P.I.E. (Personal Immersive Environments) :: January 15, 2012; 10:00 am – 4:00 pm :: Machine Project, 1200-D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA.

Join Amy Jo Diaz and Casey Hughes for an afternoon of personal-diorama-making. These dioramas are intended to produce miniature immersive environments using both two and three-dimensional elements and a point-of-view.

The workshop will begin with a brief discussion of dioramas with examples representing the breadth of the medium. The participants will be asked to imagine a context (fictional or not) which they will construct within a provided frame. Continue reading

Emotional Skin: Performance and Sensorial Environments — a VIDA 13.0 workshop with Sonia Cillari :: October 26-28, 2011 :: Matadero Madrid. Paseo de la Chopera 14, Madrid, Spain.

The Italian artist Sonia Cillari, honourable mention in VIDA 13.0, will share with participants her exploration of sensorial and perception mechanisms in immersed environments and the consciousness, perception and identity-related patterns arising from them.

The workshop is structured along three main lines: physical and phenomenological reality, the body as an interface (how do we experience space?) and the physical phenomena of the radiating body. The event is also conceived as an open debate during which attendees may propose new perceptive strategies and discuss the specific subjects proposed. Continue reading

Immersion Into Noise by Joseph Nechvatal, Open Humanities Press:

The noise factor is the ratio of signal to noise of an input signal to that of the output signal. Noise can block or interfere with the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication. But in Information Theory, noise is still considered to be information.

By refining the definition of noise as that which addresses us outside of our preferred comfort zone, Joseph Nechvatal’s Immersion Into Noise investigates multiple aspects of cultural noise by applying the audio understanding of noise to the visual, architectural and cognitive domains. Nechvatal expands and extends our understanding of the function of cultural noise by taking the reader through the immersive and phenomenal aspects of noise into algorithmic and network contexts, beginning with his experience in the Abside of the Grotte de Lascaux. Continue reading

Palimpsest #08 presents Finitude (Mallee: Time) v01 — a new media art/ sculptural/ sound hybrid by Keith Armstrong, et al :: September 10-11, 2011 :: The Ka-Rama Motel, Room 22, Deakin Ave, Mildura, Australia.

Situated on the main drag, The Ka-Rama Motel is just like every other ubiquitous motel that you’ve ever stayed in: all 70s decor, floral linen and mistuned television sets. But this time the darkened room 22 contains a strange structure over the bed: a circular holographic touchscreen that participants can lie underneath on the clean floral sheets, revealing mysterious 3D landscapes and forms via a unique, circular touch sensitive screen, that also magically reveals a complex series of motorised dioramas, turning continuously high above the bed accompanied by 4 channel interactive sound. Continue reading

New York Electronic Art Festival presents Blue Morph by Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski :: until September 25, 2011 :: St. Cornelius Chapel, Governor’s Island, NY.

Blue Morph is an interactive installation that uses nanoscale images and sounds derived from the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The piece emerges in sound and pattern only when the viewer is STILL and SILENT.

Nanotechnology is changing our perception of life and this is symbolic in the Blue Morpho butterfly with the optics involved — that beautiful blue color is not pigment at all but patterns and structure which is what nano-photonics is centered on studying. Continue reading

Richard Garet: Espacios No-Euclídeos :: August 11 - October 30, 2011 :: Opening: August 11; 6:00 - 9:00 pm :: EAC – Espacio Arte Contemporáneo, Arenal Grande 1930, Montevideo, Uruguay. Continue reading

CREW presents Terra Nova — Radical confluence of immersion and theatre @ Festival d’Avignon :: July 6-14, 2011; daily @ 3:00 and 6:00 pm :: La Chartreuse, Villeneuve lez Avignon.

Terra Nova, a remarkable mixture of theatre and state-of-the-art image technology, will have its premiere at the Rencontres d’été of La Chartreuse, organized in collaboration with the Festival of Avignon. Terra Nova is created by Eric Joris, Peter Verhelst, Stef De Paepe, Robby Cleiren and CREW. A performance and immersive adventure at once.

Terra Nova takes us back to R. F. Scott’s dream to be the first man on the South Pole, in 1911. Beaten by only a month by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, the English explorer and his team perish dramatically on their way back. Continue reading

Augmented Window :: June 17-26, 2011 :: Centre Pompidou, Gateway level 6, Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris, France.

Directed and curated by Thierry Fournier, Augmented Window is a sensory observatory. Different artists and authors have been invited to produce a critical reading or original work on the landscape itself. Each contribution is geo-localized and presented on a touch-screen window that looks out onto a landscape that is simultaneously displayed as a live video feed on the window itself.

Augmented Window is premiered within the Futur en Seine Festival, at Centre Pompidou. Continue reading

Discotrope Work-in-Progress Preview - May 2011 from Amy Alexander on Vimeo.

Discotrope is an audiovisual performance for public spaces by Amy Alexander and Annina Rüst. Dance party performances invoke both alternative energy and the curious history of dance in cinema – from backlots to backyards.