Radius 25: Cultural Morphing by Klaus Filip / Nicolaj Kirisits / et al. :: May 20-21, 2012; 8:00 am CST (to coincide with the 2012 Chicago NATO Summit).

Cultural Morphing is an experiment in creating a multi-perspective image of reality from the simultaneous experience of a geographic line by the individual expression of a perceived personal reality. Twelve invited artists traveled by train from Vienna to Shanghai, and selected stops along the route served as their workspace where they would meticulously work out an project that outlined various aspects of cultural transition experienced on the journey. Stopovers at Ulan-Ude, Ulan Bator, Beijing and Shanghai were used to exhibit the works that were created en route. Continue reading

["Wifi Camera," Sjölén, Haque, Somolai-Fischer, 2006] From Picture This — Reinventing The Camera As A Social And Anti-Technological Object by Jonah Brucker-Cohen, The Creators Project:

[...] “Examining the invisible proliferation of wireless networks that are permeating every location we inhabit comes another type of camera that takes images of the signals themselves. The “Wifi-Camera” (2010) by Bengt Sjölén, Adam Somlai Fischer, and Usman Haque is a camera that takes photos of locations that contain wireless transmissions in the way that a traditional camera captures spaces illuminated by visible light. The camera is meant to reveal all of the electromagnetic space that our mobile and portable devices create daily. From their description: “Radio waves at wifi’s wavelength behave similar to light in that they are reflected off almost all solid objects to varying degrees, just as when we see colors we see the light from a light source being reflected off an object into our eyes.” This effect is achieved by pointing a wireless antenna and measuring the signal strength throughout a viewing period to create an overall image…”

ACT 5 IS NOW LIVE! Turbulence Commission: We Ping Good Things To Life: An Interactive Networked Installation In 5 Acts by Ephraim & Sadie Hatfield:

We Ping Good Things To Life is an ever evolving and expanding interactive networked installation that brings together elements of Toy Theater, Vaudeville performance, Surrealism, and consumer culture. Users can activate dozens of store-bought, found, and donated objects to create a unique performance, alone or with others, via the live streaming video feed.

Inspired by the work of friend and artist Jarvis Rockwell, Act 1: Remember When We Used to Have Fun? explores the hidden lives of toys. Continue reading

Jennifer and Kevin Mccoy: Index :: until October 13, 2012 :: EMPAC, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York.

Index is an EMPAC-commissioned public art installation by Rensselaer Arts alumni Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, which consists of multiple sculptures filmed via small, live cameras. The resulting video projection, as well as the models, will appear throughout our public spaces during an extended residency with the artists.

Inspired by a J.G. Ballard short story called The Index, in which an alphabetized list of people and places are turned into an implied, overarching narrative, the McCoys’ list spans the 1960s to today, referencing globalization, technology, mass migrations, and war. Continue reading

New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. is now accepting proposals for its Turbulence.org Commissions Program. The deadline for New York practitioners is May 31, 2012; June 30, 2012 for everyone else. The Application Guidelines are here.

Turbulence.org is the oldest and most consistent net art commissions site in the world. Now celebrating 16 years it has commissioned, exhibited and archived over 200 works. We are also in the process of archiving the collection at the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. You can read about the project in Virtueel Platform Research: Archiving the Digital by Annet Dekker and Rachel Somers-Miles.

Please support this inspiring and important project! Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) is a line of mesh networked electronic clothing with the goal of building autonomous local networks that don’t rely on corporate infrastructure to function, inspired by community based, anti-racist, prison abolitionist responses to gendered violence. The project is focused on creating networks of communication to increase community autonomy and reduce violence against women, LGBTQI people, people of color and other groups who continue to survive violence on a daily basis. The Autonets garments, when activated, will alert everyone in range of the the local mesh network who is wearing another autonet garment that someone needs help and will indicate that person’s direction and distance. More here.

Listen to KPFK’s interview with Micha Cárdenas:

Going Feral on the Net: the Qualities of Survival in a Wild, Wired World :: May 15, 2012; 12:30 pm (ET) :: Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA + webcast live :: RSVP Required.

How do we balance the empowering possibilities of the networked public sphere with the dark, unsettling, and even dangerous energies of cyberspace? Matthew Battles blends a deep-historical perspective on the internet with storytelling that reaches into its weird, uncanny depths. It’s a hybrid approach, reflecting the web’s way of landing us in a feral state — the predicament of a domestic creature forced to live by its imperfectly-rekindled instincts in a world where it is never entirely at home. Continue reading

Agence TOPO and the Réseau Accès culture of the Ville de Montréal present: Detours - Poetics of the City … A mobile art and technology project that will tour 5 Montréal Maisons de la culture as part of the first International Digital Arts Biennial (BIAN) :: May 10 - June 13, 2012 :: Launch: May 10, 2012; 6:00 pm :: Maison de la culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville, 10 300 Rue Lajeunesse, Montréal, metro Henri-Bourassa, Montréal, Canada.

Detours - Poetics of the City is a Web work for mobile platforms created by Taien Ng-Chan and produced by Agence TOPO as part of its 2011-2012 artist in residency program. Continue reading

[A network of nodes (29)] Emergence in the Social Web by Liat Berdugo:

Abstract: Complex systems sometimes exhibit what’s known as emergence — the phenomenon wherein the whole is more than the sum of its parts. For instance, ants acting individually are mindless, but collectively they self-organize to form intelligent colonies with intricate behavior patterns. I explore whether something similar can be said of the way that a collective consciousness seems to emerge from the nodes in a social web. I begin by showing why emergence is a compelling way to understand what happens on the social web, and examine meme generation and social movement formation, specifically, as resultant emergent phenomena. The emergence of social phenomena is nothing new — it happens in offline communities like family units, corporations, and cities. Continue reading

Web Biennial 2012 (Wb12): OCCUPY CONTENT: Have we reached the end of the Internet as we knew it? :: Open Call — Deadline: June 15. Continue reading