Remediating the Social :: Conference: November 1-3, 2012 :: Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH3 9DF :: Exhibition: November 1-25, 2012 :: Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB.

The Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) research project invites scholars, artists, researchers and performers to the conference, Remediating the Social. The conference programme consists of expert presentations, across a range of disciplines and modes of inquiry, addressing examples of creative communities that have formed around various practices, media and discourses. Case studies, papers and panels, discussing examples arising from the ELMCIP project and other contexts will be presented. The conference will be e-cast, allowing for remote attendees to freely monitor events and put questions to conference via Twitter. Continue reading

Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship — A searing critique of participatory art by an iconoclastic historian, Claire Bishop, Verso Books:

Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson.

Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” Continue reading

Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks by Tony D. Sampson, University of Minnesota Press:

In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, Virality does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors; it instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is how society comes together and relates.

“Tarde and Deleuze come beautifully together in this outstanding book, the first to really put forward a serious alternative to neo-Darwinian theories of virality, contagion, and memetics. A thrilling read that bears enduring consequences for our understanding of network cultures. Unmissable.” — Tiziana Terranova, author of Network Culture Continue reading

Harrell Fletcher: Where I’m Calling From :: June 28, 2012; 8:00 pm (BST) :: Online at BMW Tate Live: Performance Room.

Artist Harrell Fletcher invites busking musicians to take their performances from the tube stations and streets of London into the gallery to play live, online to the BMW Tate Live Performance Room’s global audience.

Harrell Fletcher’s work often takes the form of socially engaged collaborative and interdisciplinary projects. For his BMW Tate Live performance, Where I’m Calling From, the musicians will shift from playing to a local London audience to performing on a global online stage. Continue reading

A {Digital} Stitch In Time :: Calling all artists whose practices are at the intersection of art, craft and digital technologies to be considered for inclusion in a writing project about artist projects employing needlecraft techniques to translate, redefine and recontextualize images and lexicon sourced from digital and virtual culture.

No longer reserved for our grandmothers, needlecraft has become a subversive tool of counter-culture, interrogating knowledge and meaning, while encouraging an intimate participation with the digital through a laborious, and social process. 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…”

[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

Social Media For Urban Research :: March 27, 2012; 6:30 - 8:30 pm :: Studio-X NYC, 180 Varick St., Suite 1610, New York City.

Social media are increasingly becoming part of our everyday lives, from connecting with friends and sharing images to exploring cities through location-based applications. These new services have given us a different vantage point from which to understand, explore, navigate, and geographically record the places we live.

This panel discussion brings together academics, professionals, and journalists who are researching, building, and using social media data to better understand our urban environment. Continue reading

Textil{e}tronics: From the Textile to the Electronic Thread, From Substance to Fashion Item:

Following the development of a simple thread into complex new media objects, the exhibition will touch upon recent developments in the areas of wearable technology and electronic sculpting through lumino light objects and the presentation of Arduino microcontrollers.

Dealing with sculptural textile (J. Štefanec) and electronic thread (A. Klančić), designed substance and new meanings of objects (P. Dona), as well as socially responsible textile art (M. M. Pungerčar), the exhibition presents an overview of contemporary new media directions and questions the meaning of the medium as such. Continue reading

America’s Got No Talent — by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki — is a web-based software project that synthesizes and processes the steady stream of Twitter feeds for several American reality television shows such as “American Idol,” “America’s Got Talent,” “America’s Next Top Model,” and “X Factor US” among others in this genre. Continue reading