Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists by Casey Reas and Ben Fry: Casey Reas is one of the few digital artists that are both technically and theoretically talented. In the media space his works of art are more often than not taken over by his status of Processing language co-creator with Ben Fry. That’s wrong and it means to miss an essential part of its work. But being a programming language creator means to work for a community, abstracting problems and implementing then tools for creative solutions. That’s why this is a unique book. Continue reading

Into.Inter.Tech Project: Introvert, Intercommunicate and the Intersection of Technology :: November 3, 2007; 11 am – 7 pm :: The Brewery Complex, 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

This is the first show for a newly created Boston-based art project, Into.Inter.Tech Project, founded in September 2007 by Rebecca Scheckman to create a live art forum for artists working with new technologies. This specific show is dedicated to communication technology and how we relate to one another through it/because of it. These shows are to be hosted in alternative spaces that are unclaimed by a specific group and open to the public asking only for donation. Continue reading

[Image: Graffitti Research Lab] Abstract: Nearly twenty years ago, a prominent media studies professor, John Fiske, coined the term “semiotic democracy” to describe a world where audiences freely and widely engage in the use of cultural symbols in response to the forces of media. Although Fiske originally referenced the audience’s power in viewing and interpreting television narratives, today, his vision of semiotic democracy has become perhaps the single most important ideal cited by scholars who imagine a utopian relationship between law, technology, and democratic culture. In this Article, I seek to introduce another framework to supplement Fiske’s important metaphor: the phenomenon of “semiotic disobedience.” Three contemporary cultural moments in the world – one corporate, one academic, and one artistic – call for a new understanding of the limitations and possibilities of semiotic democracy and underline the need for a supplementary framework. Continue reading

The Registry of Culture of NRW, Guetersloh presents: My Temporary Visiting Position From The Sunset Terrace Bar a new work by Carlo Zanni. Set in the city of Ahlen, Germany, The Sunset Terrace Bar, imitates an amateur’s film of the landscape framed at sunset. While the city strip is prerecorded the sky is captured in real time from a webcam shooting the sky of Naples (Italy) at sunset and as such, always changing.

The work, confronting themes such as exile, migration and border control, is enhanced by a poem by the esteemed author Ghada Samman and music by the international band Gotan Project and legendary composer Gabriel Yared. People visiting the website can choose upon two ways to experience the work: a live mode, available only in a specific time frame during the sunset in Naples or browsing through the archive where a time accelerated HD version of the movie is rendered every day and archived online. Continue reading

The Duellists (short version) – free media meets freerunning Continue reading

Zero Gamer (GOLD) :: November 2-18, 2007 :: HTTP Gallery (directions).

Taking the action out of interaction. Zero Gamer looks at games played, unplayed and unplayable, the spectator and the spectacle. Zero Gamer (GOLD) at HTTP Gallery is a remix of the exhibition created for the Festival Lounge as part of the London Games Festival Fringe 2007. It includes works by Axel Stockburger, TheGhost, Corrado Morgana, Ziga Hajdukovic, Progress Quest and large projections of JODI’s Max Payne Cheats Only. The exhibition is accompanied by short publication with a keynote text by Axel Stockburger. There’s also a collaborative, curatorial text by Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett & Corrado Morgana 2007.

FUTURESONIC 2008 – Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas :: May 1-4, 2008 :: Manchester, UK :: Call for submissions: Art and Conference Deadline: December 18, 2007; 5pm :: Music and EVNTS Deadline: February 7, 2008; 5pm.

Futuresonic has 4 strands: Art, Music, Ideas and EVNTS. Currently in its 12th year, the festival occupies the orbits of both music and digital culture. A focus in recent years has been presenting artworks in unexpected city spaces, and on social art and social technologies. The Futuresonic 2008 theme is The Social – Social Networking Unplugged. Continue reading

ISEA2008 – call for papers, art work, and presentations :: Deadline: November 14, 2007.

International Symposium on Electronic Arts 2008 – ISEA2008 – is seeking both peer-reviewed individual papers and panel presentations. This year we are also encouraging artists who wish to share their works with a broader audience of their peers to submit artist presentations where they can speak about the specific aesthetic, conceptual and technological aspects of their works. We welcome contributions from creative practitioners and researchers from a variety of disciplines and institutional contexts as media arts benefits from and exemplifies the interdisciplinary linkages between contemporary art, science, technology and their related philosophies, pedagogies and institutional practices. The submissions must address or be of relevance to at least one of the themes of ISEA2008 in order to be considered for inclusion in the conference. Continue reading

Transborder Immigrant Tool: A Mexico/U.S. Border Disturbance Art Project by Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas and Jason Najarro.

The border between the U.S. and Mexico has moved between the virtual and the all too real since before the birth of the two nation-states. This has allowed a deep archive of suspect movement across this border to be traced and tagged – specifically anchored to immigrants bodies moving north, while immigrant bodies moving south much less so. The danger of moving north across this border is not a question of politics, but vertiginous geography. Hundreds of people have died crossing the U.S./Mexico border due to not being able to tell where they are in relation to where they have been and which direction they need to go to reach their destination safely. Continue reading

“NOISIEL, France — An American mashup artist let passers-by put words in giant zombies’ mouths last week. The show, called Txt of the Living Dead, projected 15-foot-wide, black-and-white stills from George A. Romero’s classic 1968 horror flick Night of the Living Dead onto buildings. Text messages from random people on the street then filled comics-style speech balloons that were added to the images in what New York artist Paul Notzold called an “SMS-enabled interactive street performance.” …

Notzold’s work is one of several public art projects, like Smoke Signals and the Helloworld Project, that encourage viewers to become participants. Continue reading