In a typical neural network application, layers of simulated neurons are used to compute an output based on some input. The Ecstacy of Communication explodes the network to a human scale, both in terms of space and in terms of time. The result is a spatially-situated conflation of neural network and swarm intelligence, a population of sound-making devices interacting with each other and the sounds in their environment. Our focus shifts to the very activity of the network; the generative process itself becomes the art.

See movie: http://machinatus.net/tec/tec_240.mov Continue reading

[Image: Garrett Phelan] Garrett Phelan works and lives in Dublin, Ireland. In recent years Phelan has focussed his practice on extensive explorations into the formation of opinion and the absolute present, particularly manifested through independent FM radio transmission projects, drawing, video, photography and web based projects in both gallery and non gallery environments.

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. Continue reading

Performances at transmediale.08: CONSPIRE - festival for art and digital culture, Berlin: Moving Forest by AKA the castle:: February 1, 2008, 11.00 am - 11.00 pm, all day performance at HKW and several locations in Berlin’s centre: Moving Forest is a 12-hour 5 act sonic performance operating with public wifi and mobile technology – an expandable citywide operatic manoeuvre/intervention. Derived from Kurosawa’s film version of Macbeth, Spider Web Castle, Moving Forest renders the film’s final sequences (12 minutes in length) into a 12-hour ‘sonica’ of grand scale. Moving Forest reinvents a modern edition of a Castle Central (here: the House of World Cultures) and a city in revolt. Continue reading

“A new smartpen could change the way people practice mobile computing by bringing processing power to traditional pen and paper. Made by Livescribe, of Oakland, CA, the smartpen is designed to digitize the words and drawings that a user puts down on paper and bring them to life.

So long as the user writes on paper printed with a special pattern, the smartpen transforms what is written into interactive text. For example, the pen has a recording function, called paper replay, that can record sound and connect it to what the user writes while the sounds are being recorded. Later, the user can tap the pen over what she wrote and replay the associated sounds. “We’re starting to make the whole world of printable surfaces accessible and functional,” says Livescribe CEO Jim Marggraff.” Continue reading Computing on Paper - Livescribe’s smartpen turns a sheet of paper into a computer by Erica Naone, Technology Review.

INVITATION TO JOIN KUNSTRADIO’S CELEBRATION OF ART’S BIRTHDAY 2008! Celebrating Art’s Birthday is a tradition started by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou who declared, on January 17th 1963, that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years ago when somebody dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water.

Throughout the last decades artists have continued organising annual celebrations in the spirit of Filliou’s “Eternal Network” or “La Fête permanente”. In 2008 people all over the world will again be preparing numerous networked birthday parties for art, several of these under the motto “Forever Young”. Continue reading

MIT students compose literary texts on Dymo label makers. [blogged by Nick on Grand Text Auto]

smSage, by Tim Redfern + Ralph Borland, is a device to plant a murmur in the city. Mimicking a piece of faceless urban infrastructure, it murmurs to itself and to passersby, and seems to come from nowhere, a blank spot on an ordinary wall… Or which ubiquitous urban object is producing the sound? Which alarm-box, conduit, or… security camera?

smSage receives SMS text messages, which are converted to audible speech, using a text-to-speech engine with a synthesized voice. It speaks these messages coherently at first, but which each repetition, starts to mix them with previous messages it has received, producing a concrete poem. The voice becomes quieter … A new message wakes it up again, for brief lucidity, before sense begins to dissolve again. Continue reading

Kenji Siratori - Federico Barabino (Agua I)

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Roulette: Zach Layton :: June 26, 2007; 8:30 pm :: 20 Greene St. (between Canal and Grand) 2 blocks west of Broadway :: $15 at the Door :: Harvestworks, DTW members, students, seniors: $10 :: Roulette & Location One, members free :: Reservations: 212.219.8242.

Dense layers of low frequency oscillations, intersecting with synchronized abstract visualizations. Live interactions between electric guitar and laptop and a new work for multiple voices, winds, percussion and electronics by Ray Sweeten (synthesizer) and Bruce Tovsky (laptop) with text written and narrated by Vito Acconci. Continue reading

Avatar.Digitale.Poesie :: du 24 juin au 22 juillet 2007 :: du mardi au dimanche, de 17 h à 22 h :: vernissage et performance le 24 juin à 17 h :: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, Knaackstraße 97 (Kulturbrauerei), 10435 Berlin :: fon: +49.30.48 52 45 0 :: mail(at)literaturwerkstatt.org

[English description] Le 18 juin, Avatar, association de création et de diffusion sonores et électroniques de Québec, s’envolera pour l’Allemagne afin d’y présenter, dans le cadre de la 8e édition du Festival de poésie de Berlin, quatre installations et une performance. Voir le site d’Avatar spécialement créé pour l’événement ici. Continue reading