Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles by Erkki Huhtamo, MIT Press:

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, huge circular panoramas presented their audiences with resplendent representations that ranged from historic battles to exotic locations. Such panoramas were immersive but static. There were other panoramas that moved–hundreds, and probably thousands of them. Their history has been largely forgotten. In Illusions in Motion, Erkki Huhtamo excavates this neglected early manifestation of media culture in the making. The moving panorama was a long painting that unscrolled behind a “window” by means of a mechanical cranking system, accompanied by a lecture, music, and sometimes sound and light effects. Showmen exhibited such panoramas in venues that ranged from opera houses to church halls, creating a market for mediated realities in both city and country. Continue reading

Please join us for drinks to celebrate the launch of A Collective Memory of Childhood by Michael Szpakowski :: July 28, 2012; 2:00 - 5:00 pm :: Furtherfield Gallery & Social Space, McKenzie Pavilion, Finsbury Park, London, N4 2NQ.

Artist and composer Michael Szpakowski has worked with local children and their families to create a generative sound sculpture that invokes the collective memory of childhood, drawing on the memories of Haringey residents from all over the world. Continue reading

[Collective Geology of the Erased Space by Paul Catanese] Expanded Artists’ Books: Envisioning the Future of the Book :: Call for Proposals — Deadline: September 15, 2012.

The Center for Book and Paper Arts, a program of the Interdisciplinary Arts Department at Columbia College Chicago, recently received a $50,000 Arts in Media grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in support of a new electronic publishing initiative, Expanded Artists’ Books. This grant will support an award of two $10,000 commissions for new artworks for the iPad. These will have physical counterparts that intersect, modulate, or inform the digital components of the artwork. Continue reading

Bring To Light: Nuit Blanche New York 2012 :: October 6, 2012 :: Call for Submissions — Deadline: July 13, 2012.

Bring to Light is a site-specific contemporary art exhibition that illuminates the streets, parks, and industrial waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Bring to Light is New York’s “nuit blanche,” part of a global network of locally organized nighttime art festivals.

An investigation of the tension and transformation underway throughout the New York waterfront, Bring to Light seeks proposals from artists exploring innovative approaches to temporary public art that engages the built environment and re-imagines public space. Continue reading

Dome2012: Video Art In The Digital Dome :: April 13-14, 2012; 5:00 - 8:00 pm :: Digital Dome @ IAIA, 83 Avan Nu Po Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and the Santa Fe Complex invite you to DOME2012, a two-day immersive video experience featuring the world premier of new experimental video art in the Digital Dome @ IAIA. The event is free and open to the public.

DOME2012 is the first artist-in-residence show at the Digital Dome @ IAIA and is curated by Ethan Bach, Digital Dome Manager at IAIA and Orlando Leibovitz, Art Director at the Santa Fe Complex. Continue reading

Bring Your Own Beamer :: March 16, 2012; 7:00 - 10:00 pm :: VIVID, 140 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, West Midlands B9 4AR :: Open Call — Deadline: February 24. Continue reading

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