In Rigoletto, “La donna è mobile” is sung by the Duke of Mantua, a coldhearted playboy. In the last act when the Duke is singing its reprise, Rigoletto realizes his attempt to have the Duke assassinated had been foiled, and that his daughter, instead, was the one killed. In the context of violence and betrayal in the opera, the song’s lyrics of distrust and deceit stand in contrast to its comical melody. Added to this disconnect is the inherent irony that it is the Duke singing of females being flighty, when he is the one most guilty of this accusation. Woman may be fickle, man even more so, but Porter’s fluffy yellow chicks, a gender-neutral metaphor of innocence, sing as if to comfort and calm.

Long interested in issues of representation, Porter’s practice frequently addresses conventions related to portraiture and the gaze. Her figures, typically shot against white backdrops or placed on a painted white canvas or shelf, are presented with a simple, direct quality, inviting the viewer to ponder their existential plight. Whether it is a line-drawn rabbit looking at us from a piece of paper with a rock glued on, its path leading straight to the rabbit’s head, or a man pulling a strand from a rope, coiled beyond his vision to the size of a mountain, relative to his size, we can feel momentarily omniscient and amused, but also unsettled when we recognize ourselves, similarly unaware of our fate. Though they are kitsch objects, the artist portrays the chicks in Rehearsal in a way that imbues them with humanity, legitimizing our desire to anthropomorphize them.

Liliana Porter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and later took up residence in New York. She has exhibited widely in South America, Europe and the United States. A monograph was published by the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires in conjunction with her solo show Fotografía y Ficción in 2003. A solo show of her work at Hosfelt Gallery in New York runs October 30, 2008 through January 10, 2009.

Funding for this project has been provided the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Hz is published by the non-profit organization Fylkingen in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen has been known for introducing yet-to-be-established art forms throughout its history. Nam June Paik, Stockhausen, Cage, etc. have all been introduced to the Swedish audience through Fylkingen. Its members consist of leading composers, musicians, dancers, performance artists and video artists in Sweden.

WRO Center for Media Art Foundation announces the international competition WRO 09 Expanded City. The Competition is aimed at artists, producers, distributors and rights holders who explore novel forms of artistic communication, created within the field of electronic media. The competition encompasses screenings, installations, objects, performances, multimedia concerts, net and interactive projects.

Every entrant may submit up to three works created after 01.01.2007.

Entries can be submitted with the online entry form. In order for a work to be registered in the Competition, it has to be posted to the competition office along with a filled-in and signed printout of the form.

The presentation of works chosen in the pre-selection for the Competition finale will take place during public showings with Jury throughout WRO 09 Biennale.

Schedule:

15.09.2008
Opening of the competition and the online entry form

15.02.2009
Submission deadline

5 – 10.05.2009
WRO 09 competition and main events

5.05 – 7.06.2009
WRO 09 exhibition, National Museum, Wrocław

The Competition Terms & Conditions, and the online entry form are available at http://wro09.wrocenter.pl/entry

Sound Microscope is a simple interactive web application designed by Jason Freeman and Mark Godfrey for exploring the inner lives of sounds. A pan-and-zoom interface (similar to online map services) isolates small fragments of a sound file in time and frequency space, bringing structural subtleties and hidden details to the aural foreground. It is intended to help students (or anyone!) learn about the visual representation of a sound and its frequency components while encouraging them to listen in new ways and from new perspectives.

Come mingle with the artist, listen to his brief and entertaining lecture-demonstration exposing innovative yet simple ideas for a music involving interactivity and audience participation, and be among the first to experience Sound Microphone, an on-line sound tool that will live permanently on our website as an interactive piece and a tool for the exploration of sound in education.

ISAW’s programs are possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. ISAW’s programs are sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Technical assistance is funded in part by a grant from the Southern Arts Federation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council.

South Florida Composers Alliance is registered with the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services under registration #CH25629, renewable March 13, 2009, to solicit contributions as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) sound arts organization.

A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free (800) 435-7352 within the State of Florida. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by The State.

First there was silence…
Then there was data…
But there was no story…
Just images and sounds…

We love it! The Sound of eBay is our affirmative low-tech contribution to the ATOMIC soundtrack of the peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.

“Beautiful project! Especially the scary parts about sensitive data. Very well worded, too. I can’t wait to see some fear trickle through the datasphere…” Douglas Ruskoff

How it really works:

We generate unique songs by using eBay user-data. You simply enter any eBay username (your own or someone else’s), add your email address so we can notify you as soon as the song is ready for downloading. Then click „generate“ and our robots sprawl out into the net to collect data.

After about 2-3 minutes the robots bring back all kind of user-data (creditcard information, bank details, passwords and non-sensitive user-data such as bought and sold items, prices, comments, ratings, etc) to our sc3 supercollider soundgeneration-engine.

Finally, the complex software-machine starts generating a score-file which is then transformed into your unique but uniform song and presented in teletext porn style! We sell out your human needs digitally…

At what point will common sense prevail, 26 sound works to be presented for a 5 year period, was commissioned by the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and curated by René Zechlin. It marks the second phase of a series of projects exploring the formation of opinion; it deals with how cognition occurs in conversation, discussion or debate.

