RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.26.05

discussion

Posted Aug. 25 2005 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.26.05

RHIZOME DIGEST: August 26, 2005 Content: +note+ 1. Francis Hwang: New on Rhizome.org: Track your Location by city 2. Marisa S. Olson: Digest will now go out on Fridays +opportunity+ 3. Lea: ¿blog? art project - call for submissions 4. Alicia: Call for Entries ::: SF IndieFest ::: Deadline 10.15.05 +announcement+ 5. Greg Smith: vague terrain 26/08 - toronto 6. Info: CRYSTALPUNK WORKSHOP for SOFT ARCHITECTURE 7. Katie Lips: Inside the Inbox; real people, real SMS messages, the 'SMS log' by Treasuremytext +comment+ 8. Søren Pold: The Algorithmic Revolution +commissioned for Rhizome.org+ 9. joni taylor: Conference Report: Garage Festival + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering Organizational Subscriptions, group memberships that can be purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants at institutions to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. For a discounted rate, students or faculty at universities or visitors to art centers can have access to Rhizome?s archives of art and text as well as guides and educational tools to make navigation of this content easy. Rhizome is also offering subsidized Organizational Subscriptions to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded communities. Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more information or contact Lauren Cornell at LaurenCornell@Rhizome.org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. From: Francis Hwang <francis@rhizome.org> Date: Aug 23, 2005 8:03 AM Subject: New on Rhizome.org: Track your Location by city! Hey everyone, Today, the Rhizome Location feature is getting even better: We're going to start creating city nodes, too, so people can list themselves, and find other people, by cities. Right now I've just turned on cities for the United States, because that's where most of our Members live, and because it's a territory I know well, so picking appropriate names is a little easier. If you are a Member, and you live in the U.S., you can now go to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/preferences">http://rhizome.org/preferences</a> and choose to be searchable under one of these cities: Baltimore Boston Chicago Denver Los Angeles Minneapolis New York Philadelphia Portland San Francisco San Jose Here, for example, is the location page for NYC: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/location.rhiz?location=us_nyc">http://rhizome.org/location.rhiz?location=us_nyc</a> Though right this minute, I'm the only person who's tagged myself as living in NYC. That should change soon, I'd imagine … Cities will be coming for more countries soon–hopefully starting next week, once I feel confident that the overall system works fine. In the meantime, please start using it, and let me know if you have any questions or problems. Regards, Francis Hwang Director of Technology Rhizome.org phone: 212-219-1288x202 AIM: francisrhizome + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Refresh! The First International Conference on the histories of media art, science, and technology. Hosted by the Banff New Media Institute, Leonardo/ISAST, and the Database for Virtual Art. September 28-October 1, 2005 The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada For info. and to register Visit: www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi">http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi</a>> E-mail: luke_heemsbergen@banffcentre.ca + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. From: Marisa S. Olson <marisa@rhizome.org> Date: Aug 24, 2005 4:03 PM Subject: Digest will now go out on Fridays I just wanted to make an informal announcement that we're going to begin sending the Rhizome Digest out on Fridays, rather than Sundays, beginning this week. There's no super brilliant reason for this other than the fact that it works best with my schedule, as Editor, and it seems like the best weekday to summarize the week's activities, on Raw. I hope it works nicely with your inbox flow, as well. Your feedback is always welcome, of course! All the best, Marisa —————————— Marisa S. Olson Editor and Curator at Large, Rhizome.org marisa (at) rhizome.org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome ArtBase Exhibitions <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/</a> Visit the fourth ArtBase Exhibition "City/Observer," curated by Yukie Kamiya of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and designed by T.Whid of MTAA. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/city/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/city/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. From: Lea <lalela02@yahoo.com.ar> Date: Aug 22, 2005 9:50 AM Subject: ¿blog? art project - call for submissions ¿Blog? Blog, one of the most spread forms of expression on the web, varying from personal diaries to community weblogs, professional knowledge exchange resources, political campaigns and more. In their different manifestations, blogs (moblogs, videoblogs, photoblogs, etc.), became a phenomenon influencing in many cases upon social and cultural areas: journalism, politics, alternative knowledge sources, literature, art, etc. The ¿blog? project takes blog as art and as a stage for net artworks investigating the language, the aesthetics, the impacts and the practices of blogs, blogging and the blogoesphere. In this context, it's worth mentioning the blog.art project –one of the first projects dealing with the notion of blog as art – operating for about a year and publishing blog-defined art projects. ¿Blog? project acts (is envisioned to act) as a platform for an open discussion on the topic and as a pool for submitting works. No-org.net invites submissions of art projects making use of blog as a tool, subject, or both as well as texts investigating the blog-art interplay in a broad sense. Selected texts and artworks will be exhibited (separately) on the no-org.net website. The launch of the project will be accompanied by an opening event and the discussion, that will get documented on the no-org.net website. