Chris Joseph

Latest Audio/Visual VisitorsStudio mixes by Graziano Milano.

http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5406
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5403
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5402
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5401
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5400
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5398
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5391
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5390
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5388
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5387
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5386
http://www.visitorsstudio.org/mix.pl?id=5385

VisitorsStudio is a real-time, multi-user, online arena for creative ‘many to many’ dialogue, interviews, networked performance and
collaborative polemic.

Visitorsstudio is a Furtherfield.org project. Through simple and accessible facilities, the VisitorsStudio web-based interface allows users to upload, manipulate and collage their own audio-visual files with others’, to remix existing media. VisitorsStudio provides a
platform for the exploration of collective creativity for both emergent and established artists from a diverse array of geographical locations and social contexts.

Participants upload sound files and still/moving images (jpg, png, mp3, flv, swf) to a shared database, mixing and responding to each other’s compositions in real-time. Individuals can also chat with each other and are located in the interface by their own dancing-cursors.

VisitorsStudio Version2, incorporates new artistic tools and community building facilities. Users are able to schedule and promote their own networked performance programmes. These can be recorded, archived, rated, downloaded and redistributed as screensavers to users’ own desktops.

More info at http://blog.visitorsstudio.org

Transart Institute today announced the workshops and seminars for this years’ summer residency. Workshop topics range from “Language and Image” to “Archeology of Media”, with seminars coming in flavors of “Software as Metaphor” and “Documenta XII User Guide”, to name a few. The full program can be found at: http://transartinstitute.org/ Pages/Summer_2007.html .

Applications to the low-residency MFA program are being accepted with rolling admissions until June 1, 2007. Five places are reserved for the final deadline to accommodate the European schedule.

Transart Institute’s international MFA in New Media program is designed for working artists to develop a sustainable creative praxis in
— three summer residencies in Linz, Austria plus two optional winter residencies in New York
— and two school years of independent project work with supporting mentorships - wherever they work and live.

The innovative program focusses on content and context. Students work in the genres which best communicate their ideas including animation, architecture, curating, cyberart, digital and experimental media, film, gaming, graphic design, installation, painting, performance, photography, robotics, sculpture, sound, text, video, virtual reality.

The program is intended to lift the boundaries between applied and fine arts, traditional and new media, artists and scholars. Students are free to pursue work in any media art-related genre and to create their own course of study. Detailed information is available on the institute’s website: www.transartinstitute.org and through email from: info@transartinstitute.org.

Headlands Center for the Arts now accepting applications for Artist Residencies in all media through June 1, 2007. Download an application at http://www.headlands.org/programs.asp

Headlands Center for the Arts’ Artist in Residence Program has earned international renown for bringing together pioneering artists in all disciplines-visual, literary, performing and new media-from throughout the U.S. and the world.

The Artist in Residence program provides a supportive working environment that allows time for artists to experiment, reflect and grow, both individually and collectively during their stay.

The program offers fully sponsored, live-in and live-out residencies to around 30 artists each year from March to November and is distinguished in that there is no fee to participate.

Through the support of generous donations, Artists in Residence are provided with a studio, shared housing and five meals a week for live-in artists. A studio and dinner twice weekly are provided for live-out artists. Stipends of up to $500/month are available pending funding and sponsorships secured each year.

Residencies range from one to six months, with an average stay of three months.

Artists are selected based upon merit, through a mixture of open application and invitation. Headlands currently accepts applications for residencies from artists working in all disciplines: visual, literary, performing and new media. Headlands Center for the Arts also provides Bridge residencies by nomination to artists who are leaders in using the creative process as a catalyst for social change.

Headlands offers residencies to artists from across the U.S. and around the world, from places such as Sweden, Denmark, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Italy, India, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and more than 20 other countries.

On 22 March an article appeared in the Guardian Unlimited entitled ‘Embrace the textual revolution‘, written by Chris Meade, who is setting up Bookfutures, a project to explore “digitisation and its impact on tomorrow’s readers and writers”, and who is also an MA student at De Montfort University’s Creative Writing and New Media course.

