Charging Bull - Wall Street: an avatar-occupation organized by Jeremy Owen Turner (Canada) and Jacquelene Drinkall (Australia) in Blue Mars Lite (a Mac/PC client which integrates avatars with photos from Google’s map API) :: October 9; 1:00 - 1:30 pm (PST) :: Details here.

ISEA Istanbul presents La Plissure du Texte — Chair Per­son: Elif Ayiter; Pre­sen­ters: Roy As­cott, Jan Baetens, Elif Ayiter, Max Moswitzer, Selavy Oh :: Sep­tem­ber 17, 2011; 1:00 - 2:30 pm :: Sa­banci Cen­ter Room 1, Sa­banci Cen­ter, Lev­ent.

This panel will un­der­take a close scrutiny of La Plis­sure du Texte, tak­ing into ac­count both its cre­ation in 1983 and its re-cre­ation in 2010, dis­cussing the work in its role as a land­mark of New Media Art His­tory as well as an art work which has shown the ca­pa­bil­ity of re­gen­er­at­ing it­self as an en­tirely novel man­i­fes­ta­tion based upon the con­cepts of dis­trib­uted au­thor­ship, tex­tual mo­bil­ity, emer­gent semi­o­sis, mul­ti­ple iden­tity, and par­tic­i­pa­tory poe­sis. Continue reading

Robots and Avatars :: Call for Proposals — Deadline: September 7, 2011.

Robots and Avatars is an intercultural, intergenerational and interdisciplinary exploration of a near future world consisting of collaborations between robots, avatars, virtual worlds, telepresence and real time presence within creative places, work spaces, cultural environments, interactive entertainment and play space.

Robots and Avatars will present two Development Commissions and additionally a minimum of six existing works as an Exhibition in 2012. Lead producer and concept developer of this EU Culture project is body>data>space and the partner for the commissions is National Theatre in London. Continue reading

Senses Places - Dance-Technology Workshop 3: organized by Pei-Jung Lee, Isabel Valverde, Todd Cochrane :: July 30, 2011; 1:00 - 5:00 pm :: Dance Studio, The Kenneth Myers Center, 74 Shortland Street, Auckland Central, New Zealand + in Second Life.

Senses Places is a dance-technology collaborative project creating a playful mixed reality performance environment for audience participation. The project stresses an integration of simultaneous local and remote connections, where participants and environments meet to generate a kinesthetic/ synesthetic engagement. Continue reading

Virtual Body Language: The History and Future of Avatars: How Nonverbal Expression is Evolving on the Internet by Jeffrey Ventrella:

Why does the tail wag the brain? What is virtual autism? Why can’t our avatars walk hand-in-hand? Will a nonverbal Babel fish save the world? Jeffrey Ventrella, a seasoned virtual worlds programmer and visual language expert, reviews the history of avatars, smileys, and other expressive forms, and considers a future of spectacular creativity. This book combines thoughtful scholarship with amusing anecdotes from the trenches of Silicon Valley. Virtual Body Language presents a thorough analysis of the neurological, linguistic, aesthetic, and technical aspects of how nonverbal communication can be distributed over the internet. Based on nearly a decade of avatar development, Ventrella has the practical foundation on which to justify even the most outrageous claims, regarding what “avatar” might mean in the future.

The Real Real Thing: Wendy Steiner in Conversation :: February 3, 2011; 6:30 pm :: Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia PA.

Our culture is fixated on the pose, the state of existing simultaneously as artifice and the real thing. In this reading and conversation, Penn literary scholar Wendy Steiner discusses her latest book, The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art. Joining Steiner in conversation are Jeffrey E. Green, Jim English, and Jean-Michel Rabaté. A book signing will follow.

Why do so many contemporary visual artists use models — often themselves — when for much of the twentieth-century, explicitly model-based representation was relatively uncommon? What is a model, and what role do models play in the creative process? Continue reading

[Image: Sparky - DIY Web-Based Telepresence Robot] Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts Conference 2011: Connected Communities: global or local2local? :: September 4-7, 2011 :: University of Nottingham Ningbo, China, with add on option of September 3 in Shanghai.

In 2011 the DRHA conference will explore the new connectivities in societies and cultures which are enabled by the blending of virtual and physical space, the traversing of time and space through the virtual, and the evolution of innovative methodologies. Crossing disciplines and challenging boundaries within the humanities, arts and the creative industries, this conference will examine critically familiar notions of the ‘local’, the ‘global’ and the ‘network’ across the cultural spectrum.

We anticipate specific strands focusing on such topics as the following, but the conference welcomes other related suggestions: Continue reading

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NoneOfTheseCandidates Macbain for United States Senate is a native of Nevada and Second Life. He is a lifelong independent, founder of Nevadans 4 Hyperreality and a veteran of the America’s Army Game where he has served in maps that look like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He is single and lives in the Shady Oak Trailer Park in the New Hamlet region of Second Life. Visit him in Second Life.

Media artist Joseph DeLappe announces the virtual candidacy of his avatar, NoneOfTheseCandidates Macbain for United States Senate representing the great state of Nevada! “None of these candidates” is a voting option for Nevada voters for President of the United States and all state constitutional positions, including U.S. Senator. Continue reading

Hybrid Participatory Performance: Real Virtual Games in Second Life :: July 11, 2010; 2:00 - 3:30 pm BST (6:00 - 7:30 am PST/SLT) :: The Place, London + Second Life :: Part of Society of Dance History Scholars Annual Conference: Dance and Spectacle.

This working group session starts with a 5-10 mn hybrid participatory performance based on a short structured movement improvisation between avatars (Second Life users) and participants in London, through SL video broadcast. The performance is followed by working group discussion of the proposed issues including all the physical and virtual participants. Continue reading