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://no-org.net/blogs">http://no-org.net/blogs</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org 2005-2006 Net Art Commissions The Rhizome Commissioning Program makes financial support available to artists for the creation of innovative new media art work via panel-awarded commissions. For the 2005-2006 Rhizome Commissions, eleven artists/groups were selected to create original works of net art. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/">http://rhizome.org/commissions/</a> The Rhizome Commissions Program is made possible by support from the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial, the Greenwall Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support has been provided by members of the Rhizome community. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. From: Alicia <alicia@sfindie.com> Date: Aug 22, 2005 7:06 PM Subject: Call for Entries ::: SF IndieFest ::: Deadline 10.15.05 The San Francisco Independent Film Festival seeks your most delicous, twisted, unique, historical, fictional, subtitled, stop-motion, curious, cadaverous, outsider, outstanding and otherwise brilliantly-executed indie-films and videos. For more information on submitting your Features Shorts Docs & Animation films (35/16mm) & videos (BetaSP/dvd/dv/mini-dv) for the 8th Annual SF IndieFest (Feb. 2-14, 2006), check out <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sfindie.com">http://www.sfindie.com</a> . Head on over to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sfindie.com/06_App.pdf">http://www.sfindie.com/06_App.pdf</a> to download an entry form. Send it, along with your VHS/DVDs, stills, press kits, entry fee and tidbits to: SF IndieFest 530 Divisedero St #183 SF, CA 94117 Entry fee is $20 for shorts (any film less than 50 minutes), and $30 for features. If you'd care for your entry to be returned, please include a SASE + add $5 to your entry fee. ::::Entries must be postmarked by October 15th, 2005:::: We're looking forward to seeing your latest work! -Jeff, Bruce, & Alicia at SF IndieFest + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Support Rhizome: buy a hosting plan from BroadSpire <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/hosting/">http://rhizome.org/hosting/</a> Reliable, robust hosting plans from $65 per year. Purchasing hosting from BroadSpire contributes directly to Rhizome's fiscal well-being, so think about about the new Bundle pack, or any other plan, today! About BroadSpire BroadSpire is a mid-size commercial web hosting provider. After conducting a thorough review of the web hosting industry, we selected BroadSpire as our partner because they offer the right combination of affordable plans (prices start at $14.95 per month), dependable customer support, and a full range of services. We have been working with BroadSpire since June 2002, and have been very impressed with the quality of their service. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. From: Greg Smith <smith@serialconsign.com> Date: Aug 22, 2005 6:47 PM Subject: vague terrain 26/08 - toronto This is just a brief reminder that after a 3 year hiatus, the event promotion organization formerly known as clonk returns to Toronto on Friday August 26th with the first in a series of events under a new moniker; Vague Terrain. Vague Terrain will serve as a promotional vehicle for forward thinking electronic music/arts events in Toronto and digital arts online as a quarterly journal. This evening will featuring live performances from.. tinkertoy - lautmaschine / noise factory recordings naw - noise factory recordings / vague terrain aidan baker - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.aidanbaker.org">http://www.aidanbaker.org</a> video by robin armstrong Friday August 26th/2005 toronto @ art bar / the gladstone hotel limited capacity $5 / doors open @ 9pm 1214 queen st. west For more information please take a look at our URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.vagueterrain.net">http://www.vagueterrain.net</a> our online flyer <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.vagueterrain.net/poster.jpg">http://www.vagueterrain.net/poster.jpg</a> or contact us at vagueinfo@vagueterrain.net – The first issue of <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.vagueterrain.net">http://www.vagueterrain.net</a> will be launched this October and it will be dedicated to an exploration of digital detritus. The next vague terrain event is scheduled for Saturday September 24th and will feature a live PA from Vancouver Based Zora Lanson recording artist Granny'Ark, Spider Recording's Akumu, & naw. – Artist Information… tinkertoy - noise factory recordings/ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lautmaschine.com/">http://www.lautmaschine.com/</a> Tinkertoy is a Toronto based duo comprised of Andrew Wedman and Paul Shrimpton. Both Andrew and Paul came from classical music backgrounds to form Tinkertoy in 2000 – a project that has since evolved into a unique style of washy, sometimes melodic techno. Tinkertoys music is about the discovery of beauty in sundry noise. Their sound palette is developed through an extensive process of sampling outdoor environments and natural instruments and remodeling those samples using their own-programmed software. Tinkertoy's sound is always based on experimentation, and they bring this approach to their live performances. naw - noise factory recordings / vague terrain / <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.naw.phoniq.net">http://www.naw.phoniq.net</a> Montreal native Neil Wiernik currently living in Toronto, began his explorations in electronic