RHIZOME DIGEST: 7.5.02

discussion

Posted July 4 2002 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 7.5.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: July 5, 2002 Content: +editor's note+ 1. Rachel Greene: seeking volunteer superusers +opportunity+ 2. Kunstradio: Call for participation - Radiotopia +review+ 3. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Co2nvert- Interaction Design for a Greener Planet +feature+ 4. Lev Manovich: Welcome to the Multiplex - Documenta 11, New Generation Film Festival (Lyon), LA Film Festival¹s New Technology Forum + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 7.4.02 From: Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: seeking volunteer superusers we're looking for volunteer superusers to make rhizome.org more rhizomatic – by decentralizing editorial roles, and putting content-filtering in the hands of the many and diverse. superusers will decide what goes on the rhizome.org homepage, which texts get sent on to rhizome rare, and consequently, what goes into the rhizome textbase. taking a step back, selecting and databasing texts is part of the project of historicizing new media art, so we'd like to work with members who take the matters of rhizome.org and new media art/history fairly seriously. superusers should be able to evaluate the quality of texts, and associate them with keywords and other metadata (so they should be interested in the language of new media, art, theory, community, and discourse). superusers should also be familiar with the logic and flow of email based discussion and banter. production skills are required too: superusers will need to have graphics software (e.g. photoshop) and facility converting screenshots and graphics into thumbnail images. superusers' schedule and level of activity on rhizome.org can vary, and will be discussed with rachel so she can rely on colleagues accordingly. if you are interested in volunteering to be a rhizome.org superuser, please email a cover letter (reflecting on if you have the abilities described above) and resume to me at rachel@rhizome.org with "superuser" in the subject line. thanks + looking forward to the collaborations… + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 7.1.02 From: Kunstradio (kunstradio@thing.at) Subject: Call for participation - Radiotopia RADIOTOPIA Radioactive Communi(ty)cation on air - on line - on site on air: OE1 Kunstardio, Radio Oesterreich International (SW), Radio 1476 (MW) and others… September 8th, 11:05 pm CEST September 10th, 11:05 pm CEST - 05:00 am CEST on line: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.aec.at/radiotopia">http://www.aec.at/radiotopia</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://kunstradio.at">http://kunstradio.at</a> on site: September 8th - 12th, Ars Electronica Festival, Klangpark@Brucknerhaus, Linz, a.o. Radio in its many forms is still the most globally accessible medium for both local and long-range communication and information sharing. In the digital age, it is often dismissed as an outdated technology, and yet millions of people turn on and tune in worldwide. Despite the current configuration of radio (often limited by commercialization and state regulation), radio has great potential as a tool that can reach out across cities and remote areas alike as a means for building local and international community. Transmitters can be easily assembled from readily available technologies, enabling radio to operate independently and to be community-based, experimental, political; giving voice to those who are rarely or never heard in the mounting commercial static of corporate globalization. These transmitters may not have a wide range but when networked by any and all means available, their impact can be amplified. Radiotopia will be, literally, a radio-place; instead of the homogenized drone of corporatized globalization, Radiotopia will be the sound of a varied world, emanating from people engaged in widely diverse cultural practices. Initiated by the AEC and coproduced with OE 1 KUNSTRADIO, RADIOTOPIA proposes to create a temporary network aimed at linking disparate parts of the globe on many realtime and virtual levels, creating a multi-media network grounded in radio transception (both sending and receiving), culminating in a large open-air installation and an overnight broadcast (Long Night of Radio Art) during the Ars Electronica Festival 2002. The Ars Electronica Center and Festival for Art, Technology and Society, Linz, Austria was established in 1979 as an open meeting-place for artists, scientists and researchers. The Ars Electronica Festival is one of the most important festivals for electronic art and media theory. The festival 2002 focuses on the blind spots of globalization with UNPLUGGED, a theme indicative of how the issue of the political element in art has returned with a vengeance to the agendas of intellectual discourse and artistic practice. Artists of all fields and from all over the world are invited to become participants/nodes in this network. There are many ways of communicating/participating/exchanging: - INPUT: Send your sounds/poems/scores etc. in a pre-recorded form to Kunstradio via snail mail (on cassettes, CDs, MDs) or Internet (live streams, files, images) or send your texts/poems/statements (in all languages) in a written form to: ORF Kunstradio Argentinierstr. 