RHIZOME DIGEST: 1.6.02

discussion

Posted Jan. 5 2002 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 1.6.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: January 6, 2002 Content: +announcement+ 1. Derek Holzer: Acoustic.Space.Lab–new site for the new year 2. Melinda Rackham: -empyre- mailing list +opportunity+ 3. Nina Czegledy: ISEA2002 'ORAI' +work+ 4. Peter Traub: sibling revelry–a net sampling sound toy 5. computer: videonet work +book review+ 6. Marc Lafia: "Information Arts" by Stephen Wilson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 12.31.01 From: Derek Holzer (republikasleazka@HOTMAIL.COM) Subject: Acoustic.Space.Lab–new site for the new year Acoustic.Space.Lab ::: new site on-line 01.01.2002 <a href="http://acoustic.space.re-lab.net/lab">http://acoustic.space.re-lab.net/lab</a> From August 4-12, 2001, twenty five media artists and activists from three different continents gathered together at Irbene, in the forests of western Latvia, at the site of a Soviet-era 32meter dish antenna. Formerly used to spy on satellite transmissions between Europe and North America by the KGB, the antenna was abandoned and nearly destroyed when the Russians departed in 1994. The dish is currently under repair for civilan use as one of the top 5 most precise radiotelescopes in the world. The intent of this workshop was two-fold. The first was to explore the possibilities for creative interaction with a formerly military, and now a civilian-scientific, device which artists can seldom access. The second is to create a communications network of our own out of the raw material gathered at the dish. This "open-source sampling" process has its origins in the scientific and computer programming communities, where research is shared within a network for the common advancement of the field. Artists who were present at the orginal workshop, as well as others who joined in our network afterwards, have contributed various projects to our on-going collaboration. On January 1, 2002, the Acoustic.Space.Lab site will host the first presentation of many to come, featuring audio, video, web installations and images utilizing or inspired by the materials from the dish. Featured artists include: ***Mukul (Ambient TV) ***Kim Cascone ***Kevin P ***Francis Hunger ***Locomotive ***Sara Kolster ***minuszero + dlf + m// ***Clausthome For more information, visit: <a href="http://acoustic.space.re-lab.net/lab">http://acoustic.space.re-lab.net/lab</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Artistic Environments of Telepresence on the World Wide Web" by Luisa Paraguai Donati and Gilbertto Prado addresses the use of live images in artistic spaces. Find out what events you'll participate in via the web. Pick up a copy of LEONARDO's Digital Salon, Volume 34 Number 5 and visit:@: <a href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 1.3.2002 From: Melinda Rackham (melinda@subtle.net) Subject: -empyre- mailing list Keywords: community, art world You are invited to subscribe to the new -empyre- mailing list: <a href="http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre">http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre</a> -empyre- moderated by melinda rackham, is an arena designed for the discussion of media arts practice and theory. athough -empyre- is an international list. It first evolved to address the gap in the australian regional online terrain after the decline of the "recode" list, presenting a companion list to "fibreculture." -empyre- will regularly invite guests in the fields of media arts practice, theory, curation or administration to discuss thier particular areas of expertise, publications, zines and creative projects. The first guest from 15 January 2002 will be Ollivier Dyens <a href="http://www.subtle.net/">http://www.subtle.net/</a> empyrean/empyre/dyens.html from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, curator of "Metal and Flesh" website <a href="http://www.metalandflesh.com">http://www.metalandflesh.com</a>, who will discuss his new book Metal and Flesh, which deals with the technologically induced transformation of our perceptions of the world and the emergence of a cultural biology. In March 2002 Anonetta Ivanova from Viscopy in Sydney, Australia will discuss legal, financial and copyright issues for artists who work digitally and/or online. Further guests will be advised in the coming months. -empyre- is now open for subscription, is available in raw or digest, and is archived online. -empyre- is not an announcement or self promotion list and the moderator reserves the right to unsubscribe anyone consistantly disregarding these guidelines. to subscribe to -empyre- please visit <a href="http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre">http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre</a> <a href="http://www.subtle.net">http://www.subtle.net</a> <a href="http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre">http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre</a> <a href="http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre/dyens.html">http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre/dyens.html</a> <a href="http://www.metalandflesh.com">http://www.metalandflesh.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **METAMUTE ECHELON COMPETITION WINNERS: Metamute announces the winners of the Echelon competition. 1st prize: The Avatar Group - Isis, followed by runners up: Tessa Laird - Pink Noise and Edward Lear - The Owl and the Pussycat Assassinate the EuroFeds. Read all the entries: <a href="http://www.metamute.com/mfiles/index.htm">http://www.metamute.com/mfiles/index.