music making as early as 1988. Known to push the boundaries of his musical form from designing new or manipulating existing sound making devices and software to creative uses of production environments and sound sources, naw's music is a blend of sound manipulation/design, experimental music and dub-tech rhythms, which on the surface sound quite simple, but incorporate a number of touches that steer this artist away from being simply another minimal techno or experimental laptop artist. He combines post-house, dubby minimal techno, microsound and thick ambience, to create his own version of deep techno, house and other electronic laptop oriented music. Neil has released music on various national and international record labels, including releases on Noise Factory, Complot, Clevermusic, Piehead and Pertin_nce. As naw, Neil has performed extensively along side a variety of national and international artists both in and outside of Canada. In 2004 and 2005 naw will released his follow up noise factory record full length called: "green nights orange days", as well as a full length outing with Pertin_nce Records called: "terrain vague". These two records find Neil at his deepest, dubbiest and most experimental sounding yet. The release of these records will coincide with a series of North American and European tour dates through out 2005. aidan baker - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.aidanbaker.org">http://www.aidanbaker.org</a> Aidan Baker is a Toronto-based musician and writer. As a solo artist, he explores the deconstructive possibilities of the electric guitar creating music that ranges from &/or encompasses ambient/experimental to electronica to post-rock. He has released numerous albums on such labels as Drone Records, Piehead Records, Zunior Records, & Die Stadt Musick. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. From: info@socialfiction.org <info@socialfiction.org> Date: Aug 22, 2005 7:04 PM Subject: CRYSTALPUNK WORKSHOP for SOFT ARCHITECTURE The Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture September - December 2005, Utrecht, The Netherlands generated by socialfiction.org, hosted by impakt.nl <a rel="nofollow" href="http://socialfiction.org/crystalpunk">http://socialfiction.org/crystalpunk</a> Hidden in the former utility area of a vacant 13 floor office in Utrecht, the "Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture" will evolve an empty room from nothingness into unknown states of technological enhancement. Unlike the alphabet that always knows where it is going, this workshop does not. A Room of a Crystalpunk's Own The Headmap manifesto, the Coleridgian masterpiece of independent software development for spaces and places, observed: "Every room has an accessible history, every place has emotional attachments you can open and save". New technologies can associate places with layers of free and editable content from which the past can be re-enacted, like a murder at the scene of the crime is re-enacted, to re-experience and stir vanished memories. Little minds living in software can eat any piece of data, extract meaning from it and email it to you when the right criteria has been met. Our Crystalpunk Manifesto famously drew connections between disconnected fields of knowledge and explained to the world our intention to program minds and matter simultaneously. This workshop marshals these manifestos of inspiration into real practises with scars of happy absurdi(r)ty engraved on their souls. Lexicon Crystal: The inorganic strategies of the crystalpunk are both chemically and metaphorically informed by the lessons learned from the transformation from moleculline mayhem into crystalline order. Crystal growth is adaptive, particle-noise disrupts tessellation but the crystal works its way around it softly. Roomology as crystallography? The analogy with crystals finding form permeates every aspect of this workshop: the room is filled with latent possibility, the workshop seeds these powers laying dormant, what remains after 4 months is outward form pushed and moulded and beaten into shape by events and persons working inside the room with the material produced by their own every moves inside the room. Punk: Despite appearances this workshop is not technology-driven but propelled forward by social interaction and a healthy disrespect for specialists of all kinds. Punk is not a style or a genre but a principle of self-education: taking up a technology (an electric guitar, a sensor, a programming language) ignoring all good practise, refusing to draw a line between student and teacher. Punks don't spend years practising: they immediately start a band with the intention to change the world. Workshop: Knowledge is generated collectively, collectives generate their own special flavours of knowledge. This workshop creates a social situation by providing resources to those persons unknown curious enough to come round and actively encourage those people whose past work we like. Different interests, backgrounds, talents, skills will mix, seek alliances and run amok; rapidly the room enhanced starts to generate data, ad-hoc collaborations find challenging ways for this data to be interpreted. Within the workshop countless micro-workshops will focus on specific topics, introducing high-level ideas and technologies to the uninitiated or to keep everybody up to date on the workshop's output, helping each other to make sense of the magic properties of technology. This workshop is a sustained stream of consciousness you can wash your mind/sharpen your capabilities/empower your potential with. Soft + Architecture: Buildings learn, rooms have memories, design does not need its designers, the language of time (piecemeal extensions, reinventions, rephrasings, accidents, entropy) rewrites their script. A room, by implication, refuses to be belittled into the function of a radio, it wants to be a broadcaster too. Continuous sending information