Phelan produced the text for each of the sound pieces by participating in a range of online forums, from physics to religion. Subjects such as Commitment to truth, Youth isn’t a defense or Change is our only Commonality were inspired by previous ideas associated with the first phase of the overall formation of opinion project. These online discussions were led by the artist and then edited into scripts. Thirteen scripts were translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese or Kirundi; the others remain in English. Phelan recorded the reading of the texts by 26 different native speakers in the basement of The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, located in Cork City, Ireland. They were then recorded a second time; they had to listen to their own recording and repeat exactly what they heard the moment they heard it, thereby creating 26 regurgitated monologues.

At what point will common sense prevail is a challenging audio project that raises questions about private outlooks and current modes of personal and media communication.

Kunstradio – Radiokunst is presenting a selection of At what point will common sense prevail as part of its Curated by series.

Once launched, WITCHin flux plays continuously while randomly accessing and remixing samples from Yoko Ono’s Yes, I’m a Witch. Technical requirements - high-speed connection, flash player installed.

Soundtoys Remixed, the title of the performance that Mackern will offer to the MADRE audience, will deal with Net surfing and (real-time) remix of 40 of his soundtoys developed between 1997 and 2007. Mackernian visions will flow through the (real-time) projection on three different screens, while the surrounding sounds will hold the audience in a synesthetic embrace that will shake new reflections about the increasingly more hybrid nature of the reality we face everyday.

SOUNDTOYS / AUDIOVISUAL INTERFACES

“… Just listen to your eyes.”
Wim Wenders, Once

Brian Mackern was born in 1962 in Montevideo (Uruguay) and after technical college he started to explore the potentials, mainly sound-related, of the Web. In 1997 he became the director of Artefactos Virtuales #1, one of the first latin-american web spaces about the research and the development of Net Art projects, while in recent years he appeared among the creators of Netart_latino #2, a database whose aim was of both documenting the work of south-american netartists, and building a link between their various experiences, that risked to remain isolated in a continent that tends to keep its artists attempts “unincorporated” #3.

The sense of belonging to a specific culture and the bond with the roots are a key element to the work of Mackern. Central from this point of view is the reinterpretation of the so-called “Tormenta de Santa Rosa”. The worship of Santa Rosa from Lima in the Rio de la Plata area is celebrated in the last days of August, when the place is hit by frequent floods and big rains. These natural phenomena are associated, in the popular belief, to the presence of the Saint, and Mackern provides a personal reading of the cult in his project 34s56w.org #4.

Mackern works have been presented in biennals, festivals and exhibitions at the four corners of the world (Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Korea, etc.) and he was also prized with many awards in the above mentioned countries in over 10 years of artistic activity.

Brian Mackern is definitely an artist of the Net generation and his research is to be collocated within the tradition linked to some creative experimentations about the relationship between audio and visual objects (think about the vanguards of 1900), but it is now, in the Web, that it finds its best ground to get - finally ? depth and visibility. Thanks to the opportunities introduced by new digital tools, the dialectic tension between sounds and images has become object of endless reflections and investigations, all connected to the process of spreading of new cultural paradigms. Among them — above all — self-consciousness and self-sufficient life of the digital objects.

Within this frame, soundtoys is the personal answer of Mackern the artist to his need to find new ways of mediation between sounds and images. Every soundtoy, pure minimal meaning unit, can be remixed to others, paving the way to a complexity that, by perpetually multiplying the combination chances, becomes almost impossible to be seen as finite and leaves to the observer the task to complete the meaning of one among many possible trajectories.

#1 Artefactos virtuales experience developed from 1997 to 2002 ? http://www.internet.com.uy/vibri
#2 http://netart.org.uy/latino
#3 This is the way Alessadro Ludovico talks about Brian Mackern in an article for the austian magazine Spingerin [Noise at Margin - http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1667&lang=en]
#4 http://34s56w.org

text by Vito Campanelli - translation by Francesco Bordo

Media partner:
Neural - www.neural.it

In collaboration with:
Supportico Lopez - www.supporticolopez.com
Interferenze Festival - www.interferenze.org

Network Sonification is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Zach Layton, a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Interactive Telecommunications Program, is a composer, curator and new media artist with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms, experimental music, biomimicry and contemporary architectural theory. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns. Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at Roulette, The Kitchen, the New York Electronic Art Festival, Eyebeam, and many other venues in New York and Europe. Zach is also the curator of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series “darmstadt: classics of the avant garde” which features leading local and international composers and improvisers.

“In 2007 I began to learn to ride a bicycle. This for me was a choice not so much determined by reasons of pleasure but as a way of manifesting my need to literally move on with my life. Around the same time, I began to read Beckett’s famous Three Novels, and was moved in particular by “Molloy.” Bicycles are a very important metaphor in this book.” Haeyoung Kim

“To escape their lack of freedom, Beckett’s characters travel, taking with them a few private possessions, which reflect their personality. Of these emblematic items, by far the most important is the bicycle: it is a moving man-powered machine made for traveling (which can be both easy and difficult, according to the conditions prevailing); and it is also a prized possession through which an owner may express his personality. In this respect the bicycle is like the plot.” Janet Menzies

I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

A sound artist, composer, and audio engineer, Haeyoung Kim explores the territory of sounds in electronic music. Currently, under the name Bubblyfish, she has been creating 8-bit and experimental sound works. Haeyoung has collaborated with many respected sound and visual artists such as Malcolm McLaren, the founder of Sex Pistols, Hans Jochim Rodelius, and the Brussels based media art group, Lab[au]. Her work has been presented in art venues, clubs, festivals, and galleries internationally including The American Museum of the Moving Image, Pompidou Center, Kunsthalle Wien, MUTEK, LABoral, Lincoln Center Walter Reed Theater, and The New Museum.