30a A - 1040 Vienna Austria Phone. ++431 50101 18277 or ++43 732 7272 60 Fax: ++431 50101 18065 Email: kunstradio@thing.at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://kunstradio.at">http://kunstradio.at</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.aec.at/radiotopia">http://www.aec.at/radiotopia</a> - TRANSFORMATION: Become a node in the network by collecting part of the sound inputs from the project website, from shortwave services, or from participating local, community, pirate or national radio broadcasts, and process/remix these sounds to re-input into the network. - OUTPUT: Create your on own on-air or on-site version of the project: broadcast sounds from the network on your radio station or stream from your website; or incorporate sounds into a public concert or installation. Combinations of all the above mentioned are possible and very welcome. Mixing, re-mixing, re-broadcasting etc may also happen before and after the period of the Ars Electronica Festival) CONTENT: All kinds of sounds are welcome; however, to help create the unique soundimage of Radiotopia - Radio as a worldwide medium for communication/ exchange/dialogue supporting and amplifying the often unheard multiplicity of voices– we propose a strong language or vocal element in your contributions. Diverse and regional voices also includes the "voices" of specific landscapes, cityscapes, and ecosystems around the world. We may attempt to classify your contributions on the homepage of the project according to their emotional atmosphere, their type of language (human everyday, poetic etc., environmental sounds, urban rhythms etc) to make your contributions easily accessible to those musicians, sound artists and radio artists who will be composing on-site, on-air and on-line versions of the project during the Ars Electronica Festival. You are invited to classify your own contribution. TECHNICAL ASPECTS: The main platform of the project will be a website which serves several purposes: - it will offer informations on the project and depict its progress. - it will make all individual contributions accessible worldwide in low tech formats and if possible high quality sound formats. - it will feature live webcasts and their documentations from all the versions of the project rendered on-site and on-air during the festival - it will host documentation and archiving of the project, allowing interested people to continue mixing and re-mixing beyond the timeframe of the Ars Electronica Festival. All of the incoming contributions (sound, images, texts), also those arriving by letter or cassette, CD etc will be put on this webpage and thereby become part of the projects archive. The versions planned so far for realisation during the renowned international Ars Electronica Festival (taking place for the 23rd time in Linz/A from the 8th to the 12th of September 2002) on site: - specially invited international musicians/sound artists will compose open-air mixes using submitted and streamed audio material to be presented on a huge loudspeaker system along the banks of the river Danube at Linz/Austria, in front of the Brucknerhaus, one of the main venues of the Ars Electronica Festival. Webcasts and "soundreports" of these versions will be available on the project website - live and as documentation. on air: - an overnight radio art broadcast live on the National Austrian Radio on the September 10th (11pm CEST - 5:00 am CEST) will have artistst/musicians present in the studio composing your contributions into a very unusual many hours long radio-event. This event will be streamed live online and documented afterwards. on line: (as above) The on-site and on-air events of/at the Ars Electronica Festival will be webcast and documented on the website of the project, which will become an archive of all submitted contributions, as well as their different uses in either the installations or the radio broadcasts by fellow artists during the festival and after…. ____________________________ ORF Kunstradio <a rel="nofollow" href="http://kunstradio.at">http://kunstradio.at</a> Argentinierstr. 30a A - 1040 Vienna phone: ++431 50101 18277 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE NO. 24 OUT NOW** 'Knocking Holes in Fortress Europe', Florian Schneider on no-border activism in the EU; Brian Holmes on resistance to networked individualism; Alvaro de los Angeles on e-Valencia.org and Andrew Goffey on the politics of immunology. More @ http <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/">http://www.metamute.com/</a>> ://www.metamute.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 6.27.02 From: Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah@coin-operated.com) Subject: Co2nvert: Interaction Design for a Greener Planet <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.co2nvert.com">http://www.co2nvert.com</a> Ever wonder how many pollutants you generate by typing an email? Is the electricity used to power this computer more than the power to build it? Maybe if products were designed with energy consumption in mind, our fears of shrinking natural resources would dissolve. As digital technology heads for a sustainable relationship with the environment, artists are taking the lead on creating innovative approaches to these questions. >From early environmentally conscious art like Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" (1970) to recent work like "The Bank of Time" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thebankoftime.com/">http://www.thebankoftime.com/</a>) which turns idle computer time into fertile ground for desktop plants, there is a history of interlinking creative and ecological practices. Contemporary artists such as Natalie Jeremijenko also focus critical art practices towards environmental issues. Her project, "Stump", which prints out a tree ring when a tree's worth of paper is consumed, illustrates our continued dependence on shrinking resources in the digital world. Working in urban space, "One Tree" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/OneTree/OneTreeDescription.html">http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/OneTree/OneTreeDescription.html</a>) clones a young tree one thousand times and plants them around San Francisco to see the ecological effects of different areas of the city on biologically identical plants. Working more in the realm of solving the global Greenhouse scare through simple rules of interaction design is Co2nvert (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.co2nvert.com">http://www.co2nvert.com</a>), a new project by Irish designer Philip Phelan. The project features working prototypes of innovative eco-conscious ideas with everything from the "Snobby Toaster" that won't run on fossil fuel power to the "Buy-Sell Socket" that lets you manually crank power back into the energy grid. Phelan, a graduate of London's Royal College of Art - Interaction Design program, begins with the simple idea that modifying the design of everyday objects can not only enlighten us about personal energy use but also help change our habits. "We need to take individual responsibility for Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to make a real difference," explains Phelan. "We need to introduce 'cues' and 'clues' into a domestic environment to modify consumer's GHG-causing energy behavior patterns." This might sound like a heady statement of early 90s Earth Day hype, but what types of alternatives are possible? What has really changed since then? Conceived for the home, CO2nvert's products like the "Greenhouse Fuse" rely on our wall sockets being smart enough to know the type of appliance plugged into them. If the quality of energy used by the appliance is unclean, the fuse will blow. The "Carbon Sink Filter" is a packaged carbon-sink that comes with tree seedlings that once planted, soak up the carbon dioxide emissions generated. Similarly, the CO2nvert "Emissions Bill" is a monthly reminder breaking down each household's global pollutant contribution. This might entice you to ease up on your hair dryers and electric blender use. Or if you worry about clean energy sources, the "Windwasher" flashes a message on its LCD screen alerting us when off shore breezes are available to spin laundry. CO2nvert's opus is "Appliance Weathermap", a real-time weather map featuring flying dishwashers over your home country that signal the opportune time to use natural energy. "In times of high winds or sunshine, appliance weather maps should show the amount of power they hold so that, given enough renewable energy resources, we can put our foot down at opportune times," says Phelan. Whether it's through personal choice or subtle differences in the appliances or bills we receive everyday, projects like CO2nvert serve as a wake up call to our energy consumption, a topic often elided in discourse about the "virtual" and the implicit assumption that contemporary technoculture is less materially damaging than other forms of industry. Artists continue to challenge our habits of interaction with the planet, and attempt to shape our relationship to precious natural resources. Despite the range of environmentally conscious projects in both art and design, change is only possible when our individual actions are manifested on a global scale. "If we use interaction design to introduce such [ecological] 'feedback' into the home or work," agree Phelan, " Then this can turn a small individual difference into a massive collective one." + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/">http://www.metamute.com/</a>> Cover the realm of art, science and technology by subscribing to Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA). Published by LEONARDO, LEA is the leading monthly on-line peer-reviewed journal and web archive in its field. Subscribe now for $35 per year at <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html</a>>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 7.1.02 From: Lev Manovich (manovich@jupiter.ucsd.edu) Subject: Welcome to the Multiplex - Documenta 11, New Generation Film Festival (Lyon), LA Film Festival¹s New Technology Forum I was struggling how to fill 1000 words talking about Documenta 11, when I was hit with a solution: why not talk about all three festivals I attended this June: Documenta 11 in Kassel; New Generation, the first edition of a brand-new film festival in Lyon; and Los Angeles Film Festival¹s New Technology Forum. Since all three events focused on new (or not so new) directions in moving image production and distribution, this will be the focus of this review. Just as the last time when I went to se Documenta 10 (1997), attending the new Documenta left me with the same feeling: what¹s the big deal? On any given day in New York or London you can just go to whatever museum and gallery shows happen to be running and you will see as many first-rate works by as many brand-name and ³emerging² artists. Of course it is nice to go to Documenta parties (although it¹s not Venice) and to sit in a cafe outside the main exhibition hall trying to recognize the cultural celebrities going in: here is Stuart Hall?here is Walid Ra¹ad whose Atlas Group presented one of the smartest and though-provoking projects of the whole Documenta. While the new Documenta makes a real effort to open itself up to global multi-culturalism, the results are quite contradictory. The show in Kassel is presented as the final ³Fifth Platform,² with the first four platforms having taken place during the preceding year in Vienna, Berlin, New Delhi, St. Lucia and Laso focused on topics such as ³Creolite and Creolization² and ³Under Siege: Four African Cities². Unfortunately one could not learn anything about these previous four ³platforms² without buying the thick catalog there were no references to them in the art show itself. The long list of artists shown in Kassel included plenty of people outside of Europe and US, like the group Igloolik Isuma Productions, whose film Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) won a Prix D¹Or for best debut feature film at Cannes 2001. However, looking at the spatial layout of Documenta grounds it became clear that each of three key buildings gave the largest central spaces to the older European or US white artists such as Allan Sekula, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Constant. I had the feeling that Documenta curators put on mini-retrospectives of these artists, added more big images of German photographers and conceptual 1970s artists, and then filled the remaining smaller and peripheral spaces with actual contemporary art. Going through the show I also had the feeling I was in a kind of artist¹s cinema multiplex. Although I have not counted, it felt that at least half of all the Documenta artists presented ³video installations² which almost all followed the same standard exhibition format: a projection presented in a small room. At least in a commercial movie theatre you get comfortable seats, Dolby surround sound, and you can bring in a coke, but since Documenta was about ³serious art² and not the pleasures of mass culture, a typical room had hard and uncomfortable benches. Somebody pointed out to me that all video and film installations presented at Documenta together added up to more than 600 hours of running time. Somebody else noted that the size of video and film installation rooms varied accordingly to the prestige of a an artist The films by Jonas Mekas and Ulrike Ottinger, the veterans of experimental filmmaking, which were between five and six hours each, were in larger rooms which had a few row of comfortable chairs, like in a real movie theaters. Other videos were stuck in small rooms with a single bench. Given my interest in new forms of cinema I was attracted to a number of multi-screen installations at Documenta, including works by such heavyweights as Isaac Julien, Chantal Akerman, and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. I thought that Ahtila¹s three screen installation worked the best: you feel that she is seriously researching a new grammar for a multi-screen cinema. (She is currently having a solo exhibition at the Tate in London). One great new media project that I did see at Documenta was OPUS (software and accompanying theoretical package) by Raqs Media Collective (New Delhi). Unveiled in Kassel, OPUS is definitely the most interesting new media project I have encountered in quite a while. It is a sophisticated, both theoretically and technically, system for multi-user cultural authorship in a digital network environment. Do take a look at the site and check their new concept of "Rescension" (in OPUS Manual) that offers a very interesting way to address the difficult issues of authorship in our "remix" culture. OPUS raises the bar for all future practical and theoretical work dealing with digital authorship. The paradox of a an art show which became a multiplex movie theatre became further apparent after I visited the brand new film festival in Lyon called New Generation. Approximately one third of a festival was given to artists¹ videos. However since this was a film festival rather than art show, the short videos were packaged together in ninety minute programs shown in a movie theatre in contrast to Documenta which followed the art convention of giving each video its own room. For me, neither interface makes much sense why not put all video on a computer server and set up comfortable personal stations where viewers can access and watch any video in any time, the way it was done already a few years ago in KIASMA museum in Helsinki. KIASMA digitized a whole collection of Finnish video art which was then put on museum servers accessible through PCs set up in a special media room. Next it was to a day of panels making up the New Technology Forum at the Los Angeles Film Festival. After a conservative Documenta and a sleepy Lyon DV marathon, here I finally some real cutting edge stuff - new advances in machinema, video creation software running on cell phones, Hollywood and military collaborating on new AI simulations, and the like. Once again, I was given proof that creative techno-avant-garde is not in Kassel, Lyon, and other traditional citadels of ³real culture² but in Los Angeles, literally next door to Hollywood studios. Katherine Anna Kang (Fountainhead Entertainment) talked about a feature-length film her company is working on using a custom machinema system. (For those who don't know, machinema is a subculture of amateur filmmakers who use computer games as movie making tools. She called this new kind of cinema ³machinemation.² Another paradigm that also uses game-like real-time 3D scene generation was demonstrated by Jeff Rickel from the University of Southern California¹s (USC) notorious Institute of Creative Technologies. The institute was established a few years ago with funding from the US Army to work on new types of military simulations using Hollywood talent. Rickel showed a particular ³peacekeeping scenario. ² Written by a veteran Hollywood writer, the scene had three virtual humans in a stressful situation. The goal of the simulation is to teach a soldier what to do in an ambiguous situation. The scenario used high-end AI that controls virtual humans¹ emotional expressions, speech, etc. If traditionally simulations focused on machine operations (airplane, tank, etc.) and battle action, USC work can be better thought of as interactive narrative, where the user (the trainee) is presented with a dramatic scenario with simulated humans. Bart Cheever from D.FILM festival (the digital film festival running since 1997) presented the gems from Digital Silverlake mini-festival he curated earlier this year. Created by artists, filmmakers and designers living in Silverlake and other areas of East LA, the works in Digital Silverlake represents the next stage in the evolution of moving image aesthetics. If 1995 article ³What is Digital Cinema² I defined digital cinema as compositing live action + image processing + 2-D animation + 3-D animation. Since then a new generation of designers who grew up with Flash and Shockwave have started to make short films and music videos which add typography and also privilege a 2-D flat look as key visual aesthetics. To put this differently, while we see more and more ³hybrid² films, which use plenty of compositing, 3D and 2D animation, but still have an overall ³film² look (i.e., they present us 3D photorealistic space) - such as ³Amelie² (2001) there is also now a different type of ³hybrid² film which looks more like what we expect to find in illustration and graphic design. I call this new type of digital cinema aesthetics ³Post-Flash Cinema.² Another digital cinema pioneer Jason Wishnow (who two years ago organized the first festival of films for the Palm Pilot platform) suggested that a movie trailer could be the prototype of a new genre appropriate to micro-cinema running on cell phones, Palms, Pocket PCs, and similar devices. He also discussed aesthetic features that characterized micro-cinema during the one hundred years of its history (from Kinetoscope to Palm) such as close-ups and loops. On a distribution side, Ira Deutschman (Emerging Pictures) talked about his company¹s plan to have 200 digital movie theatres in three years by placing digital projectors in already existing but under-utilized screening spaces such as museums. In his system, digital film files will be downloaded to a local server installed in a theatre, since the files will be too big to download in real time. In June, I found the cutting edge of moving image culture in Los Angeles. However, I am spending the next three months in Berlin, and I am sure I will see enough for another report by the end of the summer. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.documenta.de/">http://www.documenta.de/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.opuscommons.net/main.php">http://www.opuscommons.net/main.php</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.opuscommons.net/templates/doc/manual_left.htm">http://www.opuscommons.net/templates/doc/manual_left.htm</a> (check out ³Rescension² concept) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cinemanouvellegeneration.com">http://www.cinemanouvellegeneration.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lafilmfest.com">http://www.lafilmfest.com</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dfilm.com/">http://www.dfilm.com/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http:///www.newvenue.com/">http:///www.newvenue.com/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.manovich.net/docs/augmented_space.doc">http://www.manovich.net/docs/augmented_space.doc</a> (on video installations as cinema) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this free publication, please consider making a contribution within your means. We accept online credit card contributions at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Or call us at +1.212.625.3191. Contributors are gratefully acknowledged on our web site at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3">http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3</a>. 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 Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 27. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. 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