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

Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction with João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Luis Dourado, Mark Aerial Waller, Neïl Beloufa, Neill Blomkamp, Omer Fast, Paweł Althamer, The ARPANET Dialogues, Wanuri Kahiu :: until July 1, 2012 :: Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol, BS1 4QA, UK.

Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction surveys the recent tendency for artists and filmmakers to apply the forms and concerns of science fiction to narratives situated in the African continent. It considers the complex undercurrents for this occurrence in art today, and posits other and possible realities existing simultaneously, via careful re-orientations of tense; elevating the need for vigilance towards the present and future over a concern for the past. Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: Space Video by Kate Armstrong & Michael Tippett, with sound by Thomas Aston [Needs Speakers/Headphones]:

Space Video addresses ideas of exploration in relation to inner and outer space. Having noticed that there are shared aesthetic qualities of video imagery that accompany disparate cultural and scientific phenomena including guided meditation, hypnosis, undersea and space exploration by NASA, motivational speaking, powerpoint backgrounds, science fiction, psychedelic drug culture, electronic music, popular spirituality, and computer effects, we have built a generative system that mixes an original non-linear narrative with YouTube videos on these subjects as they are uploaded in real time. These videos often attempt to portray what are ultimately non-visual spaces, producing images that are at once placeholders, images of the transcendental, trippy intergalactic stereotypes, and fields for persuasion. Continue reading

Jer Thorp’s work focuses on adding meaning and narrative to huge amounts of data as a way to help people take control of the information that surrounds them. Continue reading

Exhibition: Isidore Isou: Hypergraphic Novels, 1950–1984; curated by Frédéric Acquaviva :: until April 13, 2012 :: Book Release: April 12 :: The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm, Skeppsbron 20, Stockholm, Sweden.

Lorsqu’on rompt, on n’a pas de public, on forme un public future.
(When you break away, you don’t have an audience, you are creating a future audience.)
– Isidore Isou, Les Journaux des Dieux (1950, “The Gods’ Diaries”)

The Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm is proud to present an exhibition and an accompanying catalogue focusing on one unique but essential aspect of Isidore Isou’s work: his innovative and ultra-contemporary contribution to the novel, especially what he called the hypergraphic novel. Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: Endgame: A Cold War Love Story by Tal Halpern [Needs Adobe Flash Player]:

Endgame: A Cold War Love Story — for the web and Flash enabled touch screen devices (DROID) — is a puzzle whose pieces are culled from an archive of long forgotten propaganda. In it a story about art, exile and history takes shape from the fragmentary remains of one woman’s life.

Endgame: A Cold War Love Story is a 2011 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. Continue reading

Thrilling Wonder Stories 3 — a transatlantic ideas festival featuring the finest in speculative design and spatial fiction :: October 28, 2011; 12:00 - 10:00 pm (London Time) :: Architectural Association, London, and Studio-X NYC + Follow online with our livestream and the Twitter feed (hashtag #tws3).

We have always regaled ourselves with speculative stories of a day yet to come. In these polemic visions we furnish the fictional spaces of tomorrow with objects and ideas that at the same time chronicle the contradictions, inconsistencies, flaws and frailties of the everyday. Slipping suggestively between the real and the imagined these narratives offer a distanced view from which to survey the consequences of various social, environmental and technological scenarios. 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

Radius Episode 14: Sara Pinheiro — Quem Contra Um Conto, II :: Radius will transmit Quem Conta Um Conto, II for five days to mirror the narrative stages found in Chris Vogler’s “Hero’s Journey” on October 1 (1:12am CST), 4 (5:12am CST), 7 (10:12am CST), 10 (3:12pm CST), and 13 (8:12pm CST).

Quem Conta Um Conto, II is a study in narrative, Pinheiro’s main subject of research. The individual sounds in the piece grow as characters, based on film theorist Chris Vogler’s twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey. Pinheiro juxtaposes sound spaces to join together disparate times and places; she ignores the physical impossibilities of their junction in order to potentiate the conflict that can emerge from their friction. Continue reading

Pera pARkours is a work-in-progress that uses Augmented Reality (Layar) to re/dis/locate fragments from the archive of the interactive cross-media project CoffeeDeposits:::Topologies of Chance — a project by Tina Bastajian and Seda Manavoglu — into public space. These locative “post-scripts” explore a small radius in the Pera/Galata vicinity to uncover disparate narratives weaving both fictive and documentary elements that include past Armenian presences, the détournement of cup reading to neo/geo-caching for prophetic visions.Pera pARkours was recently work-shopped at ISEA.

Pera (also known as Galata) was a district in Constantinople (established circa 13th century as a Genoese trading colony) north of the Golden Horn, which now encompasses parts of Beyoğlu, Karaköy, Tophane, Tarlabaşı, Cihangir etc. Pera originates from Greek, meaning “beyond or across” and the district was particularly known for its presence of Greek, Armenian, Italian, and Jewish residents and businesses.