The Intermedial City :: October 9-11, 2008 :: Thomson House, McGill University, 3650 McTavish, Montreal.

“Media scholars have always noted the strong connection between the growth of cities and the growth of media. In Canada, despite our vast distances, most people live in large metropolitan areas and their experience of most media is as urban dwellers. This conference will draw on the rich traditions of media scholarship and urban studies which have developed in Canada, Europe and the Americas. It will examine everything from the status of airports as information hubs to the ways in which films capture the complexities of city life.” says Media@McGill’s William Straw. Continue reading

The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology is proud to present The Fourth International DOCAM Summit :: October 30-31, 2008 :: Tanna Schulich Hall (New Music Building), McGill University Montreal, Canada :: Preceded by the Symposium: Media in Motion: The Challenge of Preservation in the Digital Age :: October 29, 2008 :: Rooms 832/833 (New Music Building), McGill University.

During this two-day conference, audience members will have the opportunity to learn about the progress of DOCAM’s research and to meet distinguished speakers among whom will be media artist Antoni Muntadas, who will deliver a keynote address. Please note that registration is not required and that admission is free. Continue reading

SHAREDSCAPES is an experimental shared space, a platform for creativity, research and self-expression. It welcomes online submissions of texts, pictures and sounds, which will express your definitions of the concept of landscape.

The primary aim of SHAREDSCAPES is to provide a discussion forum for points of view inspired by the concept of landscape. Through the medium of the technological translation of material published online, its secondary aim is to create a 3D space/sculpture in real time. This will crystalise that material, seeking to bring together computer-generated images, chaotic/generative modelling and a “virtual reality” space. Little by little, a virtual landscape will develop. Continue reading

Artistic Bedfellows - Histories, Theories & Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices, edited by Holly Crawford: Although the modernist notion of art as autonomoushas been thoroughly contested, the discourse of the artist as celebrated individual persists. As a counter to that, this eclectic collection of writings on ‘collaboration as a cultural practice’ starts from the standpoint that collective approaches have been a characteristic feature of artistic production throughout the 20th century and that a rich cultural and artistic interchange results from shared experience and dialogue. Informed by contemporary notions of an emergent ‘relational’ sensibility and participative forms of social and cultural activity (such as the worldwide web) the editor, Holly Crawford, brings together a series of interviews, essays, conversations and remarks on collaboration. Continue reading

Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty (edited by Andy Miah): In recent years, the long-term future of humanity has become of particular concern to various governance bodies and scholarly institutions. This is due to the many biological transgressions that have begun to occur through emerging technologies, such as genetic modification, cloning, stem cell research and much more. These transgressions call into question the foundations of social order, thus creating a complex, multifaceted imperative for humanity as a whole to foresee.

This innovative book, stimulated by material from FACT’s Human Futures programme and informed by inquiries into the future of humanity, combines scholarly essays, images from leading artists and designers, interviews, design products, artistic artefacts, and creative writing. Continue reading

Commissioned for Interact 15, Clouds of clouds — by Miguel Leal and Luis Sarmento — is a random generator of cloud images. Each new cloud is unique and indexed to a particular time (GMT) on a particular day. It was developed in Perl + MySQL; the database has more than 1,000,000 photos gathered from Flickr between September 10-13 2008, using Flickr API.

“This is randomness, and that is altogether different. If absolutely necessary, you can count the stars. A catalogue has been kept of them since Antiquity. But if you ask for a catalogue of the clouds, people laugh at you. There is no such term as cloud, defined as permanent, defined by its borders, by its terms or its terminations. [?] Clouds, whirlwinds, flows, noises, all primary masses without qualities.” — M. Serres. Continue reading

Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society; Edited by Michiel Dehaene, Lieven De Cauter.

Heterotopia, literally meaning ‘other place’, is a rich concept in urban design that describes a space that is on the margins of ordered or civil society, and one that possesses multiple, fragmented or even incompatible meanings. The term has had an impact on architectural and urban theory since it was coined by Foucault in the late 1960s but it has remained a source of confusion and debate since. Heterotopia and the City seeks to clarify this concept and investigates the heterotopias which exist throughout our contemporary world: in museums, theme parks, malls, holiday resorts, gated communities, wellness hotels and festival markets. Continue reading

Artivistic 2009: TURN*ON :: Montreal, Canada :: Call for Participation - Deadline: November 1, 2008.

The world to come is so sexy. We are unstoppable for we are fueled with an incredible urge to embrace the pleasure provided by difference, exchange and freedom. Our actions today are charged with an energy that is animated by the rise of change and a movement that is simply irresistible.

New movements are arising at the intersections of sex, politics and technology. These movements are inspired by, as well as critical of, the long traditions of struggle they stem from, remixing gender bending, sex work (and play), and media activism. Continue reading

Open Source Meeting at Le Arti in Citta festival :: October 10, 2008; 10am-1pm / 4pm-7pm :: Fondazione Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci, Perugia.

On October 10, the group ‘Umane Energie’ and the ‘Flussi’ section of “Le Arti in Citta” festival are promoting a seminar called Open Source Meeting at the ‘Fondazione Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci’ in the city of Perugia. This is curated by Moreno Barboni and by Marco Mancuso, critic, curator and director of Digicult, and will be participated by Graffiti Research Lab, Pier Luigi Capucci, Laura Colini, Umane Energie and Confinidigitali. Continue reading

“Since the late 1980s, researchers have been working on a “post-desktop” paradigm for human-computer interaction, known as “ubiquitous” or “pervasive” computing. Combining any number of mobile, networked and context-aware technologies, pervasive computing involves the embedding of computational capacities in the objects and environments that surround us. When this research began to spread from university and corporate labs to the popular imagination, there was an almost immediate and negative reaction, marked by anxieties around the idea of technologies penetrating into everyday life. In North America and Europe in particular, privacy concerns came to the fore as commentators envisioned a world of absolute surveillance. Conversely, the more recent emerging research agendas in “urban computing” and “locative media” present a strongly utopian vision. Continue reading