Watch online until May 31, 2010. Continue reading

Changing Room by Michael Takeo Magruder — A mixed-reality installation exploring the mutability and reusability of artefacts, concepts and situations in the Digital Age.

Changing Room is an evolving artwork that considers the transitory nature of shared, virtual and mixed-reality environments and the creative potential of working within these liminal spaces. Blending the shared virtual environment of Second Life with the shared physical environment of Eastside Projects, the artwork facilitates the realisation, curation and documentation of distinct – yet interrelated – art projects arising from a common pool of virtual and physical resources. Over a seven-week period, a series of resident artists will be invited to use the spaces and materials to realise works of their own conceptual and aesthetic design. Each project will last for a single week, after which, it will be documented in situ and then be handed over to a new artist for repurposing. Continue reading

Random Access: Six challenging takes on significant works by Paik and 2009 acquisitions in a new permanent exhibition :: March 13 - May 20, 2010 :: Nam June Paik Art Center, 85 Sanggal-dong, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, 446-905 Korea.

Random Access is a theme Paik addressed frequently throughout his practice. As early as 1963, when Paik presented his groundbreaking Exposition of Music Electronic Television, the concept of Random Access was present throughout and was even the title of one of the works. Of the many works Paik presented that were innovative in the way they questioned how viewers could engage with art as well as with information in general, Random Access and Record Shashlick were the most direct presentations of this ambition for a paradigm shift in information retrieval that was led by the viewer and yet arbitrary. Continue reading

Art and Technoscience: Practices in Transformation — Keynotes by Roy Ascott and Jill Scott :: March 24-25, 2010; 10:00 am - 5:00 pm :: Auditorium, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Kaikukatu 4.

The beginning of the 21st century is characterized by an overwhelming awareness of environmental issues. Facing the threat of global warming, the findings of scientific research have become a subject of intensive political debate. The ethical questions traditionally discussed in the green-wing marginals have become mainstream, as science has become a coffee-table topic. Continue reading

ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, a biannual DVD publication, is currently accepting submissions of work for V16: Lo-tech, and V17: Hi-tech. Artists have historically co-opted emerging technology, adapting and expanding complex developments to suit their own goals. Conversely, there is nostalgia for obsolete technology. We seek work that exploits antiquated or sophisticated technology, either as an aesthetic or technical choice. We will review installation, video, performance, sound, and any other work best documented in time-based format. Continue reading

Synthetic Aesthetics: Call for Residents — Deadline: March 31, 2010.

We seek participants for a project on synthetic biology, design, and aesthetics. The project will provide funding to bring together scientists and engineers working in synthetic biology with artists, designers,
and other creative practitioners.

Resources will be made available for twelve funded ‘embedded residencies’, in which six artists and designers will spend two weeks in laboratories, and six scientists and engineers will spend two weeks in artistic studios and design workspaces (institutions or independent studios). The participants will be in six exchanges (synbio/creative), each pair spending four weeks working together over the project. Continue reading

In Lieu of Unity / En lugar de la unidad with Eduardo Abaroa, Margarita Cabrera; Livia Corona; Minerva Cuevas; Mario García Torres, Máximo González, Paulina Lasa, Teresa Margolles, Pedro Reyes and Tercerunquinto :: March 26 – August 15, 2010 :: Opening Reception: March 26; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: Ballroom Marfa, 108 E. San Antonio
 Street, Marfa, TX.

In Lieu of Unity brings together artists from Mexico – citizens, residents and emigrants – who have sustained a curiosity about social relations in their art practices. Their focus demonstrates that the nature of existence is contingent not merely on the cognizance of being, but more so on the relationships between individuals and the collectives they form. Continue reading

NOTE: DIFFERENT VENUE AND TIME Upgrade! Boston: Lily & Honglei (杨熙瑛, 李宏磊) :: March 22, 2010; 3:00-5:00 pm :: Auditorium Room 222, O’Leary Library, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 71 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854 [map]

Lily Xiying Yang and Honglei Li are new media artists from Beijing, currently based in New York City. Since 2005, they have been working under the collective name Lily & Honglei. They create new artistic expressions by integrating traditional and digital art forms. Utilizing online virtual world applications and digital animation, Lily & Honglei reinterpret Chinese folkloric traditions that metaphorically reflect current global cultures and societies. Continue reading

Upgrade! Milwaukee: Zach Lieberman — Making the Invisible Visible :: March 10, 2010; 7:00 pm :: Arts Center Lecture Hall (ACL 120), University of Milwaukee, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee WI.

In this talk Lieberman will present his interactive works and collaborations, focusing on the artistic process as research. He will show works such as Manual Input Sessions, in which an old school overhead projector is transformed into a magical audio visual performance device, and Lights On, a performance of sound and light commissioned for the 2009 opening of the new Ars Electronica center in Linz. He will also talk about openFrameworks, a C++ toolkit for creative coding which is being used by developers worldwide to make compelling interactive installations and performances.

Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance by Chris Salter (with a Foreword by Peter Sellars), MIT Press:

This ambitious and comprehensive book explores technology’s influence on artistic performance practices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Entangled, Chris Salter shows that technologies, from the mechanical to the computational — from a “ballet of objects and lights” staged by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1917 to contemporary technologically enabled “responsive environments” — have been entangled with performance across a wide range of disciplines. Salter examines the rich and extensive history of performance experimentation in theater, music, dance, the visual and media arts, architecture, and other fields; explores the political, social, and economic context for the adoption of technological practices in art; and shows that these practices have a set of common histories despite their disciplinary borders. Continue reading