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

n o m a i n b e t w e e n series: AVATAR 4D :: April 17, 2010; 6:30 - 11:30 pm :: N O M A GALLERY, 80 Maiden Ln. 3rd fl, San Francisco, CA + Reference Gallery, Richmond, Virginia.

NOMA Gallery is pleased to present Avatar 4D, a performance event curated by JstChillin and the first event in the n o m a i n b e t w e e n series. In the words of the JstChillin creators (Caitlin Denny and Parker Ito):

“Avatar 4D brings a night of embodied logarithms and viral glancing. We have asked seventeen artists whose work is concerned with the internet to perform in the space all at the same time. Through curatorial synesthesia, the performances will be set up as chaotically choreographed circumstances that exist in a reality of virtual proportions, modifying their skins in a post human culture of “I”. Continue reading

Upgrade! Boston: Joseph DeLappe + Pete Froslie :: March 11, 2010; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: ACT - MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA (Entrance to the right of the MIT Museum).

Joseph DeLappe is an Associate Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad - including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Peru, China and the Netherlands. Continue reading

Center for Contemporary & Digital Performance Research Seminar Series: The Rise of the Bio-Virtual: Non-place, Disappearance, Indistinction (Life in the Digital Kamp) by Matthew Causey :: February 17, 2010; 2:00 pm (GMT) :: Drama Studio Gaskell Bld. 048, School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge/West London, Cleveland Road + The one hour talks and 30-minute discussions are webcast live on dance tech net TV (then archived).

Within the super-saturation of virtuality and technological reproductions in contemporary digital culture are established zones and terrains of indistinction and disappearance (digital kamps). These electronic environments I would nominate as examples of the bio-virtual (perhaps a post-virtual) and model the fields as a space of bio-politics par excellence. Continue reading

The 25th Annual CHArt Conference: Object and Identity in the Digital Age :: November 12-13, 2009 :: Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London, WC1 7HX.

This year’s CHArt conference engages with the idea of object and identity in relation to art practice, production, consumption, representation and display. The conference will explore new notions of the identity of the artist, including those involving collaboration and anonymity; new conceptions and ontologies of the art object, as processual, virtual, or hybrid; new means of consumption and reception, whether in galleries and museums, in public spaces, or over networks of broadcast and narrowcast; and the challenges these transformations bring to the display of art and to its curation and access. Continue reading

Meta-Plasticity in Virtual Worlds: Aesthetics and Semantics Concepts, Edited by Dr. Gianluca Mura, Politecnico di Milano University, Italy; to be published by IGI Global in the second half of 2010 :: Call For Chapters Proposals — Deadline: September 30, 2009.

The concept of virtual worlds is strongly related to the current innovations of new media communication. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to virtual world studies focused on aesthetics and semantics principles from science, technology, media arts and design. It is important for researchers and practitioners interested in this area to understand the actual criteria for creating virtual worlds’ as well as their further evolution, regarding system architecture, information visualization and human interaction. Continue reading

Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology by André Nusselder, MIT Press — Cyberspace is first and foremost a mental space. Therefore we need to take a psychological approach to understand our experiences in it. In Interface Fantasy, André Nusselder uses the core psychoanalytic notion of fantasy to examine our relationship to computers and digital technology. Lacanian psychoanalysis considers fantasy to be an indispensable “screen” for our interaction with the outside world; Nusselder argues that, at the mental level, computer screens and other human-computer interfaces incorporate this function of fantasy: they mediate the real and the virtual.

Interface Fantasy illuminates our attachment to new media: why we love our devices; why we are fascinated by the images on their screens; and how it is possible that virtual images can provide physical pleasure. Continue reading

Paulo Majano’s The Valley addresses the idea of virtual presence through computer generated virtual figures that reflect back to us our own shifting notions of what constitutes authentic experience in the age of avatars, immersive virtual environments, and other forms of mediated and remote interaction.

A digital projection installation of two virtual computer generated characters that mimic human appearance and characteristics. The Valley takes viewers to a distant, yet familiar place, where the virtual exists alongside the physical. In recent history, the idea of convincing, human-like entities has captured humankind’s collective imagination time and time again. This is evident in our fascination with characters such as Frankenstein’s monster and Star Trek’s machine-human Cyborg. Continue reading

1st X0y1 Meeting :: October 2009 :: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre, Seville, Spain :: Call for Theoretical, Artistic, and Creative Projects on Gender and Cyberspace — Deadline: July 20, 2009.

The aim of the 1st X0y1 Meeting is to address the relationships between discursive and artistic practices about gender and the Internet, in terms of the different political and socio-critical theories that consider the cultural construction of sexual difference and an online society. The working framework will bring together contributions that deal with one or more of the following issues: Continue reading