Citizens and Subjects is a three-part project conceived as the Dutch contribution to the 52nd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2007). The project reflects on the notion of the nation-state in the present day circumstances of the so-called West and asks how we can negotiate its prospects vis-a-vis the challenges posed by the enduring state of anxiety stemming from various threats, real or imagined. This contemporary condition is co-defined by immigration, an issue of major political and moral consequence, which we seem to have been incapable of resolving. Instead, fear, ‘security’ and violence have increasingly become tools for maintaining the status quo. Continue reading

Ivan Franco

Upgrade! Lisbon: Ivan Franco :: May 30, 2007 19:00 :: @ Lisboa20 Arte Contemporâneam, Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão 18B (Campo de Ourique).

Ivan Franco was born in Lisbon in 1974. In 1993 started studying engineering and in 1995 he joined the research group GASA, one of the most advanced in the fields of computing experiments and owner of the first Virtual Reality Lab in Portugal. During this time, Franco also developed an interest in music, having played in several rock bands.

Departing from these two interests (computers and music) he started exploring the possiblities of computer music. Frustrated by the lack of physical performativity in electronic music, he looked for ways of recovering both that physicality and the man-machine interaction. In 199 he started a Master program in Barcelona where he developed his own instruments, presented in some of the most important festivals of that city. Continue reading

Freedom of Public Art in the Cover of Urban Space

Catharinakapel presents: SHELTER 07: The Freedom of Public Art in the Cover of Urban Space :: Harderwijk, The Netherlands :: June 2 – August 31 :: Artistic Interventions by Lara Almarcegui, Tiong Ang, Ginette Blom, Gijs Frieling, Jeanne van Heeswijk (in collaboration wih Boris van Berkum), Job Koelewijn, Irene Kopelman and Mieke Van de Voort. Curator: Henk Slager

The objective of the Shelter 07 project is to draw attention to the history of the Dutch city of Harderwijk. To achieve this goal, the genealogical significance of the name Harder-Wijk, “an elevated place offering a safe shelter to refugees in troublesome times”, serves as the point of departure for the exhibition in public space. That genealogical significance causes notions such as safety and freedom to appear inextricably bound to Harderwijk’s history. But how did that connection arise? Is it still linked to a spatial, site-specific concept with phenomenological connotations of physicality? Or does a medial, discursive relationship transform the current concept of “place” into a textual issue, i.e., a notion of place as a platform of knowledge and intellectual exchange? Continue reading

Eyebeam style

Source Code: A 10-year retrospective of programming, Eyebeam style :: Opens Thursday, May 31, 6-8:00 PM :: On view May 31 – August 10, 2007 :: at Eyebeam.

Since 1998, artists, programmers, hackers, activists, technologists, kids and adults have come to Eyebeam to share ideas, find collaborators, experiment with new tools and create new work. The projects in Source Code – the first of three exhibitions presenting the very best of creative exploration at Eyebeam – frame technologies, generate new processes and offer the audience a platform to contemplate the impact of technology on everyday life. This group show will feature works by: Cory Arcangel, Carrie Dashow, eteam, Steve Lambert, Nina Katchadourian, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, MediaShed, neuroTransmitter, Alex Galloway and Carnivore clients Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Golan Levin, MTAA and Mark Napier.

The exhibition’s opening reception will be catered to, in part, by Steve Lambert’s Co-op Bar (2007), which offers a low-level investment and community space in the form of a co-operatively owned bar. Continue reading

on virtual (extra-)territoriality

“Second Life is an exciting development of the virtual world. A country that wishes to show that it at least has the ambition to be at the forefront of development of course has to be in it.” [1] Swedish minister of foreign affairs, Carl Bildt

The 30th of May, Sweden will be the first country in the world to open an official Embassy within Second Life, the online 3D multi user environment owned by Linden Lab. The project is initiated by the Swedish Institute [2] (a culture and marketing department of the Swedish ministry of foreign affairs, and according to the official blog even Sweden’s “road warrior for peace” the minister of foreign affairs as well as former head of state, Carl Bildt, himself will attend the opening [3]. But what happens when a specific mode of representation is transferred to a new context? In this case a building for bilateral governmental representation is transferred to a private corporation.

