Continue reading

The panelists for Friday’s symposium, “Real World Implications of Virtual Economies,” teleconferenced this afternoon to plan our discussion. We’re abandoning the usual format of having 20-minute individual conversations and instead, after a very short primer on virtual worlds and their economies, jumping straight into panel discussion and then open audience discussion. Here’s a tentative outline of the topics we’ll be covering: Continue reading

This Friday, February 8, I will be leading a panel discussion at the Mixed Realities symposium at Emerson College. The panel is titled “Immersion, Presence and Place.” Participants include John (Craig) Freeman, Usman Haque (via Second Life), Pierre Proske (via Second Life), Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker, and David Steele. Each of the artists on the panel will have their work displayed in the Mixed Realities exhibit that opens the night before. With the quality of each of the pieces represented, I’m confident that we will have an interesting discussion. The panel starts at 1pm EST at 216 Tremont Street, Boston, MA and here in Second Life. Continue reading