The Kuala Lumpur Triennial Six: Artifice On-line :: August 6 – October 6, 2009 :: Central Market Annexe, Jalan Hang Kasturi, 50470 Kuala Lumpur (until August 9) + Second Life.

This year’s Triennial focuses on the screen and virtuality. Participating artists, theorists, curators, and programmers hail from Finland, Chechnya, Malaysia, Singapore and the US. The exhibition takes place completely in the Second Life game construct, where Finnish artist, Pascal Sobczak has scaled up and simulated the Annexe Gallery.

On display is Little Chechnya, mosque designed and created by the Finland-based Chechen refugee artist, A. Law with Sobczak. Continue reading

Equation: a balanced state? — Second Site — CLUI Display Facility :: August 1 – September 19, 2009 :: 516 Arts, 516 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque, NM.

A collaborative project exploring land-based art in New Mexico, Equation: a balanced state? is an exhibition of site specific installations by artists Katherine E. Bash, Paula Castillo, Ted Laredo, David Niec and Mayumi Nishida, reflecting a world where the environment is as much about ourselves and our creations as the natural world with which we struggle to strike a balance. The exhibition includes digitally simulated waterfalls, built environments that glow in the dark, and explorations of the division between day and night in the natural environment as observed in the night sky of New Mexico. Science, technology and the study of climate and land usage play an important role in the research and development of these art projects. Curated by Thomas and Edite Cates of THE LAND/an art site. Continue reading

[Image: Superstruct video] Resetting Theory — Empire@Play: Virtual Games and Global Capitalism by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, C-THEORY.NET:

Our argument, need we say, is not that “games make you kill,” in the sense asserted in moral panics about the play of “Doom” or “Grand Theft Auto”. It is that digital games are systemically incorporated in the war-fighting apparatus of Empire, in ways that render developers and players material partners in military technoculture, and Defense Departments’ systemic cullers of gamer subjectivities: this is what makes virtual play integral to “banal war,” the normalized state of perpetual conflict Empire’s global control demands.

Amidst the current convulsions, global capitalism has one consolation left for its increasingly desperate subjects: you may have lost your job (or will never be able to retire from it), you can’t afford to go out, but you can always stay home (if you still have one) and play a video game. Continue reading

Abstract: The concept of a ‘strange ontology’ is articulated via the intersection of philosophical and computational definitions of ontology. Within digital media, each simulated world requires both; an ontology, to define its existence as data; and a subject, the player or user, who engages with the simulation. Glitches or interventions in these simulations create ontologies that are inconsistent with our lived experience, rendering them ‘strange’. We draw upon a range of works to illustrate this concept including game art, social networking software, Guglielmetti’s ‘Laboratories of thought’ and generative art. The paper aims to define this concept and outlines a terrain for further investigation. From Strange Ontologies in Digital Culture by Mitchell Whitelaw, Mark Guglielmetti, and Troy Innocent.

WOW Pod, a collaboration between Cati Vaucelle, Steve Shada, and Marisa Jahn will be at the MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from March-September 2009.

The WOW Pod is an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WOW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs. Inside, the gamer finds him/ herself comfortable seated in front of the computer screen with easy-to-reach water, pre-packaged food, and a toilet conveniently placed underneath his/ her custom-built throne.

When hungry, the gamer selects a food item (‘Crunchy Spider Surprise’, ‘Beer Basted Ribs’, etc.) and a seasoning pack. By scanning in the food items, the video game physically adjusts a hot plate to cook the item for the correct amount of time. Continue reading

Curing the Vampire consists of four interviews by artist-filmmaker Lynn Hershmann Leeson. Partially shot in the virtual world of Second Life, Curing the Vampire is being released one episode at a time.

Subverting the distinction between real and simulated, the interviews explore interwoven themes of revolution, empowerment, technology and the remix. Each interview examines how new and mass media mechanisms have generated change and how cultural and technological infrastructures have shaped the ability of individuals to have social and political impact.

Playing the part of Gene Ware, a character from the virtual world of Second Life, Hershman Leeson undertakes a set of interviews in conjunction with Tilda Swinton, posing questions to a selection of guests, including a politician, journalist, scientist and lawyer. Continue reading

Virtual Peace reflects a rich, interdisciplinary collaboration among experts and educators at the Duke-UNC Rotary Center for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, Virtual Heroes (a Durham, NC-based developer of game-based training and learning environments), Duke University’s Visual Studies Initiative, the Duke Computer Science Department, and the Program for Information Science + Information in Society at Duke. Together, the group has transformed video game technology previously used for army training simulations into an innovative tool for international humanitarian aid education. The simulation developed by these partners takes as its model the real-life events following a major natural disaster: Hurricane Mitch, which devastated much of Central America in 1998. Continue reading

Becoming Dragon, a mixed reality, durational performance by Micha Cárdenas in Second Life and at Calit2 :: Beginning December 1, 2008; 7:00 pm; runs for 365 hours :: The Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), Atkinson Hall, Visiting Artist Lab #1613, University of California San Diego.

Becoming Dragon questions the one year requirement of Real Life Experience that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive Gender Confirmation Surgery (Sexual Reassignment Surgery), and asks if this could be replaced by one year of Second Life Experience to lead to Species Reassignment Surgery. Continue reading

Performing Presence: From the Live to the Simulated – An international conference :: March, 26-29, 2009 :: Centre for Intermedia, University of Exeter, UK :: CALL FOR PAPERS – Deadline: December 1, 2008.

What creates a sense of presence? the presence of a live performer … the presence of the past … in a memory … in ruined remains … the sense of ‘being there’ in an online community … in a VR or mixed reality environment … Presence is a fundamental yet highly contested aspect of performance, and performance has come to be a key concept in many different fields. Notions of presence hinge on the relationship between the live and mediated, on notions of immediacy, authenticity and originality. Continue reading