Networked Derive :: March 17, 2010; 12:30 - 1:30 pm :: University at Buffalo | Bauhaus–Universität, Weimar | Online.

Networked Derive is a collaborative performance that takes place simultaneously between two geographically-separate locations. Using mobile phones, twitter feeds and a simple mapping system, performers in both locations engage in a series of geographical occupations that coincide with the movements through the other city.

Participants follow a shared map that has one city per side. While the maps will be printed on the same scale, they will be placed slightly askew. The derive starts when one team reports its location to the other. Continue reading

Since the 1950s, guerrilla sign ontologists, situationists and psychogeographers have delighted in using the power of the map to decode the urban landscape. They have explored Manchester using a map of Milan, wandered Newcastle guided by a map of the Berlin U-Bahn, and explored Hackney with a map of the moon. This re-use of maps may at first sight seem to be a simple economy measure, but these were in fact experiments aimed at creating spatial détournements, subverting the commodified image of the city. By the intentional misreading of city space, the city would “be experienced not as a thing at all, but as possibilities”. Our ritual walks are in contrast to the concept of the dérive meaning an aimless walk that follows the whim of the moment, sometimes translated as a drift. 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

[Image: Trigger Points for the composition of Michael Mastrototaro, aka MACHFELD] Audiomobile — A mobile sound installation for cities by Matt Smith and Sandra Wintner with: Eva Ursprung (A), Martin Pichler (A), Norbert Math (A), Heike Kaltenbrunner (A), Michael Mastrototaro (A), Luka Princic (SLO) :: Registration for a ride :: November 27 - December 4, 2009 :: Bad Radkersburg, Styria, Austria.

Audiomobile invites you to explore ‘Sonic Maps’ while driving around in a comfortable vehicle that encourages dialogue between a random assortment of passengers and that is equipped with a multi-channel audio system and GPS positioning system. Continue reading

blown up! The Temporary Autonomous Classroom — an eventwork by Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson :: Dates Below :: Mains d’Oeuvres, 1, rue Charles Garnier, 93 400 Saint-Ouen, Paris.

blown up! is an eventwork, mapping an investigation at once philosophical, cinematic and relational. In a manner similar to Antonioni’s film Blow-Up which follows a photographer’s quest to locate a body in a London park from a blow-up of a snapshot he has taken, Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson explored 1970s video footage of Gilles Deleuze’s courses at the University of Vincennes to locate participants in the seminar who then became collaborators in their film, Facs of Life. Continue reading

Ambient.TV’s Mapping CCTV around Whitehall, Review by Rob Myers, furtherfield.org.

Two-part exercise to map CCTV cameras around Whitehall, London, within a zone covered by SOCPA (Serious and Organized Crime and Police Act 2005). A map of the hundreds of cameras in the zone was made over two days of observation. The second part involved mapping the range of one of these cameras, no. 40 in Villiers street, by intercepting its signal as it was transmitted wirelessly without encryption. As passers-by entered the marked area covered by the camera, they were alerted to the its presence and handed a copy of the map of CCTV cameras in Whitehall. Continue reading

Discontrol Party :: November 20, 2009; 10:00 pm - 3:00 am :: Espace Pasolini, International Theatre, 2 rue Salle Le Comte, 59300 Valenciennes, France.

A party where future devices of control are put to the test: surveillance cameras, face detection, identification (RFID), traceability. A series of concerts in an interactive setting reacting to its public. A live collective and artistic experience!

Discontrol Party is a device that combines two worlds: the world of highly developed surveillance technologies and the party world. The dance floor and the venue are constructed with regard to the projectors lights as well as to a computerized control system (computer vision, RFID, etc.). Continue reading

Turbulence Spotlight: One Text, Many Stories — URBAN MEMORY LOSS: a Nightmare of Change in which Time is Inscribed in Space—or How a Text Became a Story by Annette Weintraub:

One Text, Many Stories is an exploration of reading, and of how the visual context and process of reading influences interpretation. An original text composed of nine short passages describes an urban space reconstituted in memory, and is interspersed with short extracts from Michael de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life and The Production of Space by Henri Lefebre. Taken together, the passages are a construction of ‘the city’ as a fluid mental map of elements that are shuffled and rearranged. Continue reading

RTests: Will Pappenheimer :: November 5 - 21, 2009 :: Opening Reception: November 5; 2:00 - 5:00 pm :: Choate Gallery, Choate Gallery House, Pace University, 861 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, New York.

RTests by artist and Pace Professor, Will Pappenheimer, refers to a selection of his artworks which feature processes resembling or following Herman Rorschach’s Psychodiagnostic directives for the inkblot tests. Using the media of online networks, communications and data exchange, a system or participatory call is set out to test the psychological conditions of a situation. The testing ground includes the intersection of virtual and physical. Continue reading

AVANT-GUIDE TO NYC: Discovering Absence :: November 4 - December 19, 2009 :: Opening: November 4, 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: 291 Church Street, New York City.

Including work by: Julieta Aranda, caraballo-farman, Kabir Carter, Dexter Sinister, Eckhard Etzold, Andrea Geyer, Pablo Helguera, Nancy Hwang, Pia Lindman, Anna Lundh, Nina Katchadourian, Carlos Motta, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, Hatuey Ramos-Fermin, Katya Sander, Ward Shelley, Xaviera Simmons, and Alex Villar. Curated by Sandra Skurvida.

This exhibition is a viewfinder trained onto the specific sites of the cultural fabric of New York City. The past, represented by the memory imprint of an artistic activity that occurred at a certain site, is “covered” by a current artwork focused on the same site. Through this double take, the past and the present collapse onto each other on a city map. Continue reading