The Architecture of Virtual Space — by Or Ettlinger — is in fact two studies in one. On one hand, it is a methodical articulation of the elusive idea of virtual space. On the other, it is a historical overview of works of architecture that were made specifically as the content of pictorial works of art. What brings these two seemingly distinct topics together is the realization that they are in fact complementary – that is, that researching one would provide answers for the other, and vice versa. As such, this study is a work of media theory as well as a work of architectural theory.

Media Theory: A theory of virtual space. Presently, the terms ‘virtual’ and ‘virtual space’ are very loosely defined. With all their widespread use in both popular culture and academic discourse, what do these terms actually mean? Computer-generated? Online? Fictitious? Imagined? Metaphysical? Continue reading

Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance by Chris Salter (with a Foreword by Peter Sellars), MIT Press:

This ambitious and comprehensive book explores technology’s influence on artistic performance practices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Entangled, Chris Salter shows that technologies, from the mechanical to the computational — from a “ballet of objects and lights” staged by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1917 to contemporary technologically enabled “responsive environments” — have been entangled with performance across a wide range of disciplines. Salter examines the rich and extensive history of performance experimentation in theater, music, dance, the visual and media arts, architecture, and other fields; explores the political, social, and economic context for the adoption of technological practices in art; and shows that these practices have a set of common histories despite their disciplinary borders. Continue reading

[Image: Merry-go-Round by Lily & Honglei] Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds :: Call for Papers — Deadline: August 30, 2010.

Submissions are invited for an edited book with the working title Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds. Machinima - referring to “filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies” as well as works which use this animation technique, including videos recorded in computer games or virtual worlds - is challenging the notion of the moving image in numerous media contexts, such as video games, animation, digital cinema and virtual worlds. Continue reading

Marta Minujín: MINUCODEs — curated by: Gabriela Rangel and José Luis Blondet:: March 2 – April 30, 2010 :: Opening Reception: March 2; 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue on 68th Street, New York City.

Marta Minujin is a prominent voice of the Argentinean avant-garde art scene in the 1960s and 70s, with a brilliant international career that helped define the discussion about media, performance, and participation. Minujin is often mentioned as one of the pioneers of happenings. Continue reading

Cinema is dead; long live cinema (Peter Greenaway). How has the explosion of new media changed the ways we think about cinema, about questions of film aesthetics and film history? How can cinema studies contribute to the theory, analysis, and creative practice of new media? This two-day symposium seeks to stimulate a crossdisciplinary conversation on moving image culture that avoids both cinephile nostalgia and uncritical celebrations of media convergence.

The Material and the Code is a two-day symposium at the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center. It features a screening on February 26, and a full day of presentations on February 27.

The Material and the Code is dedicated to the memory of Anne Friedberg (1952-2009).

Dada South? Exploring Dada legacies in South African art 1960 – the present :: until February 28, 2010 :: Symposium: February 18-19 :: Iziko South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company’s Garden, Cape Town, South Africa.

The critically acclaimed exhibition Dada South? is one of the first locally-produced, independently curated museum exhibitions in South Africa that focuses on a major international art movement of the 20th century, but from the perspective of recent South African art.

Curators Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith present a special programme in the last two weeks of the exhibition, including a two-day public symposium and closing weekend talks featuring South African and visiting scholars, curators and artists. Continue reading

RHA Presents Critique of Archival Reason featuring Herman Asselberghs, Jeremiah Day, Cecilia Gronberg (in collaboration with Jonas (J) Magnusson), Shoji Kato, Irene Kopelman, and Sean Snyder :: Curated by Henk Slager :: February 19 - March 13, 2010 :: Opening: February 18, 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: GradCAM, Royal HIbernian Academy, 15 Ely Place, Dublin 2, Ireland.

The concept of archive naturally seems to evoke an image of control and survey. For example, in The Order of Things, Foucault has described the archive as a system introducing order, meaning, boundaries, coherence and reason into what is disparate, confused, and contingent. Continue reading

Bruce Sterling, Keynote
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

NetSci 2010 Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks — A Leonardo Satellite Symposium :: May 10, 2010 :: BarabásiLab, Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University in Boston, MA :: Call For Papers — Deadline: January 22, 2010 (registration opens same day).

By means of keynotes, contributed talks and interdisciplinary discussion we will explore and identify important issues surrounding the convergence of arts, humanities and complex networks. On the one hand we will concentrate on network structure and dynamics in areas ranging from art history and archeology to music, film and image science. In the same time we are interested in the development and critique of network visualizations from medieval manuscripts to the latest tools, such as Cytoscape and Processing. Continue reading