Personas and Personalities

Now Available from Microcinema DVD: Aspect - the Chronicle of New Media Volume VII: Personas and Personalities

This volume of ASPECT features artists working with issues of identity and personality. For some, a constructed identity is an opportunity to explore personal or cultural issues of gender, accountability and culpability. Other artists make their own personality an integral part of their work and process. All the works in this issue examine the role of personal psychology in how we interact with others and our surroundings on an everyday basis. We are thrilled by the quality and diversity of work in this issue, and with the diverse ways in which the artists and commentators interpreted our open call. Enjoy.

Included in this issue: CARIANACARIANNE: Bequeaths, Oaths of Signature with audio commentary by Julie Rodrigues Widholm :: ANTHONY GOICOLEA: Tea Party with audio commentary by Terri Smith :: SACHIKO HAYASHI: Boop-opp-A-Doop with audio commentary by Nicholas Economos :: LYNN HERSHMAN: Becoming Roberta, DiNA with audio commentary by Claudia Hart :: CHRISTIAN JANKOWSKI: The Day We Met with audio commentary by Bill Arning :: ERIK LEVINE: More Man with audio commentary by Elizabeth Smith :: Continue reading

Open Call

Digital Fringe is seeking submissions of digital visual material to be a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival: September 27 to October 15.

Digital Fringe connects to Melbourne via numerous screens throughout the city. These range from the grand screen at Federation Square to screens hidden in venues and retail outlets, from screens in public spaces, taxis and mobile 3G handsets to bedrooms at home and projections on buildings. Digital Fringe artworks will be streamed live to all participating screens and made available for live streaming over the Internet from the Digital Fringe website.

We are calling for: a.. Proposals for interactive art pieces that will play at Federation Square. The Federation Square interact project is an opportunity to combine phone images, video and texting into an interactive public art piece. Works may involve people sms and mmsing content onto the screens to be incorporated into, or to shape or influence the artwork in some way. We are interested in works that provide innovative ways of getting mobile phones and public screens working together. Continue reading

Sandbox

ACM SIGGRAPH is hosting SANDBOX, a two-day video game symposium on 29 July and 30 July in 2006, co-located with SIGGRAPH 06 in Boston, MA, USA.

The symposium will consist of keynotes by Ian Shaw of Electronic Arts and Greg Costikyan of Man!festo Games, panels and peer reviewed papers focused on industry and scholarly perspectives on how video games are designed and developed; analysis of the experience and pleasures of game play; and critical articles on the value and significance of video games as cultural artifacts.

In addition, a “Hot Games” session will preview unreleased titles from major game companies and independent developers, and recently released and classic titles will be available to try. Save $100 on the symposium cost by registering on-line prior to the June 23rd early registration deadline and providing your SIGGRAPH member number. Continue reading

Call for Participants

Enter to play the C5 Quest for Success during the ZeroOne San Jose / ISEA 2006 Symposium August 9-12, 2006. The C5 Quest for Success is an invited project for ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge; San Jose, California, August 7-13, 2006.

Quest for Success is curatorial selection as urban game, testing competitors’ analysis, management, and cooperative decision making skills - traits needed for success in Silicon Valley. The grand prize is a six to twelve week residency at the Montalvo Arts Center co-sponsored with C5 and a Silicon Valley corporate partner - a great opportunity for the right player with the right project pitch. Contestants navigate the streets of San Jose exploring GPS controlled narratives in an attempt to locate the C5 Corporate Limo. Once there, you just might have the opportunity to pitch your proposal to a panel of distinguished experts. A single winner from each evening’s competition then advances to the final round on Saturday, August 12th. Three finalists representing TALK, DEMO, PERFORM ‘present’ their pitch live on-stage to an audience of thousands during the ZeroOne San Jose culminating celebration. Continue reading

Modern Orthodox + EarthSpeaker

June 29 through July 15 Eyebeam is pleased to present three new installations developed in our studios exploring innovative uses of sound and light, both visible and undetectable, to fix and define spatial environments.

Elliott Malkin’s Modern Orthodox is a working demonstration of a next-generation eruv installed on 21st Street in front of Eyebeam in New York City. An eruv (pronounced ey-roov [related]) is a symbolic boundary erected around religious Jewish communities throughout the world. While an eruv is typically constructed with poles and wires, Modern Orthodox employs a combination of low-power lasers, wifi surveillance cameras and graffiti, as a way of designating sacred volumes of space in urban areas.

