translation and minding the gaps

“…The most basic of which is this puzzlingly persistent notion that the net itself is a borderless state, a kind of endless public domain, open to intervention from anyone, anytime, any place. I think it’s important to think through the ways in which this utopian ideal is in fact less than true: the net is amorphous but it’s not limitless. Forgive me if all of this is extremely obvious.

First: how many web programming languages exist that are not based in the English language? Almost every web page out there, no matter what its surface linguistics (or how dynamic they may be in the service of hyperconsumerism), has an understructure with some percentage of English through which it must pass before entering machine translation and passing its packets to the network. Its programmer has had to learn some percentage of English in order to master the technical skills to communicate through the network. Continue reading

Next UpStage Walk-thru, October 7

Kia ora koutou: this is a reminder about the monthly UpStage walkthru’s [the next one is next week!]–Wed 5 October: California, USA: 2pm; New York, USA: 5pm; UK: 10pm; Western Europe: 11pm; Finland: 12 midnight; Australia (NSW/QLD): 7am [thurs]; NZ: 10am [thurs]; or check –http://www.timeanddate.com [for your local time].

The format will be newbies in the introduction stage [over view of the tools and tricks in the UpStage performative space]. While other crew will be devising with members of Avatar body Collision [please come to the introduction stage first for directions :)]; To take your place as a player please email colliders[at]avatarbodycollision.org for a login and password. Audience members please proceed to http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation. Continue reading

[Immersion and Virtual Reality]

[Immersion and Virtual Reality] Beyond reality and interactive reality experience–From aerospace to surgery, and in all things game related, the simulators and immersion environments developed to serve humankind are indispensable tools that significantly improve human knowledge and enhance our reality experience.

Speakers: Yves Gonthier – Canadian Space Agency; Jean-Claude Artonne – Immervision; Jocelyn Faubert – Université de Montréal, École dÂ’optométrie; Carl-Éric Aubin – École Polytechnique de Montréal, Dép. génie mécanique & CHU Sainte-Justine; Luc Courchesne – Université de Montréal et Ideaction.

TUESDAY, 4th October 2005 Interface [s] Montréal :: [Immersion and Virtual Reality]; 5:30pm – $30 at the door – package deals available. Continue reading

T-shirts as Software

Susana Mendes Silva keeps creating interactive performances and by (in) doing so continues to investigate the nature of social relations. After Artphone and art_room, two performances in which the spectator (user, to be more accurate) had to interact with the device created by the artist, a technologically mediated question-answer situation about contemporary art, Silva developed Live Art.

The assumptions are the same. Even the name of this new performance reminds us of the previous ones and how much she enjoys questioning the boundaries of traditional art, or at least of a commodified, object driven art. In this project there is again a device the artist created, but not a digital one, or at least not one at first sight. It is a t-shirt with information concerning the performance. The information, the technical details of the work of art, functions as the instructions manual for the performance, defining how it is supposed to work.

The user, he or she who buys the t-shirt, will have to perform a determined action, wear it (or not), thus making the device work, interact with it. This performance consists in a set of rules materially formalized in an inexplicit manner in a t-shirt, . The course of action is unpredictable and is completely out of the artistÂ’s control. Once again, through such a procedure, Silva questions how spectator and contemporary art interact, playing with concepts as artistic phenomenon or authorship. Continue reading

Computer Users Move Themselves with the Mind

“Computer scientists have created a hat that can read your thoughts. It allows you to stroll down a virtual street. All you have to do is think about walking.

Called a brain-computer interface, the device detects activity in certain brain areas linked to movement, and uses the signals to mimic that movement in a virtual world. The technology could one day help paralysed patients to move robotic arms, or help sufferers of motor neuron disease to type out words on a virtual keyboard.

“Just thinking about movement activates the same neurons as actually moving,” explains Gert Pfurtscheller of Graz University of Technology in Austria, who has been working on the device for around four years. By picking up on these bursts of nerve activity, the computer can decide whether you are thinking about moving your hands or feet, and react accordingly…” From Computer users move themselves with the mind by Michael Hopkin, nature.com, 27 September 2005.
Continue reading

Special Broadcast w/Eric Leonardson & Inge Hoonte

Friday, September 30, 1:00 PM–2:00 PM (GMT-6/US Central Time). Listen on-line to the live audio stream, QuickTime required.