to the world, a room can have a virtual identity and under this guise live a secret life. For instance: a crystalpunk moves his leg for comfort, a crystalpunk shakes her head in disagreement, sensors pick up on it, triggering a wide range of reactions known and unknown, local and faraway. To paraphrase Ezra Pound: in soft architecture each gesture creates content that has form as water poured into a vase has form. Content is recyclable, routed multiple times, finally ending up back where it initiated: causing a sound closing a door illuminating a cryxal on-screen. A crystalpunk walks through the room and, like in a crappy disco, ! the floor lights up underneath her feet, too bad he is not feeling very much like a dancing queen tonight. Soft Architecture is a home grown architectonic freak show: what the Elephant Man is to the Athletic Body, the Crystalpunk Room will be to the Smart House. Now that we have found data, what are we going to do with it?! Technologists have for decades been playing with the idea of the supposedly smart home: the entire house adaptive and responsive and proactive, providing conveniences like that resurfacing dystopian killer-app: the refrigerator that makes sure the milk never runs out. No matter how device-centric and profit-inspired these efforts are, and as such divided by a royal mile from the super-serendipity of Crystalpunk roomology, this workshop is moving in the same problem-space of obvious possibilities and unresolved puzzles of making sense from the surplus of automated data production. Everybody can generate a source of water by opening the tap, few are given to come up with conceptually stimulating ways to process the output. On Being Soft Knowledge, so it is said, is the agitator of economic growth, a good education the only insurance against unemployment. Self-education in this respect is a scrapyard challenge: without any experience you can master the use of a jet engine, but when announcing yourself at the job centre it will be back to washing plates or carrying big things if you know what I mean. But self-education is part not of the world of schools and jobs and financial solvency and mortgage opportunities, but an involuntary by-product of the personal creative urge of the kind that start with one innocent question: "what if….?". What if I make a lot of noise? >From the small but liberating gesture of doing so, its miracle usually diminishing quickly, you may be inspired to find a way forward in a process easily labelled crystalline. Learning to control the machine that makes the noise proposes new questions that need further understanding to be answered. In a different context Sherry Turkle suggested that self-education is rooted in the curiosity in finding out if, by playing around with it, you can make things work for the sake of it. This way to deal with problems, she says, is at odds with the goal oriented alphabetic way of making things as taught at schools. This 'soft mastery' over problems relies in a very real sense on the fact that answers will come to you. A 'lazy' and very unprofessional approach, as you can never explain what you will do beforehand. The Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture is really entirely very splendidly softly unprofessional indeed. On Participating The Crystalpunk Workshop of Soft Architecture workshop lives in 2 distinct spheres: in the corner of a gigantic building in a tiny Dutch city and online where as much realtime roomness is broadcasted as possible. Participation is local, you are invited to bring your laptop and start making noise, to join a workshop or to come listen to a presentation. To those faraway we must mention that, apart from this workshop, there are very few reasons for visiting Utrecht and the more we admire you for doing so. From the deepest Africa you are encouraged to turn yourself into a soft architectonic bootlegger: to render on-line data into representations formal and fluid, in monotones or RGB, spatially exact or rolling like a wave. Or perhaps you are more philosophically inclined and prone to profound reflections, or perhaps breaking things only to rebuild them is the tea you drink: the social infrastructure will be in place to work and think along wherever you are. We do not care if participants don't know anything useful, and likewise we will welcome you with as much enthusiasm if you do know something useful. We are not like an alphabet but we are neither a cheap bar: we do ask from our participants the desire to unwind their own what-if soft scenarios. If you only want free internet access Beelzebub will bite your head off and create content that has form as a main artery needing urgent medial attention has form. For a workshop that wants to shake the language and experience of roomness, 4 months is little time, but like with every education, it is never finished A fact learned can reveal itself useful only years after. Come as you are: you can be crystalpunk too. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://socialfiction.org/crystalpunk">http://socialfiction.org/crystalpunk</a> get involved via: crystalpunk |at| socialfiction |dot| org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Members can purchase the new monograph on Thomson & Craighead, Minigraph 7, for a discounted rate: £10.80 which is 10% off £12.00 regular price plus free p+p for single orders in UK and Europe. thomson & craighead Minigraph 7 Essays by Michael Archer and Julian Stallabrass Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead ¹s extraordinarily varied, almost unclassifiable artworks combine conceptual flair with sophisticated technical innovation. Encompassing works for the web alongside a host of other new media interventions, this book ? the first monographic survey of the artists¹ work ? highlights a number of impressive installation and internet-based pieces which use digital technology to echo the art-historical tradition of the ready-made. Part-supported by CARTE, University of Westminster. Published by Film and Video Umbrella 52 Bermondsey Street London SE1 3UD Tel: 020 7407 7755 Fax:020 7407 7766 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.fvumbrella.com">http://www.fvumbrella.com</a> To order, Rhizome Members should write Lindsay Evans at Film/ Video Umbrella directly and use the reference ³Rhizome T + C² in the subject line. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. From: Katie Lips <katie@kisky.co.uk> Date: Aug 25, 2005 3:39 PM Subject: Inside the Inbox; real people, real SMS messages, the 'SMS log' by Treasuremytext Keywords: SMS, voyeur, publish, collaborative, mobile, blog, moblog, text message, reality text Treasuremytext.com (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.treasuremytext.com">http://www.treasuremytext.com</a>) is first and foremost a service that stores SMS messages making Treasuremytext.com the world?s largest SMS Inbox. Thousands of users store thousands of texts every month. Anyone and everyone can use it to aggregate their mobile content, treasure it forever and then to re-publish, re-blog, to share their personal messages with the world. The service contains RSS feeds and a ?Slog? a SMS log that lets anonymous viewer, or voyeurs read the personal lives of texters. Treasuremytext is a project in which thousands of users are contributing their deepest, private messages into a public space. What do people really send, and why do they want to keep this stuff forever? We want other digital artists to work with this SMS RSS capability, and if suitable reblog this SMS content, or set up their own SMS RSS channel for other projects. The project explores the relationships between communication and publication, trails of information, and data we all leave behind us continuously as we interact with software and applications and devices. Many people use the Treasuremytext project to publish their own communications and as they are doing so they are creating a mass collaborative consciousness. The public face of Treasuremytext.com is humorous; it plays with the idea of the personal and the private world of mobile communication. Many publicly displayed messages are private in nature; and by publishing, the collective authors are offering a view into their personal lives. Through this project, Kisky Netmedia (the project?s creators) are blurring the boundaries between communication ?service? and creative space, between application and art exhibit. Kisky demonstrates how this service is generating its own ever evolving, self-generating form, whilst also raising the bar in terms of how Netart behaves, through creating work with truly functional as well as exploratory aims. Whilst there are distinct voices amidst the noise, the theme of the collaborative content demonstrates that mobile communication, for most of us is about continual contact; request and response, affection and confirmation. Many messages are explicit, many are needy, many are mundane, but more and more, Treasuremytext.com offers a glimpse into unconnected yet ubiquitous worlds; it shows snippets of communications, conversations, detached from each other, yet vocally loud, bold statements, request, actions, aspirations, and dreams. The project is perhaps the only place where it is possible to view other people?s mobile communications. It is a demonstration of disconnected voices, all surprisingly saying similar things. The people who are creating this ?not seen anywhere else content? are becoming bolder at publishing their innermost thoughts anonymously to an unknown audience. Kisky develops systems and environments which enable audiences to enter, use and control traditionally closed spaces. This is particularly true of the mobile phone, which is used by many, but tightly controlled by few. Kisky uses simple web technologies to open up this space, to create new creative opportunities for users and audiences. A common themes in Kisky?s work is the notion of the audience as collaborative creator; exploring ideas of ?passive publishing? whereby through the act of communication, there is a communication by-product; content that may in alternative spaces be viewed as artistic content. Please feel free to use Treasuremytext.com to blog your own or existing content. Current ?treasured text? content is available as RSS, XML and My Yahoo feeds as well as at the ?luxuriously? designed site. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. From: Søren Pold <pold@multimedia.au.dk> Date: Aug 25, 2005 4:06 PM Subject: The Algorithmic Revolution Originally published at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artificial.dk">http://www.artificial.dk</a> Article with images from the exhibition: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artificial.dk/articles/heavy.htm">http://www.artificial.dk/articles/heavy.htm</a> THE ALGORITHMIC REVOLUTION HEAVY MACHINERY AND ABSTRACT ART IN A NEW CONTEXT AT ZKM 'Usually, a revolution is about to happen and it announces itself with a 'roar'. The Algorithmic Revolution has already happened, and, despite remaining largely unnoticed, it has been all the more effective. There is, namely, no longer any area of our social and cultural life that is not penetrated by algorithms: Cameras, cars, planes, ships, household appliances, hospitals, banks, factories, shopping malls, traffic, architecture, literature, art, music. The Algorithmic Revolution began around 1930 in science, around 1960 in art. ' (Peter Weibel, ZKM 2004). The German Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe is currently showing the exhibition The Algorithmic Revolution which presents a historical outline of this radical change in the fine arts, music, design and architecture. The exhibition draws both on the ZKM collection and selected loans. It can be experienced until December 2005. Two writers let themselves be inspired and give two different views on the