I’ll use the Embassy in Second Life as a case study of mediation between global web-based corporations and the notion of participation in a time where privatized service platforms are becoming a standard that most people (in this case even states!) uncritically are subscribing to. Continue reading

by Joshua Levy

Although it took place a little over a week ago, my impressions of the 2007 Personal Democracy Forum conference, which I attended on May 18th and helped to organize, are fresh in my mind.

First, a disclaimer: I’m Associate Editor for the PdF website and for a group blog called TechPresident, which both cover the way technology is changing politics. The former is an online companion to the conference and a blog in its own right; the latter is a more-focused group blog covering how the web is being used in the 2008 U.S. president campaign, both by supporters and the candidates themselves. Though it’s an offshoot of the PdF site, it’s become arguably more popular and influential, landing publisher Andrew Rasiej and editor Micah Sifry, and to a much lesser extent me, in the media spotlight. Continue reading

Renders Transparent What Was Once Concealed

LightHive, an installation by artist/architect Alex Haw :: Architectural Association :: until Saturday June 2, 2007.

LightHive occupies the entire main block – 5 addresses, 5 storeys and 160 rooms – of the institution’s home in Bedford Square. A vast distributed network composed of various types of camera, infrared and wireless sensors relay back to a central exhibition space, where the communal activity of the school illuminates a scale model of its own light sources. Each light source is custom scripted and generated from the spatial and luminous parameters of its original source, and activated in real time by occupancy, contributing to an immersive form of spatial, 3-D surveillance. The installation renders transparent what was once concealed, compensating for the optical restrictions of the very object of the school’s study: architecture. Continue reading

Culture, participation and the web

Logging On: Culture, participation and the web – John Holden: In the brief history of the internet, the cultural sector has followed two related paths: on the one hand, the digitisation of content and provision of information and, on the other, interactivity and opportunities for expression. Some have seen these as in binary opposition. The truth is that they are inexorably merging. But the big question is where do we go next? How can policy intervention best meet with technology to achieve the aim of bringing about a more democratic culture? What will be the role, opportunities and limitations of online culture in a rapidly changing world?

A moment of reflection is provided by the coming to an end, in March 2007, of the Culture Online initiative funded by the Department for Culture,Media and Sport. Culture Online provides both an interesting case study, bringing together lessons learnt about how to organise online engagement, and a point of departure for asking questions about future directions. [via iDC] Continue reading

The 13th International Conference Virtual Systems and Multimedia 2007 :: September 23 – 26, 2007 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia :: Theme: Exchange and Experience in Space and Place :: Papers – Long and Short Papers: June 17, 2007 :: Notification July 15 – Camera-ready August 10 :: Posters due July 15, 2007 :: Notification August 10 – Camera-ready due September 15 :: Long Papers will be published by Springer in their LCNS. Others will be published locally.

Keynotes currently include: Dr Mark Billinghurst, Director, Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand, based at Canterbury University; Professor Mark Burry, Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture), at RMIT University; Dr Jonathan Fulcher, Head of Native Title Practice, Minter Ellison; Aden Ridgeway, Executive Chairman, Indigenous Tourism Australia (ITA); Ms Minja Yang, Director and UNESCO Representative to Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka. The conference is endorsed by the Australian National Commission for UNESCO.
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CIAC’s Electronic Magazine No 27

“A more “expressivist” form of communication is apparent today in a range of media – in the flourishing growth of the means for self-production and the production of the self in the form of personal web sites, blogs and their attendant technology (syndication, tags, podcasting, videoblogging, etc.) and the networks for communication among Internet users and their associated practices (fansubbing, fan films, etc.). Since the late 1990s, net art has been guiding and prefiguring these “mass” technologies and practices by multiplying the ambivalence of our relationship with the Internet, which is both intimate and dreadfully solitary. As new dialogue interfaces grow and expand, we withdraw from the real world, which is both more collective and community-minded. Today, the term net art refers to interactive works of art designed by, for and with the Internet, as distinct from more traditional forms of art which have simply been transferred onto the web sites of art galleries and other virtual museums. In the art world, the originality of the Internet lies in the fact that it is simultaneously a medium, a tool and a creative environment. Continue reading