The article provoked a lot of responses from those who wanted to challenge the novelty of or interest in digital literature, and those who wanted to defend it (and naturally enough there was a high DMU MA contingent here, as this was both an article by a peer and personal friend, and a key area of interest that unites them all).

Although some might (and did) take offense from the tone of some of the responses the article garnered, many interesting points on both sides were made. It could be taken as a sign of the growing maturity of this area that it engenders this kind of discussion, particularly in an arena (The Guardian) that many people still view as ‘old’ media (though this is changing quickly… I heard a very juicy bit of gossip about possible directions The Guardian will be taking very soon, but revealing it now/here would be unwise - they have good lawyers).

There were a couple of points I wished I could have responded to while the discussion took place, but I was unable due to a total lack of time. So what follows is a ‘right to reply’ of sorts. The original Guardian post has been closed to comments now, which is a shame, but should any of those Guardian posters (or anyone else) wish to continue here I’d encourage them to do so.

Rather than disect the ins and outs of the Guardian discussions (unless/until anyone brings them up here), I’m going to restrict myself (as co-author) to a particular discussion of Inanimate Alice that cropped up:

“InanimateAlice” , to cite one example, doesn’t even come *close* to what a brilliant novel does (and no technology will until they can jack directly into the brain, another innovation I’ll be rather resistant to when they start offering it). Inanimate Alice is a glorified slideshow presentation. We had those when I was a kid. I’m 37.

It’s nothing new.

This is, in many ways, the classic(al) response to digital lit. The (first) argument seems to be that only ‘jacking in’ could cause significations in one’s brain equivalent to that of reading words on a printed page. But hold on… what exactly are printed words, other than one system of pictoral significations, and thus part of a continuum that includes icons, images, animations, video? A ‘brilliant novel’ imparts a story (brilliantly) to a reader: surely images can do the same, else a lot of designers, illustrators, animators and filmmakers have been wasting their time… and the massive critical and commercial success of these forms suggests otherwise. And indeed, a later commentator writes:

Steve dismissed Inanimate Alice as nothing more than a slideshow - I’d see it as a film that’s failing to achieve even a tiny percentage of that medium’s capabilities.

Aside from the interesting confusion over whether Alice is a book, a film, a combination or something else entirely, let me get one thing straight: I would never claim Alice succeeds as a ‘brilliant novel’, or even a brilliant e-novel (whatever that term might mean). The mistake the commenter makes is to assume that “glorified slideshow presentation” is a term of abuse, rather than something to be worn as a badge of pride. A (brilliant!) slideshow presentation is a complex piece of media mechanics - images, text, presenter-interaction and reader(s)-interaction: multimedia choreography, spatial and temporal design. A digital multimedia slideshow (Powerpoint, for example) updates this for the electronic arena, and in doing makes certain things easier, particularly from the creator’s point of view (management of assets, editing, distribution, etc.)

Thus the idea that Alice is a glorified slideshow is absolutely correct: it is a piece of dynamic media that imparts information (in this case, fictional) to a reader/viewer.

There are two main reasons behind the commentor’s use of the term as an insult: firstly, the implication that - because it is a type of slideshow - it is of no interest. As I’ve already suggested, this could clearly be challenged on many levels, but let me additionally outline some of the ways in which Alice is not a slideshow, it is also something else, and what that ’something else’ is is exactly what has attracted people to it.