exhibition in two separate articles. Here is what Soeren Pold wrote. Soeren Pold is ph.d, associate professor and head of the research project 'The Aesthetics of the Interface Culture' at the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre in Aarhus, Denmark. Translation: Sofie Paisley. ——- Inside the glass door by the entrance to the art exhibition 'The Algorithmic Revolution' at ZKM stands a giant machine, which with its weight of 1000 kg radiates equal parts white lab coats, German objectivity and wirtschaftswunder. It's a Zuse Z22 from 1957, the seventh computer from the world's first computer start-up company, Konrad Zuse AG, and the oldest functioning vacuum-tube computer. It makes a serious humming noise and its 415 electron tubes radiate, and is in this way an esthetical object in itself, drawing admiring and inquisitive glances. You can look in at the tubes, study the teleprinter and the control panel. At the same time it is a mysterious machine ? you can't see what it does and how it processes its data ? you can't read or follow the algorithms. It was used within building technology, aerodynamics and the construction of nuclear reactors, but some of the very first digital art was also created on it. Digital literature was made on this computer as ! early as 1959, when Theo Lutz made computer generated texts based on The Castle by Franz Kafka, which was one of the very first experiments with digital literature. But at the same time, the machine precisely indicates the dilemma and starting point of digital art: unlike the steam engine which Danish writer Johannes V. Jensen and others praised 100 years ago, the computer lacks sensuous features. Even though Zuse's vacuum-tube model can instil respect in most people, the point is the invisible and unreadable, which takes place in the computer. The computer's processing of data is invisible to most, we only see the results, and the computer's cultural influence has in this way to a large extent centred on making processes invisible and on heightening their efficiency ? about complex quantities of data automatically stored and put into effect in opaque bureaucracies. The most important digital art therefore works with the relation between visible versus invisible, sensuous versus concealed, meaningful versus coded. This makes it partially step out of the sensuous, which is otherwise the domain of art. Maybe this is the reason it is so ! frequently overlooked? ALGORITHMIC IMAGES If you think digital art is a new thing ? which would be easy to think from the highly sporadic treatment of the subject by Danish museums ? then visiting the ZKM and the Zuse Z22 is a good idea. As the literary experiments on the Z22 points to, the first artists used the computer 40-50 years ago. As early as 1955-56, composers worked with computers and ten years later we see the first experiments with algorithmic images and animations created on the computers of the day. Frieder Nake, who was among the first three artists to exhibit visual computer art in 1965, also started his artistic experiments on Zuse Z22, but the works displayed at ZKM were made on later computers. Frieder Nake's early works are, as several of other early works, attempts at visualising algorithms and algorithmic processes. At making visible the invisible and visualising the abstract. One example of this is images that let random processes determine the number of edges on a polygon, their lengths and directions, such as Random Polygon (1965). Or the works where elements are repeated in series, but transposed by the way individual parameters are changed and influenced by coincidence. Nake's art is, similarly to other algorithmic art, a kind of art that depicts the relationship between rigid order and chance, and how new both organic and rational structures occur. ARTIFICIAL ART Frieder Nake was a math student in Stuttgart and was given permission to experiment with the computer at night in the early 1960s. The first time digital art (by Georg Nees) was exhibited in February 1965 in Stuttgart, other more traditional artists reacted with negativity according to Nake. Max Bense, the organiser, tried defending the digital art against the insulted artists as being 'artificial art'. An art that was not directly traceable back to a creative artist expressing himself or his intentions, but which was created with the help of programmed computers which most viewed (and still view) as far from the domain of art. Digital art, however, was not created in a vacuum. At the time of its appearance the most advanced parts of the art scene were preoccupied with opening art in new ways and towards new dimensions. Several of these movements, such as Op-Art, Fluxus and kinetic art, are beneficially viewed in relation to the cultural history of the computer. The exhibition establishes this obvious connection by including these contemporary movements, and it thus places digital art in an art-historic connection. At the same time, the exhibition points out that the advanced art scene of the 1960s was preoccupied with, and can with advantage be viewed in relation to the arrival and growing importance of the computer. THE ANALOGUE COUSINS OF ALGORITHMIC ART The Fluxus artists dealt exhaustedly with coincidence and with recipes or instructions as art. At the exhibition you can for example see George Brecht's 'Universal Machine' from 1965, named after the computer theoretician Alan Turing's famous description of the computer as a universal machine and not just as a calculator, which had previously been imagined. Brecht's universal machine is a box with things in it, which, when you shake the box, can be arranged randomly on some images. The box also contains some texts indicating how an interpretation of the placing of the objects in relation to the images can answer different questions for the art user. The exhibition contains several examples of the Fluxus artists' use of instructions