Art in Translation: International Conference on Language and the Arts :: May 27-29, 2010 :: University of Iceland and the Nordic House, Reykjavik, Iceland :: Call for Papers — Deadline: February 22, 2010

Like so many nations historically on the cultural and geographical fringes of globalized society, Iceland has seen tremendous growth in its presence on the international arts scene in recent years. And like visual artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, writers, and arts professionals from other small language communities, many Icelanders have-whether by choice or necessity-embraced English as an integral aspect of the creation of and discourse on the arts, sometimes side-by-side with their native language, sometimes not. Continue reading

Critical Play: Radical Game Design by Mary Flanagan, MIT Press:

For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry — and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Continue reading

1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.

2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.

3. Intellectual property systems failing.

4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized. Continue reading

[Image: Kate Armstrong & Michael Tippett / Grafik Dynamo / 2004-2005] Kate Armstrong is a Vancouver-based artist and theorist with a panache for new media powered permutational storytelling. Her work questions the nature of narrative in light of computation, social media and contemporary urban space. She has exhibited widely and is currently en route to Turkey for the March 8th launch of PATH, a bookwork generated by “an anonymous individual living in the city of Montreal between 2005-2007″ at the Akbank Art Centre in Istanbul. Above and beyond her creative practice, she is the author of Crisis and Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture, sits on the board at The Western Front artist-run centre and is a lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts + Technology. Continue reading

Sala-Manca Group presents in the frame of the series Something Different by the Jerusalem Foundation & Gerard Bechar Center: The Story of Batya M. — An original telenovela screening with life dubbing performance by Sala-Manca Group with the live music performance of Yarden Erez (composer of the film soundtrack) :: June 10, 2009; 9:00 pm :: Leo Model, Gerard Bechar, Jerusalem.

The Story of Batya M. is the last (and unique) chapter of a fictional Argentinean “telenovela” (soap opera) projected on the screen and experienced as live performance. In a live performance the two leading actors from the film dub the scenes (from Spanish into English). The language they use changes, the translation becomes dubious, the design of the subtitles and the conventions of the genre are also transformed and subverted. Continue reading

Xu Tan — Keywords School•Venice Recruitment Notice: Deadline: May 31, 2009 :: part of Making Worlds, 53rd La Biennale di Venezia.

The Keywords School is a project based on the continuous investigation and research of “keywords” by the Chinese artist Xu Tan. Underway since 2006, the project’s central premise of communication between audience and artist/art project now takes the form of “school”. The content of this school is “keywords”, terms gathered from Xu Tan’s persistent searching and researching through interviews and discussions among people from different fields and backgrounds. In Keywords School, Xu Tan communicates with all participants through the “keywords” to create a new idealistic public space. Continue reading

Open Translation Tools 2009 (OTT09) :: June 22-24, 2009 :: Amsterdam, The Netherlands :: Call for Participants!

OTT09 will be followed by an Open Translation “Book Sprint” which will produce a first-of-its-kind volume on tools and best practices in the field of Open Translation. Both events are being co-organized in partnership with FLOSSManuals.net and Translate.org.za, and generously supported by the Open Society Institute. Continue reading

V.O.S.T. OV/OT — exhibition, screenings and performances curated by Alexis Chazard & Marika Dermineur :: May 21 - 31, 2009 :: AV performances at Cinema Nova: May 23; 9:30 pm :: Screening sessions at iMAL every evening of the exhibition at 8:00 pm :: iMAL, Quai des Charbonnages, Brussels.

V.O.S.T. OV/OT explores the connections between cinema, video art and digital art. The starting points are subtle, intermediate and functional elements of the cinema industry, such as subtitles and dubbing used by artists for appropriation and diversion. This program gives a central place to language, transcription and translation. Continue reading

Building_Space_with_Words by Anne-Laure Fayard and Aileen Wilson :: until March 27, 2009 :: NYU-Poly, Wunsch Building, 311 Bridge Street, Brooklyn, NY + webcam.

Like its co-creator, Anne-Laure Fayard, a social scientist whose background spans the disciplines of philosophy to human-computer interaction, Building_Space_with_Words doesn’t fit into a neat category. The month-long art installation is part experiment, part research artifact, part think-piece. Ms. Fayard, an NYU-Poly assistant professor of management, and co-creator, Aileen Wilson, an associate professor of art and design at Pratt Institute, designed Building_Space_with_Words as a hybrid offline/online environment that asks: Continue reading

Cyberculture and New Media, edited by Francisco J. Ricardo, Amsterdam/ New York, NY 2009.

In the extension of digital media from optional means to central site of activity, the domains of language, art, learning, play, film, and politics have been subject to radical reconfigurations as mediating structures. This book examines how this changed relationship has in each case shaped a new form of discourse between self and culture and illustrates explicitly the character of mediated agency beyond the formal separateness from lived experience that was once conveniently termed the virtual and which has come to influence common assumptions about creative expression itself. Continue reading