The eruv is an ancient architectural construct that stems from the observation of the Sabbath, the sacred day of rest that includes a prohibition against certain kinds of work, including the carrying of objects outside of one’s home, or private domain. Continue reading

Critical Writing Initiative

Do you want to write about live art and contemporary performance for journals, magazines and newspapers? Would you value the opportunity to develop your writing in a supportive environment?

If you are interested in writing about a range of innovative performance practices that are not restricted by artform boundaries, then Writing From Live Art could be what you are looking for.

Live Art UK, a national network of venues, promoters and agencies, is running a year-long scheme to develop and nurture writing talent. Writing From Live Art aims to develop writing, which can discuss complex live art and performance work in accessible terms, and on finding suitable publishing points.

Writing From Live Art is open to new writers or writers who are new to live art. Continue reading

Now Accepting Applications

DRU CreativeLab workshops at Futuresonic, Manchester, UK :: 17 - 21 July 2006, Monday - Friday, 11:00 - 17:00 pm :: Registration fee: FREE!

WORKSHOP #1 “Game modification - games as audiovisual tools” :: BY: Tom Betts & Alison Mealey :: WHEN: 17 - 18 - 19 July :: Through this workshop you’ll learn about game modification and how to use game generated data as input for audio and/or visuals. We’ll look at level design, game engines and game data, and how to use specific game generated data (i.e. coordinates) in a Digital Signal Processing application.

WORKSHOP #2 “Introduction to physical computing” :: WHEN: 18 - 19 July :: BY: Tuomo Tammenpää & Daniel Blackburn :: Interested in making a custom hardware interface for your software instrument or embedding electronics to your art project but don’t know where to start? Two intensive days will give you an introduction to physical computing. We will push buttons, lit LED’s, make sounds, detect movement and interface with computer. Continue reading

Physical Effects of a Tempo-Driven Society

Beijing Accelerator–by MARNIX DE NIJS–was created after being inspired by a recent visit to Beijing, and the realization of how quickly the dynamics of a city could transform into such apparent modernism. Although similar to an earlier prototype, Panoramic Accelerator, in that it also explores the effects of a tempo-driven society on the individual, this new version has an enhanced cinematographic experience as well as a superior interface.

The basic working principle is naturally akin to the original model; the participant takes position in a racing-chair on a motorized structure equipped with a joystick. This time however, a 160×120 cm screen is positioned in front of the user and while they control both the direction and speed of the chair, rotating panoramic images are projected on the screen before them. The aim is to synchronize the moving image with the rotation of the chair. Once this is achieved, the participant is able to view the images properly and the disorientation associated with the uncoordinated spinning is blocked. Continue reading

Two June Events

UPGRADE! BOSTON: NANCY NISBET AND AMBER FRID-JIMENEZ: WHEN: June 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m. WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street, Cambridge. [Red Line to Central Square]

Nancy Nisbet is a Vancouver-based artist. From a disturbing paintball gun performance enacting the chaotic fluctuation in the cost of crude oil during the lead up to the US-led War in Iraq/War on Terror to the surgical implantation of ‘identity’ microchips into her hands, much of her work considers the political, the technological and the personal. Of specific consideration in her mixed-media work are issues of power, economics, and surveillance and their cultural influences on entertainment/leisure, identity and community. Exchange 2006 is a large scale project currently underway. Nisbet received her MFA in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts. Nancy Nisbet is Assistant Professor of Visual Art in the Department of Art History, Visual Arts & Theory at the University of British Columbia. Continue reading

Theories of Internet Spectatorship

The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship by Michele White — Internet and computer users are often represented onscreen as active and empowered–as in AOL’s striding yellow figure and the interface hand that appears to manipulate software and hypertext links. In The Body and the Screen Michele White suggests that users can more properly be understood as spectators rendered and regulated by technologies and representations, for whom looking and the mediation of the screen are significant aspects of engagement. Drawing on apparatus and feminist psychoanalytic film theories, art history, gender studies, queer theory, critical race and postcolonial studies, and other theories of cultural production, White conceptualizes Internet and computer spectatorship and provides theoretical models that can be employed in other analyses. She offers case studies and close visual and textual analysis of the construction of spectatorship in different settings. Continue reading