We are pleased to announce the winners of our international juried competition, Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art). They are, ANNE HELMOND, PATRICK LICHTY, ANNA MUNSTER, and KAZYS VARNELIS.

Each will receive a commission of $3,000 to develop a chapter that will be open for revision, commentary, and translation. Networked will launch on July 1, 2009.

The runners-up are Ele Carpenter, Christine Nadir, Mark Shepard, and Jason Freeman. Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: ABSML by Jeff Crouse, Andrew Mahon, and Steve Lambert: ABSML is a new markup language that enables the creation of complex sentence formulas for 21st century automatic writing. ABSML tags replace parts of speech and sentence components using sophisticated semantic analysis, regular expressions, and web-based resources. In the right combination, the tags create prose that — while based on formulas and code — do not appear formulaic. ABSML is free and open for others to use, both through an online editor and an API (application programming interface). Continue reading

Tivon Rice: Between Here and a Kind of Fleshlessness :: February 6 - March 14, 2009 :: Opening and Artist Talk (7:30): February 6; 6:00 - 9:00 pm :: 911 Seattle Media Arts Center, 402 Ninth Avenue North, Seattle, WA.

In this installation of new works, Rice invites the viewer to explore presence, distance, and the senses through form and imagery. Using video projections, real-time text, and viewer-initiated perceptual loops, Rice confronts the viewer, creating moments where he “…orders, and undermines, seduces and repels”, according to art critic Regina Hackett.

Tivon Rice (b. 1978) is an artist and current PhD student at the University of Washington Center for Digital Art & Experimental Media. Continue reading

Abstract: This observational text posits the conundrum of experiencing locative media projects first-hand, which are intrinsically nomadic and ephemeral, whereby their traces or archival afterlives are left behind as data, tags, and other textual, aural and image renderings. Likewise many locative media projects are increasingly repositioning these iterative aspects contextually, spatially, or through diverse viewing platforms. I will trace the German/Swiss theatre collective Rimini Protokoll’s work CALL CUTTA Mobile Phone Theatre and its tangential offshoots or afterlives as a starting point to muse on the notion of iterations and location aware, urban and mobile manifestations that resonate and amplify various aspects of our globalized condition.” From Some Musings on Iterations and Encounters - Re: CALL CUTTA(s) by Tina Bastajian; artnodes Issue 8 (2008): Locative Media and Artistic Practice: Explorations on the Ground.

Abstract: Locative media remain a useful frame for understanding how collaborative sensing will broadly empower groups to author alternative narratives of urban public space. The case of Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls is used to describe this process in the context of a recent large public art work.

[...] Public art provides an interesting case study through which to consider how locative media, as one particular set of context-aware mobile computing, is driving this interplay in urban public spaces. This article therefore looks at engagement with public art through locative media and geodata as a way of understanding this evolving dialogue between professional artists and curators on the one hand, and mass publics on the other. Continue reading

Abstract: Locative media is an emerging field of creative practice and a platform for experimenting with new experiences in the urban environment that has become increasingly interesting to artists. The use of locative media for artistic purposes has linked geography and maps to urban life and experience in new and sometimes unusual ways. This connection offers the possibility of various transformations in the traditional relationship between the mapping process and the physical space that it depicts. The map no longer merely depicts in a top-down manner the physical territory that it represents; rather, the territory inspires the artistic creation of various kinds of maps that may express, criticize or motivate different aspects of urban life. Continue reading

Media Arts in the World Mapping is launched. View with Google Earth / Google Maps. This is a art project made for the 12th Japan Media Arts Festival, and this is a visualization of information of a media art festival all over the world that used Google Earth and Maps.

Detailed place information, logomark of festival, and slideshow of photograph open to the public in Flickr can be inspected. Moreover, the holding time of the festival can be understood in Google Earth along the time axis. This project is exhibited with “SIGGRAPH Archive in Second Life” in the 12th Japan Media Arts Festival, holding on February 4-15. Continue reading

ShiftSpace Workshop / ARTEFACT Festival :: February 12, 2009; 10:00 am - 6:00 pm :: iMAL, 30 Quai des Charbonnages / Koolmijnenkaai 30, 1080 Bruxelles/Brussel 1080.

ShiftSpace is an open source browser plugin for collaboratively annotating, editing and shifting the web. While the Internet’s design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. The web has followed the physical transformation of the city’s social center from the (public) town square to the (private) mall. ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web. Continue reading

GeoTales with Esther Polak (NL) :: February 23-27, 2009 :: iMAL, Brussels :: Maximum Participants: 15

GeoTales proposes a 5 days unique and creative experimentation workshop with mobile and location based technologies (GPS: Global Positioning System, Mobile networks and smart phones) under the direction of Esther Polak (NL) and her assistant Tijmen Schep (NL). While reflecting upon available tools and their influence on our world’s perception, we will hit the streets to dig up experiences of real-life locative media use. From these experiments, participants will develop concepts for locative projects and make a start with hands on development of tools: based on existing open source GPS editing/tracking softwares or newly developed from scratch. Continue reading

First Screening - Computer Poems by bpNichol (2007) — Jim Andrews, Geof Huth, Lionel Kearns, Marko Niemi, Dan Waber.

From -empyre-: “In 1983 and 1984, bpNichol used an Apple IIe computer and the Apple BASIC programming language to create First Screening, a suite of a dozen programmed, kinetic poems. He distributed First Screening through Underwhich, an imprint he started in 1979 with a small group of poets. The Underwhich edition of First Screening consisted of 100 numbered and signed copies distributed on 5.25″ floppies along with printed matter. Continue reading