openFrameworks: an introduction — a 3 days workshop by Zachary Lieberman, Arturo Castro and Theo Watson :: May 28-30, 2009 :: iMAL, Quai des Charbonnages, Brussels.

This workshop is an introduction to the openFrameworks library. OpenFrameworks is a C++ library for creative coding. It is designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation. Simply put, openFrameworks is a tool that makes it much easier to make things via code, and here via compiled and fast C++ code giving access to the full power of the machine and its operating system. Continue reading

Dorkbot Vienna: nOtbOt - Walter Langelaar (NL) :: May 3, 2009; 7:00 - 10:00 pm :: Metalab Vienna, Rathausstraße 6, 1010 Wien, Vienna, Austria.

nOtbOt is an automated game-player which is controlled and deranged by reactions to it’s own virtual environment, caught in a vicious force-feedback loop… The installation consists of a hacked up human-computer interface in which the feedback system, originally intended to provide tangible interaction for a human player, is now used as input data to control a ‘first-person’ videogame. Human interaction with the game/controller becomes obsolete, resulting in a completely erratic form of [art]ificial intelligence. The observer of the installation, however, can literally try to ‘get a grip’ on taking control of the system… Continue reading

“Clarinda Mac Low grew up in the avant-garde arts scene that flourished in New York City during the 1960s and ‘70s. She began performing with her father, the Fluxus poet and composer Jackson Mac Low, at the age of three, and shortly thereafter performed in Meredith Monk’s 1971 Vessel. Upon graduating from Wesleyan University in 1988 with a dual degree in dance and molecular biology/biochemistry, Mac Low began presenting her hybrid art works in New York City. For the past several years her work has focused on site-specific performances and installations with an emphasis on community, collaboration, antimaterialism, and science. Continue reading

Hrag Vartanian on Jerry Saltz’s This is the End; The Rising Tide that Floated All Boats has Gone Out and All Boats are in Danger of Sinking, NYFA Current:

“[...] One problem with the art world, according to Saltz, is the plethora of over- academicized curators and critics that favors “late late late late conceptualism” and has taken the fun out of looking at art…

Another major problem facing the art world, Saltz explained, was the overheated market; dominating all discussions of art for the last decade, it tended to choke out styles that didn’t fit into the commercial gallery system. Saltz is a longtime critic of art-world economics, in particular the odd ritual known as the art fair. In a 2005 Village Voice essay titled “Feeding Frenzy,” he wrote “…art fairs are perfect storms of money, marketability and instant gratification… Continue reading

“Abstract: Executable code existed centuries before the invention of the computer in magic, Kabbalah, musical composition and experimental poetry. These practices are often neglected as a historical pretext of contemporary software culture and electronic arts. Above all, they link computations to a vast speculative imagination that encompasses art, language, technology, philosophy and religion. These speculations in turn inscribe themselves into the technology. Since even the most simple formalism requires symbols with which it can be expressed, and symbols have cultural connotations, any code is loaded with meaning. This booklet writes a small cultural history of imaginative computation, reconstructing both the obsessive persistence and contradictory mutations of the phantasm that symbols turn physical, and words are made flesh.” From Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination by Florian Cramer

From Entering the Machine and Leaving It Again: Poetics of Software in Contemporary Art by Florian Cramer, February, 2006.

“[...] My focus however is less on computing as something that enable or shapes new forms of art, but rather the other way around: on digital art as a speculative appropriation and practical cultural reflection of computing. In 1962, physicist and philosopher Abraham M. Moles wrote a seminal programmatic and theoretical outline of computational art, the first manifesto of permutational art (erstes manifest der permutationellen kunst ) [slide]. The booklet combines structuralist and cybernetic theory with examples of mathematics, contemporary experimental poetry, music, visual art, and even mysticism and erotic art. Moles’ demanded to refound both the poetics and the aesthetics of art on the grounds of computation: As composition, the new art would “narrow down and exhaust the field of possibilities accessible through a set of rules.” Continue reading

Foreignness and Translation in New Media, NMC Media_N, Spring 2009, v.05 n.01, Pat Badani, Guest Editor.

Media-N’s spring 2009 issue focuses on the relationship between foreignness and translation in new media. As guest editor for this issue I was interested in submissions investigating the process of translation in new media; in the use of an electronic system that mediates and enables the movement from one state to another while simultaneously exploring the specific notion of cultural translation and migration. That is to say, I was interested in creating a forum for discussion about cultural artifacts or markers that are displaced into foreign and extraneous locations, languages, supports and genres. In this context, foreignness is seen as an investigation surrounding notions of displacement and migration beyond those tied to human immigration. Continue reading

UKIYO Laboratory with INETDANCE Japan, DAP-Lab, Michael Takeo Magruder, Elegant Child, Keiko Courdy & Danielle Wilde :: May 2 – May 8, 2009 :: Antonin Artaud Building, Studio 101, Brunel University, Science Park off Cleveland Road, West London.

The project involves collaborative exploration, research and experimentation conjoining artistic, technological and scientific disciplines. Based on a design libretto for the composition of a choreographic installation – “Ukiyo” (Moveable World) – the workshop develops performance ideas for linking physical performance spaces with virtual spaces/ Second Life, and a diverse range of innovative wearable design and programming concepts, including: Continue reading

Processing Time - A Code Jam :: May 2, 2009; 12:30 - 6:45 pm :: Massachusetts Institute for Technology, N52 390, 265 Massachusetts Ave, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA :: Call for Participation.

Concept: * Compete individually or in pairs to design and develop beautiful programs in Processing * Snack and refresh yourself * Present completed projects to other participants and visitors at the end of the day * Anyone (not just MIT students or community members) can compete, anyone can stop by to see presentations * Meet the creators of Processing, Ben Fry (in person) and Casey Reas (via video), who will give awards. Continue reading

Upgrade! Paris: House of Natural Fiber [HONF] — New Media Art Laboratory, Yogyakarta, Indonesia :: April 30, 2009; 8:00 pm :: Maison des Metallos, 94 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, Paris.

Irene Agrivina Widyaningrum, Tommy Surya, Andreas Siagian, Julian Abraham, co-founders of HONF in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, will present this New Media Art laboratory, its two festivals CELLSBUTTON and YIVF, and them recent creations.

House of Natural Fiber [HONF] from Yogyakarta, Indonesia is a New Media Art laboratory, founded in 1999. They concentrate on the principles of social critique and art&technology innovation. Continue reading