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 1.5.02 From: Nina Czegledy (czegledy@INTERLOG.COM) Subject: ISEA2002 'ORAI'–reminder VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO All REMINDER DEADLINE APPROACHING!!! ISEA2002 SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE: February 28, 2002 + + + CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPATION ISEA2002 'ORAI' OCTOBER 27-31, 2002 NAGOYA, JAPAN http//www.isea.jp ISEA2002 NAGOYA[Orai], the first ISEA symposium in Asia, is expecting about 1500 participants including artists, researchers, engineers, students, and presentations of over 200 papers and works from 30 countries around the world. Many related exhibitions, concerts, performances and other events are also planned to take place in the Nagoya area during the time of ISEA2002. ISEA2002 is organized by a Steering Committee [MEDIASELECT, City of Nagoya, Nagoya Port Authority,etc] in partnership with the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) and others. ISEA2002 is committed to hosting an inclusive event, encompassing the many trends in electronic art throughout the world, including those with limited access to the latest technology and those working from a cultural context, which may be unfamiliar to the reviewers. Members from communities that traditionally have been under-represented at ISEA are encouraged to identify the new perspectives that they can bring to the symposium. ISEA2002 will offer Papers, Panels, Round Tables, Posters, and Institutional Presentations for scientists, artistic experts, and professionals. Workshops and Tutorials hold special interest for teachers, students, and practicing artists. Exhibitions, Performances, Concerts, and Electronic Theater, are also aimed at the cultural exchange program and are open to the public. ISEA2002 invites Papers to be given during the symposium. Proposals for Panels, Round Tables, Poster Sessions and Institutional Presentations are also welcome related to the symposium topic (see http//www.isea.jp/) ISEA2002 SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE: February 28, 2002 http//www.isea.jp + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ STATE OF THE ARTS SYMPOSIUM * UCLA APRIL 4-6, 2002 * RHIZOME DISCOUNT * <<a href="http://www.eliterature.org/state">http://www.eliterature.org/state</a>> ELO invites Rhizome subscribers to join leading web artists, writers, critics, theorists for the seminal e-lit event of 2002. Rhizome subscribers who register before FEB 15 2002 may register at ELO member rates ($25 discount). + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 12.30.01 From: Peter Traub (Peter.Traub@alum.dartmouth.org) Subject: sibling revelry–a net sampling sound toy <a href="http://www.fictive.org/sr">http://www.fictive.org/sr</a> After months of collaboration by the brothers Traub (Greg and Peter), 'sibling revelry' is ready for your ears. Type in a search term (preferably sound related), and the 'sibling revelry' engine will search the web for related sounds, bringing those it finds directly to your browser. Use your mouse or your keyboard (keys a,s,d,f, and g) to play back the sounds to create your own unique internet sound collage. Please be patient, as the engine sometimes takes a few minutes to find its first batch of sounds. We have given you some default sounds to play with while you wait. 'sibling revelry' requires Macromedia Flash 5, and preferably a high- bandwidth connection (DSL or better). <a href="http://www.fictive.org/sr">http://www.fictive.org/sr</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 1.4.02 From: computer (computer@computerfinearts.com) Subject: videonet work videonet work> <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/3.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/3.html</a> * java enabled * quicktime 4.1+ * fast connection recommended if you can not see the page, go direct> goal> <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/goal/index.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/goal/index.html</a> pecker> <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/pecker/index.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/pecker/index.html</a> hollyland > <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/hollyland/index.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/hollyland/index.html</a> + + + <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/3.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/3.html</a> <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/goal/index.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/goal/index.html</a> <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/pecker/index.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/pecker/index.html</a> <a href="http://www.computerfinearts.com/hollyland/index.html">http://www.computerfinearts.com/hollyland/index.html</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 1.5.2002 From: Marc Lafia (marclafia@EARTHLINK.NET) Subject: "Information Arts" Keywords: technology, social space, responsibility, research +book review+ "Information Arts" by Stephen Wilson Stephen Wilson in his new book, "Information Arts" takes us on an extraordinary tour of the ever widening landscape of art practice today. The book is not only a compendium of a great range of artists works but an equally compelling inquiry into the very role of the artist and the context in which art is produced. In his book published by Leonardo and MIT Press, Mr. Wilson argues that there is an enormous value for artists to work on the frontiers of emerging technologies, not only to produce new works and advance new discourses, but equally to have artists probe these fields and reclaim them from the university and corporate research departments. and through art and cultural criticism, bring their findings into the larger cultural realm. After all, if art is to tell us something of our culture, and our culture is daily being impacted by advances in physics, genetics, biology, robotics, astrophysics, artificial life, telecommunications, digital information systems, then shouldn't such things be forefront on the minds of artists and of the keenest interest to the public. Stephen Wilson who has worked as an artist and researcher for the past twenty years presents his book as a resource in the reexamination of the relationship between research and art, between science and art. It is his claim that it is in the crucible, in the percept of art, that science and technology will yield different answers, approached with different methods as to the systems of meaning and significance that constitute their fields proper. Under each others purview, each other's temperament, science and art come into relief and are seen anew in a manner most pressingly needed for our culture. Is it the artist, or the scientist, or both, that make visible and give shape and form to what is often not seen, mapping a space of knowledge visually, sensually, of something there, but not quite there before? Is each a varied vantage point on a similar set of data? Each an exercise in modeling? In our living, are we not always concerned with questions of nature, life, pleasure, the individual, the social body and our conjugation to emerging technologies which forge the trajectories and folds of our varied and interwoven cultural meshworks? Can one be a producer of cultural materials without encountering these issues? How might this information enter into the conceptualization and practice of art? It is these questions that Wilson addresses in his over 900-page exemplarily researched tome. Part historical overview with insight into numerous disciplines of the sciences leading narratives, part analysis of contemporary critical practices, the book presents the works of numerous artists, overviews of research agendas, organizing the book around categories of research which differentiate the sections such as biology, physical sciences, mathematics, computers, alternative interfaces, telecommunications and robotics. Chapter by chapter his method is consistent and extensive, for example, biology - and the understanding and controlling of the organic world, including our bodies which many analysts state will far out distance the electronic and computer revolution. This field will lead to significant cultural questions about the nature of being human and the implications of biological manipulation. In this chapter he presents such varied critical discourses as Ruth Hubbard's "Reinventing Biology" which annotates essays of alternative perspectives to the notion of scientific or medical objectivity - and "The Making of the Human Body" by historians Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Walter Laqueur which describes how the body has been perceived over time by different epochs and cultures - amongst numerous other books. After giving a sense of the currency of the discipline he surveys the research agendas of the field (for example in medicine, drugs, sensors and device development top the research agendas of medical technology companies) and with these put forward he then focuses on enumerating how artists have approached biology and medicine as emerging technologies. Quite a tall task. Artists working in emerging research, as well as artists as students of the sciences, have opportunity to become knowledgeable about an area of technology or science and then engage in much needed cultural critique. Such critique can reveal narratives and concepts that might be invisible to not only regular practitioners of the field but cultural critics and the public as well. Undoubtedly, research agendas in all of these fields raise a series of complex and disturbing questions. For example, cultural narratives produce our experience of our bodies. Medicine and experience of the body is not just an objective corpus of scientific knowledge external to culture but rather a product of media and language. This research and the sciences then is most fitting terrain for artists to get involved with, both to comment on, and to independently shape possible future research directions. It is this conversation that the arts can foster and that Wilson invites us to participate and encourage. The book takes cues and departure from cultural and post-structuralist studies. It looks systematically at the rhetorical techniques that channel a field's conceptualization and the power of metaphor in promoting some ideas and excluding others. One must understand the discourse - the pattern of words, figures of speech, concepts, values, symbols, texts, and visual representations - in order to understand a phenomenon and its associated practices and ideologies. And Wilson references a great many books and practices giving insight as to how cultural criticism gives fore to such tools of analyses. But now cultural criticism and critics, he argues, must give greater invitation, encouragement, merit and dialogue to art practices engaged with the sciences. Cultural critics need to open a space of understanding to read the sciences as a domain proper for the arts. And the sciences need to understand the enormous value artists can bring to the sciences. It is this conversedness that cultural criticism lacks today. "Information Arts" then is as much an invitation to art educators, curators and collectors to ask the question, from whence does art come, as it is a probing of just what art is and it's place in culture. Mr. Wilson places this question pointedly to contemporary cultural critics wondering whether art has become too circumscribed, and as a result, the engagement of a much larger dialogue about our place in the technological culture we are producing, and living in, is being made short shrift by the tight confines of the current international art scene. He argues that though the museum community has come round to the net and things digital, even video games, and occasionally transgenic art, there is much, much more out there with which they need get attuned. Is there more that art can engage, more questions that it can raise, more work that it can bring to us, more insight into ourselves and our world? - clearly and sincerely Mr. Wilson is asking these questions. He argues the necessity and pleasure of including techno-scientific research in a definition of art. He has given us an invaluable book presenting such work and an invitation to engage such dialogue. It would be exciting to take him up on this offer. <a href="http://online.sfsu.edu/~swilson/book/infoartsbook.html">http://online.sfsu.edu/~swilson/book/infoartsbook.html</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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 href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. 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