Feel the Breeze

WindMaker is an ambient weather widget that applies the current wind conditions to your Web site. First, it uses a United States ZIP Code to grab local conditions from the Yahoo Weather RSS feed. Second, it parses your Web site into individual pieces such as text blocks and images. Finally, WindMaker sets the pieces in motion according to the strength of the wind.

Add WindMaker to your own Web site in one step. Insert the following JavaScript into your HTML just before your closing BODY tag. WindMaker does the rest. [via] Continue reading

Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence

THE PLANETARY COLLEGIUM MONTREAL SUMMIT – 2007 :: “Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence” :: Montreal, Canada, 19-22 April, 2007

The first International Planetary Collegium Summit will be held in Montreal from April 19 to 22, 2007, on the premises of University of Quebec in Montreal’s Coeur des Sciences. Among the speakers are many internationally recognized artists, thinkers and researchers, such as Roy Ascott, founder of the Planetary Collegium, transdisciplinary artist Victoria Vesna, astrophysicist Roger Malina, nanotechnologist James Gimzewski, philosopher Pierre Levy, culture theoretician Derrick de Kerckhove, media artist and theoretician Bill Seaman, and many others.

Entitled Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence, the summit will allow 65 presenters from fifteen countries to share the results of their latest works and researches with their guests, and with the Quebec media arts and technologies community. The Summit will be an occasion for members of the different nodes of the Collegium (Plymouth, Beijing, Milan and Zurich, which will soon be joined by Seoul and Sao Paulo), along with several members pursuing their research on an individual basis as part of this international network, to get together. Many of these are amongst the best known artist / researchers of their fields. Continue reading

INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR

I-TASC FOR THE INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR :: Friday March 30, 2007 : I-TASC settles for two years at Espace :: Mendes-France, Poitiers, France :: Free entrance.

I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation) is an official project of the International Polar Year 2007-2008. I-TASC is a decentralized network of individuals and organisations working collaboratively in the fields of art, engineering, science and technology on interdisciplinary development and tactical deployment of renewable energy, waste recycling systems, sustainable architecture and open-format, open-source media. I-TASC is a lichen-like structure sharing and integrating local knowledge, resources and skills across six continents in order to symbiotically engage with common issues concerning the air, ocean, earth and space. Continue reading

Call for Fellows

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular is pleased to announce its fourth annual summer fellowship program to take place June 18-22, 2007 at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. We are seeking proposals for projects related to upcoming issues devoted to the themes of Reading (vol. 4 no. 1) and Noise (vol. 4 no. 2). Vectors publishes work which need necessarily exist online, ranging from archival to experimental projects.

We invite you to consider submitting an application or to circulate this email to your peers and graduate students. Vectors’ fellows not only attend our summer workshop but also have the opportunity to work over several months with a world-class design team in realizing the scholar’s vision for online scholarship. You may download the Call For Proposals for the 2007 Vectors Summer Fellowships here. Continue reading

Transcultural Change and Translation

[Image: Patrick Lichty, Cicci, virtual avatar, digital print on paper, 2007] CROSSMEDIALE 2 :: Gosia Koscielak Studio & Gallery, 1646 N. Bosworth Ave., Chicago, IL 60622 :: T.847.858.1540 :: info[at]gosiakoscielak.com. CROSSMEDIALE 2 will also be at Gosia Koscielak Studio & GalleryÂs Booth # 12 at Bridge Art Fair Chicago; April 27-30, 2007. For more details on Bridge Art Fair Chicago.

An exhibition of American and International art in new media curated by Gosia Koscielak :: April 13 – May 12, 2007 :: Opening reception: Friday, April 13, 6-10 p.m. :: Second Saturday Special Event: April 14, 6 – 10pm :: An electro-audio-visual performance by La Bande Sans Fin, a Chicago-based multimedia artistic team formed by David Zerlin and David Blum.

CrossMediale 2 focuses on the concept of transcultural change and translation in a broader sense. As a continuation of the ongoing curatorial Transcultural Projects initially developed by Gosia Koscielak Ph.D. in 2000 (which was exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2001 and at the National Museum in Szczecin, Poland in 2002), Crossmediale 2 continues to investigate how complex identities, a multimedia reality, and the multicultural mosaic of humanity create the Global-Local world and GLOCAL identity through a variety of local and international artistic responses. Ultimately, the artworks featured change our understanding of transcultural society, and thus change our understanding about human existence. Continue reading

Locative

vague terrain: locative: Why is location interesting? Several years ago, I inherited a broken television set from my grandmother. I had little use for a TV that displayed everything in shades of green, and so it stayed in the attic. It was only when I was later preparing to move that I decided to turn it on. What I found when I turned the dial to the highest UHF channel was that the TV picked up what sounded like eight simultaneous cordless phone conversations. I could barely decipher anything in the cacophony, but it did make me wonder who these people were, where they were standing as they were speaking these words, if these conversations were passing through me, and if they knew I was listening.

I have to thank both Greg J. Smith and Neil Wiernik for inviting me to be the first guest editor. Neil and Greg have both done an enormous amount of work on the journal since its inception. Their efforts are creating an amazing archive of the state of the arts during this nascent period of technological curiosity and exploration. Continue reading

Call for papers

Dispersive Anatomies :: Call for papers :: Guest Editors: Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim and Mez Breeze :: Editorial Guidelines :: Discussion Group: leadispersive-subscribe[at]googlegroups.com :: Deadline: 31 May 2007.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that address dispersion – dispersion of bodies, objects, landscapes, networks, virtual and real worlds. A fundamental shift in the way we view the world is underway: the abandonment of discrete objects, and objecthood itself. The world is now plural, and the distinction between real and virtual is becoming increasingly blurred, with troubling consequences within the geopolitical register. This shift is related to a cultural change that emphasizes digital deconstruction over analog construction: a photograph for example can be accessed and transformed, pixel by pixel, cities can be taken apart by gerrymandering or eminent domain, and our social networks are replete with names and images that problematize friendship, sexuality, and culture itself. One issue that emerges here: Are we networking or are we networked? Are we networks ourselves? Continue reading

A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art

Franklin Furnace presents a retrospective: The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art :: One Night Only – April 27th, 2007.

Franklin Furnace, the internationally-acclaimed incubator of the avant-garde, is proud to present a one-night only benefit event on Friday, April 27th at 8:00 PM: The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art, to take place at the Harry de Jur Playhouse of Henry Street Settlement (located at 466 Grand Street, Manhattan). For this unique evening, Patron tickets are $500 and $100, and are available through Franklin Furnace, or call 718-398-7255. General Admission tickets are $20, and are available through www.theatermania.com, or call 212-352-3101.

The benefit will be co-curated by C. Carr, critic and author of On Edge; RoseLee Goldberg, scholar and author of Live Art: 1909 to the Present; and Martha Wilson, Founding Director of Franklin Furnace, and will contain both video footage of historical performance works and live performances by some of the most influential artists of our time. This program will serve as an overview of performance art works which changed art discourse over three decades. Continue reading

Bridging the Gap

New from MIT-Press (Leonardo Book Series): MediaArtHistories, Edited by Oliver GRAU :: with contributions by Rudolf ARNHEIM, Andreas BROECKMANN, Ron BURNETT, Edmond COUCHOT, Sean CUBITT, Dieter DANIELS, Felice FRANKEL, Oliver GRAU, Erkki HUHTAMO, Douglas KAHN, Ryszard W. KLUSZCZYNSKI, Machiko KUSAHARA, Timothy LENOIR, Lev MANOVICH, W. J. T. MITCHELL, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL, Louise POISSANT, Edward A. SHANKEN, Barbara Maria STAFFORD and Peter WEIBEL.

Digital art has become a major contemporary art form, but it has yet to achieve acceptance from mainstream cultural institutions; it is rarely collected, and seldom included in the study of art history or other academic disciplines. In MediaArtHistories, leading scholars seek to change this. They take a wider view of media art, placing it against the backdrop of art history. Their essays demonstrate that today’s media art cannot be understood by technological details alone; it cannot be understood without its history, and it must be understood in proximity to other disciplines–film, cultural and media studies, computer science, philosophy, and sciences dealing with images. Continue reading

Transferring Patriotism

Transferring Patriotism is a new work by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things now on sale at Evolution de l’Art Gallery. The Institute is selling its patriotism to any interested buyers. Once the sale is made, the full transfer of our patriotism to you will occur in the following way:

Two members of the Institute will fly to your country. We will meet you and a witness from your country at the border between your country and the US Embassy or Consulate. We will set up a table with four chairs. We will sit at half of the table on American territory and you will sit at half of the table on your country’s territory. We will then proceed to share an American beer. Then we will share a drink from your country. We will repeat those drinks until we are all drunk. At that point, the transfer of patriotism will be complete.

Price: Cost of two plane tickets from Boston, MA, USA, to your country plus additional logistic costs. Sale handled via Evolution de l’Art Gallery. Continue reading