as art, e.g. Tomas Schmidt's typewriter poem from 1964, which is a typewriter keyboard with numbers indicating which order to press down the keys in order to produce a poem. In the exhibited form the poem is unreadable ? it has to be executed before it can be read ? and the instruction is thus an unreadable code in the same way as a computer program. The typewriter poem, however, points out this illegibility in the algorithmic, functional language ? actually, it is this awareness that is its artifice. Similarly, digital art points out the way the artist and the human sender take a step back in relation to the expression. The machine creates the expression ? the artist has like the lab-coated scientist become an experimenting operator. The potential of the algorithm was also explored in other ways within contemporary analogue art. The Op-Art movement made virtual images, created by effects in perception ? a kind of magic images pointing towards the installations created today by an artist such as Olafur Eliasson. Other artists were like the mobiles of the kinetic art, more preoccupied with dynamics ? movements that never repeat themselves, and require an interacting user to get started. The work becomes a machine without a practical function such as Jean Tinguely's kinetic reliefs and sculptures. In this way, the subject is art, which requires a user and an unfolding before being realised. Works that are not realised until you interact with them, and which in this way to a lesser extent express something in themselves. But this is where art reflects the potential in, and the consequences of, the algorithmic revolution. The machines become expressive in a new way ? they are not merely impressive objects such as steam engines, but become a part of communication itself. The artist can in return take a step back for the benefit of the user, who through the interaction realizes the work. Art in this way depicts that a new sign and a new machine has entered the world, mediating the relationship between us. THE COMPUTER'S CULTURE In the early sixties these artists already recognised that culture and society was rapidly changing, and that large humming machines such as the Zuse Z22 were an important player in this revolution. Even though it had at first been overlooked, it was also culture, social structures and art, which came out of the computer. While most people only saw white lab coats and technical usages, these visionary artists saw the seed of a new culture and a new art. And their visions still seem very fresh in spite of the many years ? like visions we are maybe only now beginning to understand and appreciate. At times they are even shockingly visionary compared to the more every day interaction we have with the computer today. Perhaps the potential of the computer was more easily imagined then, when it was not as ordinary and normalised. Of course, the algorithmic revolution does not end in the 1960s. Artistically, the digital art developed into net art, software art and digital installations of our day, also displayed at the exhibition. Frieder Nake has stated that he and the other early computer artists were often frustrated about only being able to exhibit static printouts, when the actual art was the algorithmic process and its infinity of potential expressions. Later on it has of course become possible to exhibit dynamic and interactive works, such as Golan Levin or Casey Rea's generative works. Computer art has also developed into some spectacular and thought provoking installations, such as Perry Hoberman's Bar Code Hotel (1994) where the audience gets to play with a world of 3D figures via bar codes. These works have to a large extent been related to their historic roots, when shown in connection with the early algorithmic art. In this connection they are not only understood as more or less magical and spectacular works with a playing user in the centre, but also as works that unfold the algorithmic process ? that take part in the algorithmic revolution. If you are still hungry for more, ZKM also houses other exhibitions reflecting a fresh look at the societal role of art, e.g. the currently interesting, but somewhat messy, 'Making Things Public' (curated by Peter Weibel and Bruno Latour). In the media museum's collection is also a series of trend setting media artworks by Bill Viola, Nam June Paik along with significant digital works by e.g. Jeffrey Shaw. It becomes apparent that also video art looks good in ZKM's digital media-artistic connection. Finally, the museum also houses a section for computer games. You can safely set aside a couple of days if you are in the southwest corner of Germany. More about Soeren Pold: www.bro-pold.dk + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 9. From: joni taylor <joniponi2001@yahoo.com> Date: Aug 26, 2005 5:52 AM Subject: Conference Report: Garage Festival Conference Report: Garage Festival July 22 ? August 8, Stralsund, Germany By Joni Taylor The small harbourside town of Stralsund - situated on the Ost, or Baltic sea ? may seem like an unlikely place for an electronic media festival, but the Garage Festival is now in it?s ninth year and doesn?t seem to be slowing down. What started out with some local artists (spearheaded by director Carsten Stabenow) using a parent?s storage garage as a temporary studio has developed into a 4-week event showcasing digital art and a performance line-up to rival most major electronic music festivals. And yes, it does still take place in the original garage. So amidst the fresh herring, brotchen rolls, and the nightly production of a larger-than-life open-air staging of ?West Side Story,? programmers, noise artists, fringe scientists, video makers, and artists gathered again, this year, to develop and present ideas to their fellow participants. Their playful theme, ?Forget it, don't trust your archives,? was a statement about the sheer mass of material that digital artists