This 1-hour webcast–by students of Eric Leonardson and Inge Hoonte’s First Year Program Core Studio Time Group at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago–is the result of 13 individual site investigations of specific city spaces in the downtown Chicago area. All sounds and voices are produced through a month-long process of mapping, scoring, field recording, historical research, writing and improvisation. References for this project include the ideas and works of R. Murray Schafer, John Cage, Robert Smithson, John Smith, Graeme Miller, Goat Island, and Inge Hoonte.

Phone in. Studio: 312-345-3804; on-air: 312-345-3805. Past radio performances and more can heard in the Free Radio SAIC archives . Continue reading

@ the Dutch Film Festival

Live performance ResonanCity by Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer, October 3, 20.00 uur; Dutch Film Festival/Re:visie, Centraal Museum [Post CM building], Utrecht NL.

Many sounds and images in our everyday lives slip past our notice simply because they are too small, or because we lack the proper receivers to pick them up. ResonanCity is an ongoing project to gather these microscopic sounds and images from various cities, and to amplify and transform them. The goal is to build a new city of sound and visuals inside the old one, and to inspire curiosity and exploration of one’s own environment. Visually, Kolster’s work deconstructs the analog/digital divide by presenting carefully prepared film positives in a software-manipulated environment. Similarly, Holzer’s realtime digital sound treatments highlight and enhance rather than obscure and distort the field recordings and sound objects he collects. ResonanCity recently won the second prize at the WRO International Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, PL. See also http://www.umatic.nl [Related] Continue reading

Pop Meets Cyborg

[Blogged by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] Koichi WATANABE, known for his unique work molding famous people’s body in plaster, collaborated with dancer, Rumiko BESSHO. BESSHO’s statue as full-body-model and video art were placed in the gallery’s white space. In the video, she is completely naked. Her body seems to have an aura of a real body in spite of the image’s virtuality. BESSHO appears from backwards and move slowly and dance sharply with piano sound. At the beginning, she was in the same posture as a plaster statue. The statue looks like a mold of her body.

Then she began to move little by little looking carefully her inner side. In the video art, BESSHO was naked. Her images were projected on white costume and it looked erotic. However, white statue’s existence looks real on the other side. As BESSHO turns slowly and slowly, white cloth was involved to her body little by little. Her movement is not dramatic but sharp and free. From Kazuo Continue reading

24 Hour Access to China

Zhong Shuo (People Say…) is a sound installation made collaboratively by Australian sound artist Iain Mott, Beijing visual artist Ding Jie and the Chongqing art collective the Li Chuan Group comprising Li Chuan, Li Yong and Ren Qian. The work acts as a system for the collection and telling of stories and focuses on the rapid force of change in China. The exhibition at the Long March Space in the Dashanzi district of Beijing, marks the first stage in what ultimately will be a series of installations connected to each other via the internet. It will consist of up to three individual installations set up in three cities including Beijing, Chongqing and potentially a third location on the route of the Long March.

Stage 1 was launched at the Long March Space, Dashanzi, Chaoyang District, Beijing on 20 August 2005. Stage 2 is currently underway in Chongqing with the Li Chuan Group. The exhibition is to be held in the Chongqing Planning Exhibition Gallery at Chaotianmen Square. Continue reading

Political Videogames Against the Dictatorship of Entertainment

The MayDay NetParade–by Molleindustria–is a virtual demo that runs thru a heavily guarded and branded city put under siege by insurgent legions of brain+chain+temp workers and assorted anarchists, commies, queers and greens. The marching avatars are digital simulacra of today’s exploited masses of neoliberalism: précaires, precari@s, precari, cognitarie, contingent knowledge and service workers. We are a mixed bunch, a heterogeneous multitude of precarious jobs and lives. Yet we have not spawn out of fordist assembly chains, but out of dystopian retail chains and office spaces. Why don’t you give your pictorial contibution to this multicolored parade, and reclaim that visibility that mainstream media, unions, parties are denying us? Make yourself heard! Voice your anger and/or irony! You will be able to be part of a piece of collective net art. But do it fast, cos after May 1st, the NetParade will remain visible online, but it will no longer be possible to join. By clicking on JOIN, you’ll be able to create your avatar, singular and (un)crazy as you want it to be. You’ll have to answer a few multiple choice questions first, but these will be totally anonymous, private and dissociated from your avatar. Continue reading