Nathalie Miebach is a Boston-based artist who translates weather data into complex sculptures and musical scores.

“Recently, I have begun translating weather data collected in cities into musical scores, which are then translated into sculptures as well as being a source for collaboration with musicians. These pieces are not only devices that map meteorological conditions of a specific time and place, but are also functional musical scores to be played by musicians. While musicians have freedom to interpret, they are asked not to change the essential relationship of the notes to ensure that what is still heard is indeed the meteorological relationship of weather data.” (Scroll down for the Call for Composers.) Continue reading

Mountain Ghosts by Halsey Burgund :: until mid-November :: Galleries of Contemporary Art, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Mountain Ghosts is a site-specific sound art installation that infuses the entire University of Colorado / Colorado Springs campus with a location-based layer of audio created collectively by the artist and participants. Building on Burgund’s interest in systems, collected voices, and participation, Mountain Ghosts explores sound as fundamental to our experiences of space, place and history. Participants use a custom smartphone app to make audio recordings that the Mountain Ghosts system then codes by location and immediately assimilates into a collective databank for other visitors to access. Continue reading

Xavier Leonard (X.L): 433m — a (dis)Locative sound design at Soundwalk 2011 :: October 1, 2011; 5:00 - 10:00 pm :: East Village Arts District, Long Beach, CA. Continue reading

Fresh Kills+: A 21st Century Walk in the Park @ Sneak Peak :: October 2, 2011; 11:00 am - 4:00 pm :: Freshkills Park, Staten Island, New York City.

On the occasion of the annual Sneak Peak event, a new augmented reality (AR) application for smartphones is being launched, allowing visitors to navigate and understand features of the site as well as its transformation from landfill to park. Freshkills Park+ is an experience built with the Layar Browser application and is available for iPhone, iPad, Android, Nokia and Blackberry devices. Continue reading

Sensing Place | Placing Sense :: September 3-4, 2011 :: afo architekturforum oberösterreich, Herbert-Bayer-Platz 1, Linz, Austria.

The mental image of the city has become more complex. Since mobile phones have become geo-social devices, location-based data is increasingly shaping the way we navigate, experience and define the urban environment. Media art practices have played an important role in shaping, investigating and problematizing this development. The Symposium and the exhibition will investigate the potential of experimental and artistic forms of inquiry for helping us making sense of the city, and discuss practices that create new public infrastructures and define new places. Continue reading

ISEA Istanbul presents Site Specifics: Mobile Media Art and the Contexts of Place — Chair Per­son: Chris­tiane Paul; Pre­sen­ters: Tanya Toft, Jack Toolin, Teri Rueb :: Sep­tem­ber 19, 2011; 9:00 - 10:30 am :: Sa­banci Cen­ter Room 4, Sa­banci Cen­ter, Lev­ent.

The panel dis­cusses cat­e­gories of loca­tive, site-spe­cific media art and their im­pact on un­der­stand­ing the con­text of place. Mo­bile com­put­ing po­ten­tially en­ables var­i­ous forms of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and has to be con­sid­ered in re­la­tion to con­cepts of em­bod­i­ment, the cre­ation of mean­ing, as well as in­di­vid­ual au­ton­omy and agency. Continue reading

ISEA Istanbul — Beyond Locative: Media Arts after the Spatial Turn with Marc Tuters, Tris­tan Thiel­mann, Mark Shep­ard, Michiel de Lange :: Sep­tem­ber, 20, 2011; 9:00 - 10:30 am :: Sa­banci Cen­ter Room 4, Lev­ent.

William Gib­son no longer writes about cy­ber­space in the fu­ture, but in­stead about loca­tive art in the atem­po­ral pre­sent. Hav­ing emerged in the mid-’00’s from media arts, loca­tive media are now part of the con­sumer tech­nol­ogy and pop­u­lar cul­ture. This panel dis­cusses the value of this con­cept in re­la­tion to de­bates at the in­ter­sec­tion of ur­ban­ism and media stud­ies, and con­sid­ers the (non)ex­is­tence of a loca­tive avant-garde. Continue reading

[Edward Hopper, Gas (1940)] Place and Placelessness in America, The New Atlantis: Journal of Technology and Society:

In the 1990s, the mavens of high technology praised in breathless tones a new “placelessness.” Thanks to the Internet and the forces of globalization, we were told, physical location would become irrelevant to our public and private lives.

Perhaps these claims were exaggerated. Indeed, place has urgently reasserted itself in the last decade — most powerfully after deadly world events, from terrorist attacks to massive natural disasters. Still, a subtler kind of placelessness does seem to be growing. The ties of social stability and economic security that bind us to places are weak. Continue reading

[Image: Golan Levin, QR Hobo Codes/QR Stenclier and Will Pappenheimer, bUD, Bureau of Urban Devolution] Distributed Collectives — curated by Kelani Nichole :: until August 27, 2011 (Closing Reception: 6:00 - 10:00 pm) :: Little Berlin, 2430 Coral Street, Philadelphia. Continue reading

PDPal - Mapping Without Terrain (2002-’04) by Julian Bleecker, Marina Zurkow , Scott Paterson, now part of Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects, MOMA.

“To cover the world, to cross it in every direction, will only ever be to know a few square meters of it… tiny incursions into disembodied vestiges, small incidental excitements, improbable quests congealed in a mawkish haze a few details of which will remain in our memory. And with these, the sense of the world’s concreteness… no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, nor the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.” – Georges Perec, Species of Spaces

PDPal was a series of public art projects for the Palm™ PDA, mobile phone and the web. It has pushed at the notion of mapping, attempting to transform your everyday activities and urban experiences into a dynamic city that you write. Continue reading