can accumulate, and a question about how much of it is actually relevant to their practice. As Stabenow points out, ?Thanks to digitization we are relieved of the tedious obligation to decide what is worth preserving - we therefore save everything and decide later what we need.? The informal environment of Garage is integral to its success. Many of the projects (including the ?Free Soil? project presented by Nis Rømer and myself) were progressive and site-specific, taking place during the festival itself. The week allowed us to conduct research on the environment of the Baltic Sea, make field trips, and interview local scientists and activists. ?Dokumat 5000,? by Nicolas Roy (DE), was a roving, documentary-making robot, a triffid-like figure outfitted with a video camera. During the festival, it filmed selected snippets and self-edited eerie glimpses of street scenes and passers-by. Jan Zimmermann?s (DE) work documented a month spent pressing one-off vinyl records in his ad-hoc container studio, and in a mix of new and ancient arts, Alexej Paryla (DE) carved 10 collected fingerprints in stone, to be mounted somewhere in the city. He told me, ?We are the only ones who don?t actually use this data.? Another ongoing project was presented by Radio Copernicus. The Polish/German collaborative set up a permanent radio station above the garage, broadcasting online and occupying a local frequency. The open forum gave artists an additional opportunity to present their projects, such as the ?Foofoofoo? software developed by Anna Ramos and Roc Jimenez (E). Their program offered to capture the ?soundtrack of your life? by collecting all of the sound files on your system and creating just one audio track. Stralsund - like many East German towns over the last decade - is experiencing a symptom known as ?shrinking,? with many residents moving away and consequently creating excess space. The empty grain houses on the harbour-front provided a dark and damp setting for the Garage installations, which was ultimately fitting due to their mostly un-slick aesthetic. In fact, half an hour of total darkness was even a prerequisite for viewing ?Camera Lucinda,? by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand (RU/USA). After adjusting to the light, one could make out the shape of sound frequencies exploding and emitting their own light source. Staalplaat Soundsytem (NL/De), famous for their groundbreaking noise releases, offered ?The Ultra Sound of Therapy,? an audio treatment for frazzled festival-goers. After being lead onto a hospital bed by a helpful krankenschwester (nurse), one was administered a series of painless electro-audio shocks and healing sounds. ?SCrAramBlEed?HaCkZ,? by Sven Konig (CH), was an interactive, sing-a-long video lounge, where depending on your input, the Mash-up rappers on screen repeated similar sounds. (We worked out that it was only fun if you screamed really, really loudly!) The Garage Festival staff laid out their own archives, providing mixed media from past festivals and videos from the G_niale film festival, which occurs during the last week. In a room evocative of many nerdy boys? record libraries (cue ?High Fidelity?), their own way of archiving these ?objects? said a lot about storage space and media?s future obsoleteness. Also included, here, was a disturbing-looking shredding machine by Visomat Industries (De), offering other curators an easy way out. During the week that I was there, I managed to catch a plethora of new and surprising sound performances. Elember Septeventh (De) took the archive theme to heart and literally played a set of empty, mic?d-up filing cabinets. Remco Shuubiers and Remco Packbiers (NL - those are their real names) presented a multi-media overload, using the surprisingly old-skool tools of video and record players together with multiple projectors. Evocative of early VHS cut-up parties, they combined obscure TV recordings with dubby found sound. Yes, it was very low tech, considering these wireless days, but it was also fitting when paired with Desktopjam (NL), who used patching software for their performance. Instead of hiding their jitter interface, they projected it on top of the images they went on to create. The ?vinyl? night featured an experimental exercise in all things RECORD. Thilges 3, with Claudia Marzendorfer (A), spent the whole week prior to their performance freezing ice replicas of their own records, only to audibly destroy them all in the space of half an hour. The sounds of a record needle slicing through ice grooves can be hypnotic! Sebastian Buczek (PL) played wax and chocolate, and Ignaz Schick (De) scratched and ground his needle though a selection of very un-needle-friendly looking objects. American atmos stalwart, John Duncan, played an eerie composition in complete darkness and BMB con (NL) performed a glass dance piece. Tim Tetzner, from Dense (De), curated an entertaining film line-up, offering everything from an historical look at recording techniques to documentaries about Norway?s noise scene. The mood of Garage is one that emphasizes experimental technologies which are not necessarily brand NEW, and gives a space to performers and artists that exist off the ?new media? radar ? people that instead of jumping onto every new gimmick actually create a craft from the ones they already use. The feeling, this year, was one of excitement and growth, inspiring future collaborations. + + + <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.garage-d.de">http://www.garage-d.de</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.free-soil.org/algae">http://www.free-soil.org/algae</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation,  The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Marisa Olson (marisa@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 10, number 34. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>. 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