There are the interactive elements: intentionally very basic in the initial episodes, as we explicitly want to encourage people who have no experience of electronic literature to read Alice. The interactivity will grow throughout the series (we have some very exciting ideas for how it will develop) - and this will hopefully allow e-lit newbies (including, importantly, children) to expand their own levels of ‘digital literacy’. For example, Episode 3: Russia introduced a very simple game running throughout the background of the story. The game is intended to introduce a number of digital (game) literacies that will be required in episodes to come - more seasoned computer users will find these elements unchallenging (and perhaps even as an unwanted narrative interruption, though the reader has a choice between the ‘read-only’ version of the episode rather than the ‘game’ version), but from our perspective they are a part of learning (hopefully without realising you are learning) how to read/experience this type of work. Slideshows? Not much participation/interactivity in those, even the very clever ones.

Then there are the dynamic/generative/random elements. An Alice example would be Ming’s paintings - continuously changing and dynamically generated pieces of art, different to each viewer each time they watch: exactly the same notion as Brian Eno’s 77 million paintings, though on a fraction of the budget and with a much different audience in mind. The music that plays during Ming’s paintings is similarly dynamically generated. Now if you can show me a powerpoint that can do this, I’ll be really impressed! Again, it’s not that this element should necessarily excite you (though of course it does me), but that specifically what does make this a ‘glorified’ slideshow is important.

Then there is the story itself - if you have read any slideshows with this good a story, please do send them over, because I haven’t seen them (it goes without saying that I’m biased here!) Ultimately, of course, we don’t all like the same stories… so if Alice isn’t your cup of tea, that’s completely fair enough - but I’d argue this is not a good enough reason to dismiss the whole (and still growing and changing) genre.

Rather than continue here with a list of explanations of what we are trying to do with Alice, I want to turn to the second major reason I think the commenter uses ’slideshow’ as an insult, and this is that a slideshow is easy to produce, and therefore of little interest - whereas something complex that only one person could ever have created is worthwhile. It’s always funny how so many people from the world of print literature (and a small number within the digital lit world too) perpetuate this idea of artist or writer as ‘genious’, but actually most digital writers, myself included, get a huge thrill from enabling and watching other people create using the technologies and tools we ourselves use, and we do our utmost to demystify the process whenever possible. There is no need to resort to a post-structuralist or postmodern ‘death of the author’ type justifications: the digital creative process is generally much more open and collaborative than the process of writing a book, and many electronic writers think this is excellent and fascinating development (they simply disagree about the level of editing that should take place, at the time of creation or after the event).

Beyond that, e-writers recognise that a great way to expand and improve the genre(s) is to get more people to read and create it. Another way of looking at this would be to say the best form of criticism is through creation - if it is simple to create (and it should be), and you think you can do better, then please do! For me, the ideal e-lit world would be one in which anyone could create Inanimate Alices, at least as easily as they could pick up a pen and write a novel. Currently there is a skillset, and a hardware/software cost, that act as barriers to entry. Part of my ‘day’ job as writer in residence at DMU is to try and break down these barriers, and teach creative people that they can do this kind of work themselves, and how to do it.

The Million Penguins project is a example of the desire that many e-writers feel to encourage people to explore and learn digital literacies (in this case, wikis); ultimately - ideally - for the individual’s own creative ends. There is a common belief that digital literacy requires the ability to actively create/produce, not just to passively read/consume. Many people around the world are working on tools to make this creative aspect easier (see for example The Institute for the Future of the Book’s Sophie), and soon I think we’ll see software that puts the creation of ‘glorified slideshows’ within anyone’s reach.

Finally, if all these linear, non-multimedic words seem rather removed from the whole notion of e-literature, Toni LeBusque, another Creative Writing and New Media MA student, had a typically witty response to the discussion, and it’s a great piece of e-lit in its own right. Nice one, Toni.

The next Cafe Culturel on Tuesday 3rd April will be exploring the role of the artist as a subversive, and questions where subversion fits in the context of contemporary practice.

Come and talk art!

For more info visit www.cafeculturel.org.uk

Alen Bigelow’s wonderful digital literature site Webyarns.com has two new stories online:

I-Pledge.org, where you can rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance. Each revision of the Pledge is thematically linked to one of the following categories: Immigration, Politics, Nature, Sports, Family Life, or Other (no theme). Once you have written your version of the Pledge, the text plays against a background of images related to the theme you have chosen. All the pledges are saved into a database to be viewed by anyone visiting the site.

