Voice & Void -Rachel Berwick, Joseph Beuys / Ute Klophaus, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, John Cage, VALIE EXPORT, Anna Gaskell, Asta Grőting, Christian Marclay, Melik Ohanian, Hans Schabus, Nedko Solakov, Julianne Swartz, Cerith Wyn Evans :: April 19 - June 8, 2008 :: Opening: April 18, 2008; 7:00 pm :: Galerie im Taxispalais, Maria-Theresien-Str. 45, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.

The group show Voice & Void is dedicated to the representation of the human voice – and its absence – in the visual arts. The voice and its fading away, speech and the loss of speech, both the presence and the immateriality of the voice, the relation between the voice and corporeality as well as sound and image are only a few of the many aspects addressed in this exhibition. Continue reading

Colloquium: Mediated Musical Communities :: April 15, 2008; 4:00 pm :: Rm. 315 - Orwig Music Bldg. (corner of Hope Street and Young Orchard Avenue), Brown University.

Performativity, Ideologies of Liveness, and Listener-Consciousness in Electronic-Music Performance featuring Mark Butler: In DJ sets and laptop performances, an unprecedented level of technological mediation comes into conflict with the expected “liveness” of performance. As a result, musicians frequently express various techno-performative anxieties in explanations of their performance approaches. In particular, they are concerned that the audience experiences a performance, one that is imbued with a sense of live presence, rather than simply the playback of a recording or the clicking of a mouse. Continue reading

Stéphan Barron developed the concept of Technoromanticism between 1991 and 1996 for his doctoral thesis at the University Paris VIII. He also developed the concept of Earth Art in his essay Poetry of Earth Art, reproduced here:

“Earth Art uses the planetary dimension of the earth as an artistic medium and was developed in this century as a corollary to the telecommunications revolution and to the globalization of all spheres of human activity. Earth art uses planet Earth as the raw material for emotional and introspective expression. Continue reading

Synapse: Collaboration between the arts and sciences has the potential to create new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives; when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us. For the past decade, the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) has provided opportunities for artists and scientists to work together. Through Synapse, and in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, ANAT offers residencies, the Synapse Database and now ANAT is pleased to announce its latest initiative: a moderated elist discussion on contemporary art and science collaborations in fields including bioart, artificial intelligence, robotics, climate change and space, amongst others. You can subscribe here. Continue reading

Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University.

Adam will be answering reader’s questions in the comments section below until January 31, 2008. Continue reading

Akousmaflore: Sensitive and interactive musical plants by scenocosme (Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt) - Akousmaflore is a garden made with real musical and interactive plants or flowers. Each plant reacts to the human touch of a spectator by a specific sound language. Our aura is hot, electric and invisible. It can act here on the vegetable foliages by offering the experiment of a reactive environment. When the spectators caress the plants, they start to sing. Become sensitive musical instruments, they make it possible to compose a floral orchestration. In our artwork we are create possible hybridizations between plant and digital technology. The plants are natural and alive sensors, sensitive to various energy flows. Digital technologies allow us to do possible relation to plant alive. Continue reading

Designing for the 21st Century Design Challenge 5 - Embodiment of a Live Music Algorithm by Tim Blackwell: Nature-inspired algorithms for autonomous music generation have been developed which have been used in performances. This software has many of the abilities of a live improvising musician, it can create, suggest and respond to those around it. However, it only has presence as software. In this design challenge we are interested in embodiment. How do we imbue the software with a meaningful physical presence?

If we assume that this will have a positive effect on the experience of the listener and off the performer, possibly increasing the space of possible interactions for example, the question comes: Continue reading