(He)artbreaking to the Core: Zombie Data and the Arts of Re/De/Transcoding with Nina Wenhart (chair), Rosa Menkman, Melissa Barron, Daniela Kuka :: September 16, 2011; 1:00 -2:30 pm :: ISEA Istanbul.

Digital corpses all abound, zombie data that is still there, but cannot be performed anymore. Change is inevitable, if the artwork should survive. Besides the archivists’ efforts to revive the work in its original state, artists have developed their own strategies of embracing the errors and glitches of re/de/transcoding processes.

Codecs, programs, protocols and formats that are not supported anymore have become creative challenges and often initiate subversive practices. Not THAT, but HOW a work is changed and distorted becomes the choice of the artist. Continue reading

Screengrab 2011: Nostalgia :: December 12, 2011 :: eMerge Media Space, James Cook University, School of Creative Arts, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia :: Call for Art — Deadline: July 22, 2011.

Nostalgia runs deep in the network. The clean lines and coded purity of interface culture and consumer electronics belies a deeper yearning for the origins of new media. 8 Bit games, glitch art, stop motion video, audio distortions and retro stylings are cropping up throughout the networked landscape as artists unpack, smudge, melt, data-mosh and retrace their steps back to the early halcyon days of digital media. Tactile, fluid, fuzzy analogue aesthetics are emerging in surprising places as the origins of our streamlined relationship with technology and the world around us is interrogated, encoded and telegraphed into our livings rooms, browsers and pockets. Continue reading

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▓▓ Filtering Failure ▓▓▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ░ ░ ░ — curated by Julian van Aalderen and Rosa Menkman, with Paul Davis (US/UK), Benjamin Gaulon (IR/FR), Gijs Gieskes (NL), Jodi (NL/BE), Karl Klomp (NL), no-carrier (US), Notendo (US), Nullsleep (US), Jon Satrom (US), Videogramo (ES).:: until April 1, 2011 :: PLANETART, Wibautstraat 150, Amsterdam, 1091 GR, Netherlands.

In a culture that is continuously accelerating, filters have become a primal commodity. We use them both to open and to close ourselves to or from any kind of possible information. Filters are ubiquitous. However, we only realize their presence when we lack them or when they fail our expectations. On the other hand, modern digital cultures are inseparable from keywords like functionality, smoothness, order and progress. Interaction designers, programmers and interface developers all work together to understand and execute these mantras. Continue reading

GLI.TC/H — an international gathering of noise & new media practitioners :: September 29 – October 3, 2010 :: Chicago :: Call for Entries — Deadline: August 20, 2010.

GLI.TC/H is a physical and virtual assembly of artists, hackers, moshers, dirty mediators, noise makers, circuit benders, p/h/i/l/o/s/o/p/h/e/r/s, and those who find wonder in that which others call broken. GLI.TC/H seeks: Realtime + time-based performances (audio/video), utilizing broken/bent technologies/strategies. Workshops, sharing knowledge of hardware/software hacking, cracking, breaking, kludging, piracy, & tool building. Artworks and Projects, artware, videos, games, films, tapes, code, interventions, screen-captures, systems, websites & installations. Texts, lectures, essays, code, articles, & hypermedia. Continue reading

YTAND (You’re the Artist Now, Dawg!): A Digital Minimalism Exhibition Curated by Patrick Lichty: User-driven viral media sites such as YTMND.com have created a form of “internet – native” aesthetics that also seen on sites like deviantart.com, 4chan.org, and many others, that have inspired New Media artists like Marisa Olson, Jon Satrom, JonCates and Cory Arcangel to create forms such as “dirt style” and “glitch”.

As the YTMND.com site states, a “YTMND” is: A page(s) featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file. YTMND is also the general term used to describe any such site. (from ytmnd.com)

A YTMND, as a potential net.artform, is a highly formal/minimal structure, and it is through this format that the curator is inviting artists to create their own pages as exploration of digitally minimal forms. Continue reading

TEH Plot by Phillip Andrew Lewis, Adam Trowbridge, and Jessica Westbrook :: until January 22, 2010 :: FPAC Gallery, 300 Summer Street M1, Boston, MA.

TEH is a common typographical error and refers to a collaborative art and technology group with interests in research, displaced communication, simulation, nature/culture, and geography. TEH is currently examining weather as a shared experience/vocabulary, and presents this research through installation and technologically mediated experience.

TEH plot is a Summer Scene in Boston and includes: generated cicadas, liquid fresh cut grass, Meatballs glitch, and responsive cluster lighting… amongst other Summery components.

Ephemeral City: Speakers: Kora Van den Bulcke and Thomas Soetens (Workspace Unlimited), Jason Crow, M.Arch Ph.D. candidate, Department of Architecture, McGill University; Direction: Chris Salter :: December 3, 2009; 6:00 – 8:00 pm :: CCA/Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Maison Shaughnessy. 1920, rue Baile, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

What can games and gaming experience reveal about the city? How does play in public spaces differ from solitary play. What new aesthetic social practices might arise as a result of the mixing between the physical urban space and the digital realm. This forum will feature research and artistic projects that take gaming beyond the single computer screen and into the urban realm, both real and imaginary. Continue reading

Ambient.TV’s Mapping CCTV around Whitehall, Review by Rob Myers, furtherfield.org.

Two-part exercise to map CCTV cameras around Whitehall, London, within a zone covered by SOCPA (Serious and Organized Crime and Police Act 2005). A map of the hundreds of cameras in the zone was made over two days of observation. The second part involved mapping the range of one of these cameras, no. 40 in Villiers street, by intercepting its signal as it was transmitted wirelessly without encryption. As passers-by entered the marked area covered by the camera, they were alerted to the its presence and handed a copy of the map of CCTV cameras in Whitehall. Continue reading

Define Your Terms (or Kanye West Fucked Up My Show): Paul B. Davis (Beige) :: May 27 – July 4, 2009 :: Seventeen Gallery, 17 Kingsland Road, London.

Paul B. Davis’ probing, contemplative second solo show at Seventeen represents a bold step forward for the artist… though not necessarily one he expected to take. It was instigated by a semi-voluntary rejection of a practice that, until very recently, was central to his creative output and figured prominently in his debut exhibition at the gallery – Intentional Computing (2007). A curious turn of events led to this unforeseen repudiation and redefinition of practice:

“I woke up one morning in March to a flood of emails telling me to look at some video on YouTube. Seconds later saw I Kanye West strutting around in a field of digital glitches that looked exactly like my work. It fucked my show up… the very language I was using to critique pop content from the outside was now itself a mainstream cultural reference.” Continue reading