TELE_TRUST by Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat: How do we trust each other as networking bodies? Do we need to look each other in the eyes? Or do we need to touch each other?

In TELE_TRUST Lancel and Maat explore how in our changing social eco-system we increasingly demand transparency; while at the same time we increasingly cover our vulnerable bodies with personal communication-technology. For TELE_TRUST Lancel and Maat designed a hybrid play zone for a vulnerable process, of balancing between fear AND desire for the other. In a visual, poetic way they explore the emotional and social tension between visibility and invisibility; privacy and trust. Continue reading

After Thought (2010) — Portable Testing Kit and Custom Video — by Scott Kildall — is a portable personality testing kit, which uses flashcards and brainwave analysis to test stress and relaxation levels. After the session, Kildall feeds the results into his custom software which generates a unique video edit to reflect the subject’s emotional composition. During the interview, participants wear an EEG-reading headset, which indicates states of relaxation and anxiety in response to visual stimuli. As they slowly turn over placards of charged imagery such as a house on fire, a person yelling and a bottle of pills, Kildall track’s their responses on a standard form.

At the conclusion of the session, he feeds the responses into After Thought Generator — software that he wrote which algorithmically creates a unique 5-minute video from a library of 200 clips. Continue reading

Zach Lieberman: Interactive Art from PopTech on Vimeo.

DRHA 2010 Conference - Sensual Technologies: Collaborative Practices of Interdisciplinarity :: September 5-8, 2010 :: Brunel University, West London, UK :: Call for Papers and Performances — Deadline: March 31, 2010.

The conference’s overall theme will be the exploration of the collaborative relationship between the body and sensual/ sensing technologies across various disciplines. In this respect it will offer an interrogation of practices that are indebted to the innovative exchange between the sensual, visceral and new technologies.

At the same time, the aim is to look to new approaches offered by various emerging fields and practices that incorporate new and existing technologies. Specific examples of areas for discussion could include: Continue reading

Concrete Geometries: Spatial Form in Social and Aesthetic Processes — Exhibition, Symposium and Publication :: Call for Submissions — Deadline: April 12, 2010 :: The Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES,UK.

The Concrete Geometeries Research Cluster is seeking submissions of work from the fields of art, architecture, sciences and humanities that explore the intimate relationship between between spatial form and human processes — be they social or aesthetic — and the variety of new material entities this relationship might provoke. Continue reading

Vague Terrain 16: Architecture/Action :: The latest of edition of Vague Terrain presents a timely and nuanced consideration of ubiquitous computing. Guest curated by the American artist/programmer Joshua Noble, the issue provides a window into the practices of several leading researchers. Given the arrival of gestural interfaces and preliminary deployments of augmented reality technology and “intelligent” architecture, it is an important moment for thinking about the relationship between technology and the body. Noble on this current milieu: “All technologies reshape the body and the space around the body, from the bow and arrow to the steam engine to the telephone. It may be that we are beginning to truly see how computing and ubiquitous devices will once again reshape our bodies and our conceptions of ourselves in space.” Continue reading

Film, Video & New Media and the Upgrade! Chicago present: Danielle Wilde: Swing that Thing, a presentation on body-worn devices for performance and play :: February 9, 2010; 6:00 pm :: The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MacLean building, Room 1307, 13th floor, 112 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

Australian artist and scholar Danielle Wilde will elaborate an emergent definition of poetic body-worn devices for performance and play, that encourage people to move in unusual ways; and a series of non-augmented devices that explore how we might conceive of and develop technologies that we can’t yet imagine. By extending the body, mechanically, gesturally and sensorially we can encourage people to move in extra-normal ways, so view and experience their bodies from perhaps hitherto unknown perspectives. Continue reading

Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity and Interactive Media :: February 8 - April 2, 2010 :: Reception: February 11; 6:00 - 9:00 pm :: The Arcade, Columbia College, 618 S Michigan Avenue, 2nd floor, Chicago, IL.

Whether through motion capture, live processing, animation or other means of data visualization, the body is the referent and inspiration for many digital media artists working with interactive technologies. Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity, and Interactive Media is an investigation into this confluence, gazing through multiple lenses to explore the body and identity as they are transformed and represented through technological evolution. Continue reading

City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community :: June 11–13 & 19, 2010 :: Invitation to Submit Proposals — Deadline: March 1, 2010 [Application Form]

Recent exhibitions, festivals and conferences across the US and in Europe have taken wireless networks, public space, locative media and urban environments as sites of intervention, creativity, and critique. Formulated within the emerging context of networked urbanism and mobile media, City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community will focus upon dynamics of the shifting, locative, cartographic and social space of the city. It is organized by educational, arts, community-based and civic organizations and asks how locative media can act as a platform and venue for community-led expression. Continue reading

Upgrade! Paris: Art of Failure presents Corpus on the occasion of the “Corpus” exhibition opening :: January 7, 2010; 6:30 pm :: Théatre Molière - Scène d’Aquitaine / OARA, 33 rue du temple, Bordeaux, France.

Corpus is a set-up which uses sound, architecture and multimedia technology to stage objects, furniture, architecture or a place and set them into pulsating vibration. The various elements which compose the inherent identity of place thus become active or ‘living’ and breathe life into sounds specific to their personality. The selected place becomes the instrument on which the duo of musicians play, offering their audience a unique physical experience of place at once richly sensorial and other-worldly. Continue reading