BecauseYouAsked.org is a digital self-portrait in sound and image. It provides you with the opportunity to complete the self-portrait, and then, if you wish, erase it. This work is a commentary on the tradition of self-portraiture and its ongoing evolution in a digital age.

To see these and other stories, please visit http://www.webyarns.com (Flash Player 8 required).

http://www.ioctsalon.com

This event is free of charge and open to the public.

Low Brow Trash

Low Brow Trash (Graham Elstone and Thomas Hall) create contemporary artworks for all arts locations and festivals. The company is dedicated to the use of new media technologies in the creation of the artworks in expressing the ideas and themes of the work. Low Brow Trash is continually exploring new ways to utilise new technology as a creative tool and is expanding the way art is experienced by the viewer or audience by creating work that has an interactive element. Low Brow Trash work with film, computer technology, computer games, insallation and performance/theatre in the creation of their work.

Low Brow Trash’s ‘Model Citizen’

Model Citizen is a site-specific work that is ideally suited to a shopping centre or street. The work consists of a large projected image placed in a shop front/window and the images react to the movements of passers by, by using motion-tracking technology.

The work examines the concept of Model Citizen: are we born to be Model Citizens or are we manipulated into being so? And for some of us where and why does this go wrong? The work uses various reference points in life and transforms these into image statements that are then layered on top of each other to give contrasting views and opinions on the subject. Model Citizen works with layered imagery; a camera registers the movement of the passer by, they are transformed into a projected silhouette, this silhouette in turn becomes a ‘window’ to the second layer of imagery, creating a multi-layered visual language.

A public artwork that has the ‘public’ as the focal point.

Links:

Low Brow Trash - http://www.lowbrowtrash.co.uk

http://www.youtube.com/lowbrowtrash - a collection of documentation of installations and short films created by Low Brow Trash and its members

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The IOCT Salon ( http://www.ioctsalon.com ) is managed by Chris Joseph, Digital Writer in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University. This residency is funded by Arts Council England: East Midlands.

For further information about the IOCT Salon please email Chris: info /at/ ioctsalon.com . To be notified of future events please join the mailing list on the Salon website.

The IOCT Salon is held at and staged by De Montfort University and the Institute of Creative Technologies, and is supported by Arts Council England and the Literature Development Network.

ENTER_UNKNOWN TERRITORIES
Cambridge (UK)

CONFERENCE 25-27 APRIL 2007
FESTIVAL 25-29 APRIL 2007

CONFERENCE
The conference will provide an opportunity to meet, share and discuss how we build and sustain collaborative creative practices in new technology arts, education and commerce.

Art and new technology practice challenges the borders between creative disciplines, contemporary culture and commerce, questioning the relationship between producer and consumer. As these boundaries are dissolved and reformed, new kinds of spaces are emerging in which creativity and experience can exist. Enter_Unknown Territories provides an opportunity to explore these new spaces and investigate their potential for collaboration between artists, businesses and academics.

The conference will offer an exciting platform for dialogue and engagement between arts, education, research and business. It will catalyse and foster sustainable and effective partnerships across different sectors and will appeal to people working in labs, workshops, arts centres and companies as well as the general public.

Unknown Territories seeks to encourage specialists to expand their knowledge while offering a rare opportunity through the participation of Cambridge research labs and media artists from the Eastern region and elsewhere for everyone to enjoy some hands on experimentation. It also features the launch of an international publication, Uncommon Ground, which tackles some of the critical questions and issues involved in cross sectoral working.

Read more

Images of the latest show at HTTP Gallery.
http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib12/Diwo_exhibition2.shtml

About the project:
http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib12/exhibitions12.shtml

Duration of Exhibition:
2nd March - 1st April 2007.
Friday - Sunday: 12noon - 5pm.