Artist Animal by Steve Baker, University of Minnesota Press:

Artist Animal examines the work of contemporary artists who directly confront questions of animal life, treating animals not aesthetically or symbolically but rather as beings who actively share the world with humanity. Featuring full-color examples of their art, it situates artists within the wider project of thinking beyond the human, asserting art’s power to open new ways of thinking about animals.

Animals have always been compelling subjects for artists, but the rise of animal advocacy and posthumanist thought has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between artist and animal. Continue reading

Indeterminate Hikes+ BASECAMP.EXE by ecoarttech :: June 1-3, 2012 :: 319 Scholes, Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn, New York.

Leila and Cary of ecoarttech invite you to join us for a wilderness excursion through Bushwick’s pristine industrial landscape! Visit our BASECAMP.EXE installation at 319 Scholes to prepare psychically for an Indeterminate Hike through Brooklyn’s urban wilds. With our new Indeterminate Hikes+ app, we will be leading impromptu hikes throughout the weekend of Bushwick Open Studios, departing from 319 Scholes, as well as scheduled hikes at the following times: Continue reading

Wilderness Art Conference: Wind As Context :: May 24-26, 2012 :: Marjaniemi Luotsihotelli & Cafe Bar Haiku, Hailuoto, Finland. Program here. Continue reading

DEAF2012 (Dutch Electronic Art Festival) :: Symposium: Vital Beauty - May 16-20, 2012 :: DeBalie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The symposium focuses on the question of how the age-old notion of beauty can regain an importance appropriate to the 21st century.

Our need for beauty has not diminished, as hard as modernism tried to erase it from art and life and supplant it with the sublime. It was a sublime that increasingly associated itself with negation and deconstruction. In contrast, vital beauty, as defined by John Ruskin more than 150 years ago, is a beauty of sympathies and affinities with life forms. Yet vital beauty must be reinvented, since life forms today can be technological as well as natural. Continue reading

[DPoN showing temperatures in the low-60's, clear skies, and winds out of the south (indicated by the vertically-oriented yellow streak to the right)] Dynamic Performance of Nature: Augmenting Environmental Perception Through Social Media And Architectural Informatics by Brian W. Brush, Yong Ju Lee & Noa Younse:

Abstract: Architecture has always functioned as a mediating structure between humans and the environments in which they live; a static assemblage of semi-inert materials orchestrated, amongst other things, to temper environmental forces for human habitation. With advances in material and communications technology, architectural assemblies no longer perform as impassive boundaries separating discrete conditions of occupation between environments. Continue reading

Nature In Code: Physical Systems In Processing :: April 26-29, 2012 :: Laboratorio Symbolon, C. Llatzeret 13 bx, Poblenou, Metro, Barcelona, Spain :: Call for Participants — Registration Deadline: April 24. Continue reading

The Birdwatchers: Gabriela Albergaria, Jeffrey Blondes, Adriana Salazar, Marina Zurkow, curated by Laura Bardier :: until January 21, 2012 :: bitforms gallery, 529 West 20th Street, New York City.

The Birdwatchers is a group exhibition featuring work of four contemporary artists that observe nature and repurpose it within altered landscapes, as part of their interdisciplinary practice. The exhibited works include physically animated plants and animals, video, animation, letterpress prints, and drawing on paper.

What is it about bird watching? Is it related to the urgency to comprehend, forecast and, later, control our immediate environment? Continue reading

Five years ago, I installed an ant colony inside my old scanner that allowed me to scan in high definition this ever evolving microcosm (animal, vegetable and mineral). The resulting clip is a close-up examination of how these tiny beings live in this unique ant farm. Continue reading

Continue reading

After a 10 month hiatus the SoundTransit project is back, hosted by Turbulence.org.

SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. Phonography is the art of recording sounds from the environment around us, with an emphasis on the unintentional sounds which often go unnoticed in our daily lives. An international community of phonographers collect and share their recordings, with interests ranging from recordings of natural or urban environments to improvised situations or soundwalks, to the resonance of solid objects or the Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading