RHIZOME DIGEST: 9.10.04

discussion

Posted Sept. 9 2004 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 9.10.04

RHIZOME DIGEST: September 10, 2004 Content: +announcement+ 1. Rachel Greene: [Fwd: New book about Hacker and Cracker Art] 2. marta: free culture - cultura libre -liberad la cultura 3. Rachel Greene: Copy-art.net opens at the ICA, London 4. You Minowa: "project netarts.org" 2004 - 2nd annoucement +opportunity+ 5. Scott Snibbe: Regular Faculty Position at the Evergreen State College 6. Pierre: Call For Entries : Today in Paradise â Genetics & Art 7. Susan McNeil: Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Digital Media and Arts Production +work+ 8. Myron Turner: New project: bigQuestions.com 9. Rhizome.org: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: AUDC Wiki by AUDC 10. Bubble Sort: New Work:metatelephony—>a networked poem 11. Raquel Herrera: WEBLOG METANARRATIVE(S) +scene report+ 12. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Report from ISEA 2004 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 9.05.04 From: Rachel Greene <rachel@rhizome.org> Subject: [Fwd: New book about Hacker and Cracker Art] From: Lassi Tasajärvi <lassi@evenlakestudios.fi> Dear Media Art Colleagues, I thought this might interest you. Feel free to forward this to anyone who would find it useful. Thank you. Best Regards, Mr. Lassi Tasajärvi Finland :. www.evenlakestudios.fi :. www.katastro.fi MEDIA RELEASE :: 05 September 2004 For Immediate Release MULTIMEDIA ART CREATED BY HACKER AND CRACKER ARTISTS. The First Book ever about the 'Demoscene' culture has been released. Titled as "Demoscene: The Art of Real-Time". The book has 72 pages and is published by Even Lake Studios & katastro.fi. The demoscene is one of the most interesting phenomena to come out of digital media culture. It's a culture created by the first generation of kids who grew up with home computers and computer games in the 1980s. Even before Internet use became widespread, thousands of audiovisual works had been globally published and distributed by the demoscene culture. This was done using modems and diskettes. At the same time, the cracking scene, which has always been a close relative of the demoscene, systematically cracked and distributed just about every computer game and program to come on the market. The demoscene spawned a group of people that have worked in or started companies that played an important and pioneering role in the game, new media, digital graphics and ICT-sector industries in many countries. The demoscene was where many digital media artists, electronic music composers, as well as visual club culture and virtual community activists got their start. In the 2000s, the demoscene is still an active and productive global network and culture. This book is the first of its kind dealing with the demoscene. More information about the book can be found at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.evenlakestudios.com/books">http://www.evenlakestudios.com/books</a> Contact author/publisher: Mr. Lassi Tasajärvi email: lassi@_NOSPAM_evenlakestudios.fi mobile: +358 40 7222 711 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 9.06.04 From: marta <marta@elastico.net> Subject: free culture - cultura libre -liberad la cultura My co-editor in elastico.net, Antonio Cordoba, has just released an spanish version of Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig last work on the copyright war. Hope you enjoy it! mxxxxx <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.elastico.net/archives/001222.html">http://www.elastico.net/archives/001222.html</a> Cultura libre - HTML <a rel="nofollow" href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ion/stories/storyReader$869">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ion/stories/storyReader$869</a> Cultura Libre (PDF, 1.2Mb) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/gems/ion/Culturalibre.pdf">http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/gems/ion/Culturalibre.pdf</a> Cultura libre - Formato Palm Reader (CortesÃa de Albert Cuest) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.canalpda.com/displayarticle113.html">http://www.canalpda.com/displayarticle113.html</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering subsidized memberships 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 Rachel Greene at Rachel@Rhizome.org. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 9.07.04 From: Rachel Greene <rachel@rhizome.org> Subject: Copy-art.net opens at the ICA, London From: Carey Young [<a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:host@careyyoung.com">mailto:host@careyyoung.com</a>] Copy-art.net (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.copy-art.net">http://www.copy-art.net</a>) will be exhibited at the ICA London from Tuesday 7th September to Sunday 3rd October 2004. Copy-art.net is a copyright-free website, a curatorial project that aims to create an online platform to exchange works between artists, curators and the public and give the audience free access to works of art. This project intends to challenge the idea of intellectual property and test its limits in a copyright-free zone. Submitted works can be downloaded, changed, distributed, exhibited and used by all visitors for free. All submitted works will be present online in an archive, and available to the public to access. Only commercial use is excluded, as all works are registered with Creative Commons under a non-commercial license. This show marks the premier of new artists' contributions by: Elizabeth Price, Carey Young, Doug Fishbone, Abigail Reynolds, Reza Aramesh, Peter Coffin, Ella Gibbs, Gavin Wade, Beltran Obregon and Richard Crow. Existing work will be also shown by Anna Best, Bigert&Bergstrom, Colectivo Cambalache, Critical Art Ensemble, A K Dolven, House of O'Dwyer, Per Huttner, juneau/projects/, Matthieu Laurette, Miltos Manetas, N55, Szuper Gallery, Thomson & Craighead and SAK 12-7.30pm daily, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, The Mall, SW1 www.copy-art.net <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.copy-art.net">http://www.copy-art.net</a>> for further information please email mail@copy-art.net – Carey Young + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 9.10.04 From: You Minowa <webmaster@netarts.org> Subject: "project netarts.org" 2004 - 2nd annoucement "Project netarts.org" 2004 - 2nd announcement 1. From "Art on the Net" to the new "Project netarts.org" 2. Call for the nomination 3. The schedule 4. Physical events [new] ————————————————————- 1. From "Art on the Net" to the "Project netarts.org" Since 1995, The Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts has been hosting the "Art on the Net" project promoting the Internet as a space for artistic expression. For almost a decade now, this project has been calling on artists around the world to investigate the relationship between Art, the Internet and the Society. This summer, to celebrate the success of our "Art on the Net" project, we are going to launch a new event called "Project netarts.org." The "Project netarts.org" consists of an Internet Art exhibition, artist essays, theoretical articles, and an online forum. The Exhibition section of the project will feature recent developments in Internet Art and is open to all forms of creative expression that use the Internet as their primary medium. The essays and articles from artists, critics, curators and other contributors, will be featured in the Writings section. The Online Forum is open to everyone who is interested in Internet Art and other hybridized forms of Digital or Media Art that use network technologies. Although this project is primarily focused on the latest developments in the field of Internet Art, we are also very interested in considering contributions that reflect the influence of Internet Art production on the wider fields of Media-Art, Digital Art, curatorial practice, digital pedagogy, and online publishing. The new "Project netarts.org" will be launched 1st, Nov. 2004, at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.netarts.org/">http://www.netarts.org/</a> ————————————————————- 2. Call for the nomination This year, the artworks for the exhibition and the "netarts.org 2004 prize" will be chosen by our Selection Committee. The prize fee for the top selection will be 200,000 yen. The members of the Selection Committee are: Mark Amerika (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.markamerika.com/">http://www.markamerika.com/</a>) John Hopkins (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.neoscenes.net/">http://www.neoscenes.net/</a>) Trace Reddell (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.du.edu/~treddell/">http://www.du.edu/~treddell/</a>) Anne-Marie Schleiner (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.opensorcery.net/">http://www.opensorcery.net/</a>) You Minowa (Curator, MCMOGATK) The members will make their own nominations, but we will accept nominations from the web also. Please send your nomination to us directly at the website <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.netarts.org">http://www.netarts.org</a>. DO NOT SEND YOUR NOMINATIONS TO SELECTION COMMITTEE MEMBERS. The coordinators of "Project netarts.org" will also review essays and articles that focus on Internet art. Selected essays and articles will be featured in our Writings section, in English and Japanese. ————————————————————- 3. The schedule We will accept nominations by mail from 1st, Aug. 2004 to 15th, Sept. 2004. Check out our website for details. The award-winning artwork will be selected by 15th Oct. The exhibition will be launched 1st, Nov. 2004. We will soon announce some physical events to take place in Nov. at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo. ————————————————————- 4. Physical events We will invite Mark Amerika (USA)and Agnese Trocchi (Italy), and have physical events on 7th Nov. at the auditorium of the museum under the theme of [Art and the Internet: Hackers, Pirates, and Philosophers]. 13:30 Agnese Trocchi [lecture] "Peer-to-Peer Fightsharing: the Art of making Networks" 14:15 Mark Amerika [lecture] "Breaking the Code: How Net Artists Are Hacking Reality" 15:00 DJRABBI (Mark Amerika and Rick Silva, University of Colorado, USA) [Performance Art] "Net.Art-VJ-Hactivist-DJ-WWW-Collage-Remix-Performance" 16:00 Panel Discussion "Media Art and the Museum" ————————————————————- – You Minowa Curator Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.netarts.org/">http://www.netarts.org/</a> webmaster@netarts.org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 9.06.04 From: Scott Snibbe <scott@snibbe.com> Subject: Regular Faculty Position at the Evergreen State College From: Ruth Hayes [<a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:randomruth@comcast.net">mailto:randomruth@comcast.net</a>] Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 11:04 AM Subject: Regular Faculty Position at the Evergreen State College Regular Faculty Position at the Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA Digital Media The Evergreen State College seeks a Media Artist with demonstrated teaching experience in both digital moving image technologies, and cultural and critical theories of media. The candidate should have strong digital filmmaking skills and experience in at least two of the following: sound design, interactive media/web design, animation, digital photography or multimedia performance and installation. Other skills necessary to this position include the capacity to work effectively with students on writing, the ability to teach critical media theory, visual literacy and media literacy in an interdisciplinary context, and critical expertise in multicultural media arts (such as African American media, Native American media, global media activism, etc). This position is designed for a working artist and teacher with at least an MA (MFA preferred), and an active exhibition record. We are specifically looking for someone who values teaching that links media theory and practice in intensive, team-taught, interdisciplinary settings. This is a Regular Faculty position, eligible for continuing appointment after two, three-year renewable contracts. For more information on our Expressive Arts Program, review our website at <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.evergreen.edu/catalog/expmore.htm">http://www.evergreen.edu/catalog/expmore.htm</a>> Review of complete files starts November 19, 2004. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering subsidized memberships 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 Rachel Greene at Rachel@Rhizome.org. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 9.08.04 From: Pierre <drmoth@tpg.com.au> Subject: Call For Entries : Today in Paradise: Genetics & Art CALL FOR ENTRIES Today in Paradise - Genetics & Art Mobileart 05 GÃ¶teborg New Media Art Festival at RÃ¶da Sten, GÃ¶teborg, Sweden Submission Deadline: 24 November 2004 www.mobileart.se The call for works is open to artists, designers and performers both internationally and from the Nordic region willing to engage in the theme 'Today in Paradise: Genetics & Art'. Mobileart is announcing a call for works for its exhibition and festival which will open on the 1st April, 2005. This will consist of a 3-day festival/symposium held on Friday 1st April to Sunday 3rd April, concurrent with an exhibition at the same venue from Friday 1st April - Sunday 17th April. Today in Paradise: Genetics & Art will be held at RÃ¶da Sten (www.rodasten.com), a cultural landmark which lies on the sea entrance to the city of Gothenburg. Previously housing a huge industrial boiler, RÃ¶da Sten today is a hub for exhibitions and arts events, and offers everything from huge open spaces to small intimate rooms distributed over its approximate 1000 square metres. The outside of the building is a free zone for the graffiti artists of the city, and this unconventional exhibition space sets the scene for innovative explorations. The goal of Project RÃ¶da Sten is to develop itself as a nordic cultural centre for art, theatre, music and dance and to host international exhibitions of high standard. Mobileart is an organisation focussing on the advancement of digital and net-based art. Through exhibitions both on- and off-line, Mobileart seeks to create a forum for activities, meetings and information revolving around such art forms as visual art, music, design and architecture. THEMATIC BACKGROUND Since the middle of the 90's, a public debate about the possible consequences of biotechnology and genetics has emerged, with particular focus on how they might affect our lives and environment. The Scottish sheep Dolly, born in 1996 and deceased in 2003, was a catalyst for the emergence of this debate. The first mammal to be born through cloning, Dolly became symbolic of and synonymous with the new biotechnology. Biotechnology gave us a new perspective on ourselves with the completed mapping of the human genome. Many ethical questions have been opened up regarding the new biotechnology. Several aspects of our lives have been influenced over the last few years - living organisms and bodily organs can be reproduced, genes can be patented, genetic manipulation has found its way into agriculture, new medicines have been produced in the wake of the new biotechnology. The discoveries of genetic science and technology leaves us faced with several questions that deal with ethics, social relations, economics, religion and culture. In our every day life today we look out for the tags of 'genetically modified' on groceries, get offers from commercial bio-banks when we give birth and there's even an American company willing to take your order to clone your pet cat. Today biological and evolutionary processes are simulated by computers and information technology. Genetic and evolutionary algorithms are finding their way into many different fields of interest, within and outside of scientific areas of exploration. Examples of unusual applications of these algorithms can be already found in music, art and design. We are now in the era of post genetic revolution. The cloning technologies and gene mapping that once shocked are now commonplace, silently and often invisibly integrating themselves into the everyday. It is in such a climate that we would like to re-stimulate the debate and re-frame the question of how these are affecting us, and how we can express this through art. EXHIBITION AND FESTIVAL The exhibition is open to works based on the theme 'Today in Paradise: Genetics & Art' from various fields such as visual arts, architecture, design, music, dance and performance. Artists are invited to interpret the theme in various ways, either through direct commentary on genetics and biotechnology, or from a sociological/cultural perspective. Liberal interpretations and more abstract approaches to the theme will also be encouraged. Works utilizing genetic algorithms and evolutionary processes are also of interest, and need not be thematically or aesthetically related to the topic. For the exhibition from the 1st to 17th April we are looking for artists working in all kinds of media, for example interactive installations, photography, video, sound, and net based art. As this will be a group exhibition, space will be shared among the participants so this in an important factor to be aware of when submitting works. For the festival from the 1st to 3rd April we are seeking participants from the fields of music (especially electronic), dance and performance art to present pieces on site. A part of the exhibition will also hold information and visions from ongoing research from Biotechnology institutions and companies. IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline: 24th November 2004 Notification of participation: 21st December Exhibition dates: Friday 1st April to Sunday 17th April, 2005 Festival/Symposium dates: Friday 1st April to Sunday 3rd April, 2005 SUBMISSION INFORMATION Please fill in the on-line Apply Form found on the Mobileart website at: www.mobileart.se/apply.html or print out the PDF- Apply Form an post it to address (postmarked latest 24 Nov. 2004): Mobileart.se c/o Tomas Lundberg Sveagatan 22 413 14 GÃ¶teborg Sweden Supporting Documentation: This will consist of a maximum of 3 printed A4 pages of pictures/text/material needs. Describe any space requirements you might have, preferably in a simple sketch. OR The equivalent material presented in web format and submitted as an URL or FTP AND (optional) CD-ROM with audio/visual documentation (no additional text) Please NOTE: do not send documentation as attachments to email. Unfortunately, we are not able to return submitted material. A jury that will be announced later will take part in the selection of submitted works. FINANCIAL SUPPORT Equipment hire costs of participating artists will be covered by the exhibition. As we will be working on a modest budget, we recommend that artists explore the possibility of local funding for transport and travel costs. There will however be specific funding allocated to support Nordic artists. The budget will be finalized in December, and support for participating artists will be determined from then onwards. For those who are interested in webpages and articles about genetics there are some links at www.mobileart.se. The exhibition/festival is a collaboration between: Mobileart.se Kulturprojekt RÃ¶da Sten Chalmers, Art & Technology www.mobileart.se www.rodasten.com www.id.gu.se/info/arttech Contact email for enquiries: info@mobileart.se + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 9.08.04 From: Susan McNeil <susan_mcneil@brown.edu> Subject: Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Digital Media and Arts Production The Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University (www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM) invites applications for a tenure track assistant professorship in Digital Media and Digital Arts. The position will be available 7/1/05. Modern Culture and Media is a department that emphasizes the relationships between theory and production. The successful candidate will play a central role in the development of a digital media curriculum. The candidate's primary engagement should be within digital production. The candidate should have a strong commitment to teaching and a thorough understanding of both the imaginative processes of media and digital arts practices and the technical means necessary to their production. An established track record in digital production (or promise thereof) is essential and teaching experience is preferred. The candidate should also have a reasonable fluency in new media theory, post-structuralist theory, and new media research. Ph.D. or MFA preferred. Applicants should send a letter of interest, curriculum vitae, examples of work, and three letters of recommendation. Consideration of applications will begin on 11/1/04. Applicants are strongly advised to submit their materials by that date in order to receive full consideration. For more information, and to submit applications, contact Professor Mary Ann Doane, Chair, Search Committee, Department of Modern Culture and Media, Box 1957, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 Mary_Ann_Doane@brown.edu Brown is an EEO/AA employer. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply. For more information: www.brown.edu/Administration/EEO-AA/index.html + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + For $65 annually, Rhizome members can put their sites on a Linux server, with a whopping 350MB disk storage space, 1GB data transfer per month, catch-all email forwarding, daily web traffic stats, 1 FTP account, and the capability to host your own domain name (or use <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.net/your_account_name">http://rhizome.net/your_account_name</a>). Details at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/services/1.php">http://rhizome.org/services/1.php</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 9.04.04 From: Myron Turner <myron_turner@shaw.ca> Subject: New project: bigQuestions.com <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.room535.org/bigQuestions.com">http://www.room535.org/bigQuestions.com</a> bigQuestions.com(2004) is a data-mining and database project, which I hope will be of interest to people interested in databases, code, and language. There are two parts to the project: 1. It searches web sites and library catalogues for words which signify "big" questions, i.e of philosophy, religion, science. It stores them with their contexts in a searchable database, which at present consists of approximately 65,000 library and 45,000 web entries. Visitors to the site can search the database for terms other than the big terms to see how these terms are used and contextualized in our culture, as often amusing and trivial as they are serious. The web sites where the terms occur are accessible by links as are the library databases, which can then be further searched. 2. There's a "real time" window where the results of the data-mining can be watched, both the raw accumulation of found data and the software code itself as it moves through its paces. The latter is a kind of mini-debugger for the perl script which does the real time searches for raw output. This is raw, in that the data will later be processed for inclusion in the database and then indexed. I see in this a.m.'s RARE that Lewis LaCook is reporting on his survey about code. I have to confess that one of my reasons for doing bigQuestions.com is love of code. It's been a massive coding porject: the coding of the database and its structures, data-mining software for both web sites and library catalogues, the real time coding which is perl on the server and javascript in the browser, the DHTML interface etc. I started almost 2 years ago when I discovered the perl Z3950 module for accessing over 1000 online library catalogues. But I had to develop a module, now part of the perl Z3950 project, which could query any library, not just ones you were familiar with, without potentially freezing up so that it could be used over the web and for querying up to 1000 libraries also without hanging. But this obsession with code combines with an interest in language and its cultural contexts. And with an attempt to mirror in a web project the experience of the Internet, or at least my experience. On the one hand, the Internet reaches out into a vast cultural and techological space that can only be imagined. On the other hand, there are the depths, the inner workings, the code. Both kinds of space are hidden from view; yet they intersect in the experience of the person sitting at the monitor. And this intersection has a parallel in the intersection of public and private space that also goes into the making of the Internet experience. The closest analogy to this kind of space is the architecture of large structures, which is also a technological and cultural space that can't be taken in all at once but at best imagined, which also has its hidden technological depths and is the nexus of public and private experience. I had an exchange about this earlier in the year with Curt Cloninger: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=13100&text=25113">http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=13100&text=25113</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 9. Date: 9.09.04 From: Rhizome.org <artbase@rhizome.org> Subject: Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase: AUDC Wiki by AUDC Just added to the Rhizome ArtBase … <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?27664">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?27664</a> + AUDC Wiki + + AUDC + Invented by Ward Cunningham in 1995, a WikiWikiWeb, or Wiki, for short, is a communal, hypertext repository of knowledge on the web. Cunningham's project, the Portland Pattern Repository, gathered information on design patterns, recurring solutions to problems in object-oriented design programming. Design patterns are inspired by Christopher Alexander's idea of a pattern language that could be developed for designing buildings and cities. "Wiki wiki" means fast in Hawaiian. Employing a simplified subset of HTML and markup within the web browser itself, a wiki page is much faster to develop than most web pages. Moreover, Wikis are editable by multiple individuals and generally actively encourage anyone who visits them to contribute. Wikis inherently tend toward non-linear navigational structures, although hierarchical navigation pages can be created (example: The Ether Project) as well. In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer, a broadcast engineer for Radiodiffusion-Television Francaise took the noises of trains and banging saucepans and, after hours of editing the tapes with a razor blade, constructed two pieces of music: Etude aux Chemins de Fer and Etudes aux Cassaroles. After these sound collages were broadcast on the radio, Schaeffer would term them "musique concrete." This is our goal for the AUDC Wiki. + + + Biography Begun as a research unit within the Southern California Institute of Architecture, SCI-ARC [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sciarc.edu">http://www.sciarc.edu</a>] by Kazys Varnelis and Robert Sumrell [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.audc.org">http://www.audc.org</a>] Architecture Urbanism Design Collaborative is a nonprofit collective dedicated to using the tools of the architect, the designer, and the historian to research the individual and the community in the contemporary urban environment. AUDC blurs traditional divisions between media by working simultaneously in print, web, video, photography, drawings, models, dioramas, and installations while addressing the particularities of each medium. Likewise, AUDC breaks down the boundaries between theory and practice by uniting both scholarship and creative work. "We erect our structures in our imaginations before we erect them in reality." –Karl Marx + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 10. Date: 9.09.04 From: Bubble Sort <llacook@yahoo.com> Subject: New Work:metatelephony—>a networked poem <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lewislacook.com/metatelephony/">http://www.lewislacook.com/metatelephony/</a>   PHP/HTML   metatelephony is a networked poem–>metatelephony takes any web page you feed it, grabs the source code of the page, mixes it up at random, takes a randomly-chosen word from that page, performs a Google search on it, and displays a blend of both the source code and descriptions of pages found in the search…–>a shadow-poem of the web–> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 11. Date: 9.10.04 From: Raquel Herrera <rahefe@hotmail.com> Subject: WEBLOG METANARRATIVE(S) It is already online the new weblog on Metanarrative(s), reflections on the artistic direction of audiovisual and multimedia narratives and syntax. This weblog will work as a preview and a space of commentaries and criticism on digital narrative before the 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia in Mediateca Caixaforum (Barcelona, January 28th-29th 2005). We are looking forward to seeing your comments! Links: Weblog Metanarrative(s)> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://metanarratives.blogspot.com/">http://metanarratives.blogspot.com/</a> 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia: Metanarrative(s)? International meeting on the artistic direction of audiovisual and multimedia narratives and syntax> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mediatecaonline.net/5jornades/eng/index.htm">http://www.mediatecaonline.net/5jornades/eng/index.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 12. Date: 9.10.04 From: Jonah Brucker-Cohen <jonah@coin-operated.com> Subject: Report from ISEA 2004 Report from ISEA 2004 August 14-22, 2004 Helsinki (Finland), Baltic Cruise, Tallinn (Estonia) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.isea2004.net">http://www.isea2004.net</a> By Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah (at) coin-operated.com) Held over a week and located in Helsinki, Tallinn, and a Baltic Sea-roving cruise liner, ISEA 2004 was a marathon media arts conference like none other. With over 1,500 artists taking part in panels, performances, fashion shows, keynotes, and installations, there was little time for sleep among all of the commuting between venues. The conference¹s theme examined the crossover between wireless culture, wearable or fashionable technology, and networked experience. ISEA 2004 aimed to explore themes surrounding critical notions of interaction design, open source software culture, and geopolitics of media. This approach attempted to challenge accepted notions of interaction by focusing on possibilities of re-appropriation instead of mere re-evaluation. Although the conference schedule was an often strenuous journey through multiple cities and events, the discussions, interventions, and realizations that manifested contributed to an exhilarating experience. The festival officially began aboard the ³Networked Experience² Baltic sea cruise (I missed the Koneisto sound event the night before in Helsinki), where the focus was on how networked culture iterates human understanding through shared experiences such as email lists, collective performance, interactive narrative, and GPS sound installations. The panel entitled ³The List: The mailing list phenomena², began in the Metropolitan ballroom of the ship, with a panel of list-serve moderators such as Melinda Rackham of Empyre, Kathy Rae Huffman of Faces, Axel Bruns of Fibre Culture, and Charlotte Frost who is studying list culture for her Ph.D. thesis. Examining networked culture, the debate centered around the nurturing of lists and what types of communication technologies are appropriate for specific communities. I spoke on the challenges of my BumpList project as an example of an email community that focuses on shifting the structure of a system to change its participants behaviors. Other panels and events focused on community awareness in digital media projects like ³E-Tester² and UNESCO meetings with African and Asian award winners and participants. Arriving bewildered and tired in the city of Tallinn, Estonia, the ³Wearable Experience² theme of ISEA began with a keynote from Concordia University¹s Joanna Berzowska. Her talk was an overview of wearable trends and projects that aimed to challenge traditional notions of strapped-on gadgetry by emphasizing the integration of sensors and displays into clothing. Her own research on ³Memory Rich Garments² showed how everyday emotions and intimacy could be projected and enhanced through computationally enhanced clothing that stores non-personal data about people it comes into contact with. Other panels focused on the how technology and fashion can integrate into networks, how clothing can act as a display for portable signage, or how intimacy could be conveyed over distance. This discussion continued to Helsinki¹s ³Wireless Experience² theme, which began as hundreds of ISEA attendees were stuck in passport control after arriving on the SuperSeaCat ferry from Tallinn. Machiko Kusahara of Japan¹s Waseda University opened the conference with a keynote address on mobile phone culture in Japan. Her focus centered around how ³socially acceptable² mobile phone or ³ketai² use had become and how advertisements for services emphasized how ³left out² of mainstream culture people have become without a phone. Although her talk emphasized the social pressures of technology, it left out dangers of extended mobile phone use or the advent of surveillance culture. These questions were made more evident through the many parallel sessions over the next few days. The second keynote by the Sarai New Media Initiative¹s Shuddhabrata Sengupta focused around the conference theme of ³Histories of the New² and how reinventing the future is often tied to lessons from the past. His talk ³The Remains of Tomorrows Past: Speculations on the Antiquity of New Media Practice in South Asia², presented the history of technical networks from the telegraph to the Internet. His talk referenced Tom Standage¹s book ³The Victorian Internet² to illustrate how these information networks are not new and how they simply provide frameworks for a centralized space that expands global discourse. UCLA¹s Erkki Huhtamo, followed this talk with his take on the ³Archaeology of Mobile Media², or how media does not exist independently from the social framework that envelops them. He showed imagery of the amateur photographer of the early 20th century comparing the public perception of this ³nuisance² to the current mobile phone camera phenomenon: both seen as invasions of privacy and unwanted surveillance in the hands of the people. Following this theme, the GPS art panel, moderated by San Francisco based-artist Marisa Olsen, attempted to ground location-based media projects into a defined genre. The current ghettoization of media art into technology-defined categories like GPS or Wi-Fi tends to counter creativity at its roots. Instead the focus should be on crystallizing an idea so that the technology becomes less awkward and central to the output. Projects discussed included Pall Thayer¹s ³Hlemmur in C² that tracked taxi movements through GPS and composed real-time soundtracks based on their position in the city, Joel Slayton¹s (of the C5 collective) mapping of altitudes on the Great Wall of China to plot where it could have been built in California, and Teri Rueb¹s ³Trace² which allows people to discover location-based sound clips embedded into positions on a nature trail in Canada. In a sense, most of the work in this area centers on GPS enabling you find or discover things in your environment or enabling people or devices to find you. Little was mentioned about the surveillance aspects of tracking or the social aspects of why this technology is becoming pervasive? Filling in the hard theory was keynote speaker Wendy Hui Kyong Chun of Brown University who spoke on ²Control and Freedom: Interactivity as a Software Effect². Her talk was probably the most seminal moment of the conference as it connected up the central themes. Chun emphasized the role of technology as a contributor to social stigma especially in networked culture and outlined how surveillance is becoming a visual and territorial metaphor for control. Her breakdown of the utopian view that current software assumes that users cannot understand computation showed explicitly how layers of mediation between code and interface are getting thicker. Nina Wakeford of the University of Surrey spoke on ³Identity Politics of Mobility and Design Culture², focusing on the importance of local knowledge with examples of projects that emphasized aspects of mobility as a driving force in design. The exhibitions scattered around Tallinn and Helsinki showcased everything from fashion tech and accessories to social and political projects, to interactive installations and data visualizations. Some impressive projects included Bundith Phunsombatlert¹s ³Path of Illusion², a series of street lamps with rotating LED displays that passerbyers could type into rounded keyboards at the base of the lights. Also meant to display information in public space was Steve Heimbecker¹s ³POD (Wind Array Cascade Machine)² which consisted of sixty four air flow sensors in Montreal that transmitted data to towers of LEDs that resembled a large-scale graphic equalizer. Also interesting was Diego Diaz¹s ³Playground² which turned a kids merry-go-round into a collective joystick to navigate a shared 3D space. I think someone got overexcited and broke the piece midway through. In Tallinn, the wearable showcase features Tina Gonsalves and Tom Donaldson¹s ³Medulla Intimata², video jewelry that changes depending on the emotional state of the wearer and the conversations in which they are engaged. Other projects such as Kelly Dobson¹s ³ScreamBody² which consists of a bag you scream into and release the sound later, Sabrina Raaf¹s ³Saturday² which used gloves with bone transducers to hear sampled CB radio conversations through your cheekbones, and ³Seven Mile Boots² by Laura Beloff, Erich Berger and Martin Pichlmair that allows people to traverse chat rooms by walking around a physical space. Overall the projects in the show examined how wearable technology can impact and change our environment, personal experience and social landscape As ISEA ended, most people were thoroughly exhausted. Although the constant shifting of venues, cities, and themes might have contributed to this, the questions raised by the presentations and exhibitions remained strong throughout the event. Why is interaction engaging? Is there a larger message involved? How do creative systems and practice filter up to decision and policy makers to provoke and result in global action? With diverse speakers such as the Sarai Collective¹s challenge to the hegemony of the digital art canon and Mark Tribe open-sourcing his presentation online so that people could ³remix² it after his talk, the conference presented a wide array of contrasting opinions that attempted to make sense of the current media arts landscape. With so many perspectives, the endpoint seemed scattered but also manageable. The more we question the fundamental reasons why technology is important, the more we discover why we cannot live without it. Only through events like ISEA can we really come to grips with this realization. ?Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah (at) coin-operated.com) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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 Kevin McGarry (kevin@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 9, number 37. 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>. Subscribers to Rhizome Digest are subject to the terms set out in the Member Agreement available online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/29.php">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php</a>. Please invite your friends to visit Rhizome.org on Fridays, when the site is open to members and non-members alike. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +