“With the installation Sonicity, the English artist Stanza adds another significant chapter to his quest for new metaphors to translate the countless interactions produced by data passing through an environment into a sensory plane. Stanza’s aim is to create a data space that is perceived as alive. To achieve this goal he has installed a great number of sensors that are able to detect the smallest changes in variables (such as light, temperature, noise, humidity and the location of certain objects) in the building that houses the gallery. Each of these sensors provides information on the parameters being monitored. These data are then transformed by Sonicity into a sound environment through the use of a wireless network consisting of hundreds of small speakers positioned on the floor and walls of the exhibition space. Continue reading

Posted by Mitchell Whitelaw on Teeming Void: This essay was commissioned by Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen, Norway, to coincide with HC Gilje’s solo exhibition blink (video below). It looks at Gilje’s recent work - which spans audiovisual installation, performance, hardware, and networked forms - through the notion of specificity (developed earlier here).

blink (hc gilje 2009) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

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Opening Celebration of The Laboratory at Harvard - Experiments in the Arts and Sciences :: November 8, 2009 :: Exhibition: 6:30 pm @ Northwest Science Building, 52 Oxford Street :: Performance of Ryoji Ikeda’s datamatics [ver.2.0]: 9:00 pm @ Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall, Cambridge, MA.

THE LABORATORY, conceived around the model of the art and design center Le Laboratoire in Paris, France, opens with a catalogue and text installation developed through a recent Laboratoire experiment V≠L — between the Japanese digital composer Ryoji Ikeda and the Harvard mathematician Benedict Gross. Continue reading

Read | Write Storage in Collaborative Networked Art by Jason Freeman — in Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art):

ABSTRACT: This chapter explores the role of storage in media art and, more specifically, its role in collaborative creativity within the field of networked music. Through a series of paired analyses of works that differentially emphasize transmission and storage or which employ different approaches to storage, the chapter discusses different opportunities, challenges, and issues related to storage in collaborative, networked art. Music by the Rova Saxophone Quartet and by Nick Collins frames a discussion of composition and improvisation; two works by The Hub initiate an analysis of the influence of technology on network design and on collaborative models of shared material and shared control; broadcast works by Max Neuhaus introduce the concept of active storage systems; the online sites WebDrum and Jamglue raise questions about network latency and the persistency of storage; and Bicycle Built for 2,000 and Graph Theory manipulate the level of awareness of storage mechanisms by various participants.

Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art) INVITES YOU TO PARTICIPATE: Two years in the making, Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art) is now open for comments, revisions, and translations. You may also submit a chapter for consideration.

active, aethetics, aggregators, authenticity, authorship, BEN FRY, BEN RUBIN, BURAK ARIKAN, collaborative, communication, data, data mining, digital traces, distributed, DIY, EDUARDO NAVAS, everyday life, flow, GOLAN LEVIN, identity, improvisation, Internet, JANET CARDIFF, JASON FREEMAN, JODI.ORG, JONATHAN HARRIS, latency, lifelogging, lifetracing, MANIK, mapping, MARK AMERIKA, MARK HANSEN, MARTIN WATTENBERG, MAX NEUHAUS, Mechanical Turk, mediation, memory, music, narrative, NastyNets, NATHANIEL STERN, net art, network, NICK KNOUF, nonlinear, OLIVER LARIC, participation, performative, persistance, PETER TRAUB, platform, postmodernism, presentational, privacy, prosumer, prosurfer, ranking, realism, reality, real-time, relational, remix, representation, research, RYBN, SCARLET ELECTRIC, SCOTT KILDALL, SCOTT RETTBERG, search engine, self, self-exposure, SHIFTSPACE.ORG, social networks, software, sousveillance, STEVE LAMBERT, storage, surveillance, tactical media, telepresence, THE HUB, THEY RULE, TrackMeNot, transmission, TV, user-generated, visualization, web 2.0, webcam, widget, Wikipedia Art, YES MEN. Continue reading

Routes + Routines Follow Blind Workshops by Peter Westenberg and Wendy Van Wynsberghe (Constant vzw) :: July 15, 2009; 10:00 am - city walk starts at Timelab - Sint Pietersnieuwstraat 23 - 9000 Ghent :: To participate email summercamp [at] timelab.org.

This workshop is a detour through the city of Ghent guided by environmental data. Fit up with a self-made antenna, city walkers are dwelling through the electromagnetic fields of Ghent.

Part 1: EMF Antenna: After a contextualization of the workshop by a presentation and introduction of EMF, participants will make their own EMF antenna. Tools and material are provided by Constant. Duration: 3 hours. Continue reading

Issue Project Room premieres a live performance of R. Luke Dublois’ Hard Data and presents works by Tony Conrad, David Soldier, and Brad Garton — performed by the Mivos String Quartet :: June 25, 2009; 8:00 - 11:00 pm :: Issue Project Room, At the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY.

Turbulence Commission: Hard Data by R. Luke DuBois [Needs Flash plugin and speakers; wait for data to load] Hard Data is a data-mining, sonification, and visualization project that uses statistics from the American military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as source material for an interactive audiovisual composition based around an open-source “score” of events. Continue reading

A Magic Matrix Mixer Mountain will be built in Lampo, 216 W. Chicago Ave., 2nd Fl, Chicago, IL :: Saturday, June 6, 2009 - 9:00 PM ::

Mark Beasley, jonCates, Jake Elliott, Alex Inglizian, Tamas Kemenczy, Nicholas O’Brien and Jon Satrom will collaboratively build a A Magic Matrix Mixer Mountain. Cobbled together from broken computers, functional microphones, surveillance cameras, local feedback loops and international communication networks, this Magic Matrix Mixer Mountain will rise up from foothills and climb skywards. Audio, video and datastreams will flow up and down from the mountain. Each foothill will be a self-contained system (artist) that sends tributary audio, video and data via a matrix of mixer connections. All these streams are sources mixed in realtime into a multi-channel audio and video landscape. Continue reading

Raster Noton: The Shop — with a special performance by Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto) and Olaf Bender (Byetone) :: Opening: May 26, 2009; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: e-flux, 41 Essex Street, New York City.

Raster Noton’s investigations into sound frequencies and sequences are principally developed in the field of music, but often cross over into the visual arts. Using digital signal processing as their primary medium (often in combination with moving images and graphics) the label’s many releases and live performances explore minimal, modular, and concrete approaches to the structure of sound and its possibilities for being activated and manipulated as a material form. “While their late 20th century forebears applied the aesthetics of processes and mechanisms from manufacturing and industry to their craft, so many of the Raster Noton label’s publications emulate the unseen operations and transactions of our era – the flow of information.” (davidz) Continue reading

Novi_sad’s North American Tour — Novi_sad (Thanasis Kaproulias, b. 1980) graduated from the Economic University of Piraues. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. Influenced by the pioneers of audio assault, he began generating sounds in 2005. Amplified environmental recordings, drone manipulations, structured ambient soundscapes, microtones vs overtones, all come together in a hyper structure of iconoclastic form.

Novi_sad’s artistic output displays a high level of technical ability, as well as a sensitivity to the nuances of location. The strength of his soundscapes works in the same elaborateness for the whole creation process, starting from a basis of very strong conceptualism, the intense examination of field recordings over the actual composition work, to the point of performing back the result onto location. Every sound that occurs is treated with a sculptural integrity and his sonic power operates on a level in which the audience participates as transcendental listeners. Continue reading