MyWar: Participation in an Age of War - an investigation of identity, participation and the reality of conflict in a digitally networked world featuring Phil Collins, Renzo Martens, Milica Tomic, Knowbotic Research, Harun Farocki, Sarah Vanagt, Joseph Delappe, Oliver Laric, Dunne & Raby, Harrell Fletcher, SWAMP, and Thomson and Craighead :: March 12 - May 30, 2010 :: FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ.

In a period of global unrest, FACT presents MyWar, a radically personal look at conflict through the work of 12 international artists. Their artwork investigates the reality of conflict at a time when digital networking has changed the way we receive and respond to information. Continue reading

Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity and Interactive Media :: February 8 - April 2, 2010 :: Reception: February 11; 6:00 - 9:00 pm :: The Arcade, Columbia College, 618 S Michigan Avenue, 2nd floor, Chicago, IL.

Whether through motion capture, live processing, animation or other means of data visualization, the body is the referent and inspiration for many digital media artists working with interactive technologies. Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity, and Interactive Media is an investigation into this confluence, gazing through multiple lenses to explore the body and identity as they are transformed and represented through technological evolution. Continue reading

Autoscopia — by Adam Nash, Christopher Dodds and Justin Clemens: In the psychological condition of autoscopia, I literally see myself. Autoscopia entails alienation (I am I/I am not I), division (I am one/I am two), disembodiment (I am outside my own body) and inorganic vision (I see my own body but not with my own eyes). There is also a variant known as ‘negative autoscopia’ (I cannot see my own reflection in a mirror). The doppelgänger and the vampire are two ancient images of such an experience: the doppelgänger is the literal body-double of oneself; a vampire cannot appear in a mirror.

Autoscopia’s Second Life portraits are built using data from internet-based ‘vanity searches’ conducted within the Second Life installation. Each name creates a unique outcome composed of 27 ‘limbs’. Each limb is fed data from websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter etc, with colours, geometry and audio affected by variations in search volume. Continue reading

NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject with Paul Virilio, Raymond Depardon, Claudine Nougaret, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, Ben Rubin :: December 19, 2009 - February 21, 2010 :: Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Nyhavn 2, 1051 Copenhagen K, Denmark.

NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject explores the meaning of sedentariness and nomadism today, an epoch in which human migration flows are taking place on an unprecedented scale. The international COP15 conference on climate change organized by the United Nations and taking place in Copenhagen from December 7-18, 2009 attests to this critical moment in history, where the environment conditions what humans do, what they will become, and where they will live. NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject thus proposes a reflection on the notions of being rooted and uprooted, as well as related questions of identity in two works created especially for the exhibition Continue reading

“The injunction everywhere to ‘be someone’ maintains the pathological state that makes this society necessary.“- The Invisible Committee

“This is the end. My only friend, the end.” - Jim Morrison

A Virus is haunting the busy communication highways of the social networking sphere: the virus of Seppukoo. The infection has been started off last month with a viral marketing campaign for the launch of the homonym notWorking platform Seppukoo.com. The alert has now reached the pandemic state. Nobody’s safe.

EARLY SYMPTOMS. YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR VIRTUAL IDENTITY. Continue reading

Produce your own customized Artistic License in a matter of minutes using your web browser. Instead of biometrics and radio frequency ID chips, Artistic License embraces freedom, collaboration, sharing, and imagination as keys to a more appealing modernity. While your Artistic License does not require that you look like yourself, and it does not impose factual restrictions, it nonetheless has the truthiness coveted by authority. And, if you make yours before December 15, 2009, you will be eligible for a free laminated Artistic License.

Choose from among these rationales for participation or invent your own: Continue reading

User Labor Markup Language (ULML) posted on Serial Consign by Greg J. Smith:

The … screen capture is pulled from the explanation for Burak Arikan and Engin Erdogan’s exciting new User Labor project. With this venture, Burak and Engin have developed User Labor Markup Language (ULML), an XML format for determining the value of online activity, interaction and connectivity. The project neatly dovetails with other web initiatives like Data Portability and OpenSocial but moves beyond discussions about online identity and data ownership into the realm of quantifying the value of user contributions to web services. The User Labor statement contextualizes the project in light of a Web 2.0 business model we have all become rather accustomed to: 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

Mark Amerika: Unreal Time :: until January 3, 2010 :: National Museum of Contemporary Art, Building of the Athens Conservatory, Vas. Georgiou Β 17 -19 & Rigillis street, Athens.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art presents for the first time in Greece, a retrospective exhibition of the American artist and pioneer in the media arts field, Mark Amerika. The first presentation of his work in Greece took place in the framework of EMST’s online exhibition titlted e-critures (2008).

By emphasizing the construction of new digital identities and fictional personas, as well as the cross-correlation of new histories and mythologies in website, Amerika investigates the ways by which the somatic-sensory experience evolves into a new “Life Style Practice”. Continue reading

South African artist Pippa Stalker Tshabalala has just launched a new participatory project, Telling Death: Experiments in Digital Killing: 1. Choose a photo. 2. Comment - Write a story about how the character died - include as many (or as few) details as you want… (full instructions at end of post.)

Introduction: At the end of 2006 Tshabalala exhibited a series of photographs entitled Simulation which consisted of approximately 1000 photographs of “people” or rather NPC’s (non-playable characters) she killed in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In 2007 she exhibited the same work in a different format as part of a group show called Digital Surrogates. At the end of 2008, her show Point Blank consisted of an expanded version of this work entitled Simulation: Re:Load and large, abstract prints of character blood. Continue reading