Chris Joseph

TENCompetence partner, the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona is launching a new distance learning pilot as part of its plan to disseminate digital cinema technology and provide a virtual learning environment where professionals, students, and amateurs can develop their competences and skills in producing and directing digital cinema projects.

The distance learning pilot offers an introductory course on Virtual Sets Design in cooperation with Brainstorm software. The course comprises around a hundred hours of learning activities that can be freely accessed by learners. This service will be launched on October 1st and will be available for people to join over an ongoing period of at least two months.

As well as providing the opportunity for subscribers to increase their digital cinema competences and knowledge, the pilot also enables learners to meet and cooperate with other professionals and scholars in the field.

Registration for the course is free of charge since the pilot will be used to validate the underlying learning infrastructure.

You can find more detailed information on the pilot in the brochure posted at
www.tencompetence.upf.edu/virtualsets/brochure.html.

If you are interested in registering and participating, please send an email to
virtualsets@barcelonamedia.org .

The Virtual Sets distant learning pilot has been developed as part of the TENCompetence project (www.tencompetence.org)

This comes from friends and is worth checking out…

http://www.testcard.tv - free TV & movies on your PC

BETA version available for everyone to try - please post feedback to feedback [at] testcard.tv

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

13 DECEMBER with ALEX GILLESPIE, BRIAN O’NEILL & ROBB MITCHELL
:
Cyranoids…

How can “speaking the thoughts of others” enhance and subvert social interaction both face-to-face and remotely ?

What is a cyranoid ? Cyranoids are people whose speech is being controlled by another person. The term comes from the character Cyrano de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand’s 19th Century play. Cyrano, who is ugly but articulate, helps his handsome but inarticulate friend win the heart of Roxane by providing eloquent and witty prompts from the sidelines. The outcome is that Roxane falls in love with Cyrano’s mind through interacting with the body of his friend. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, in the 1970s coined the term cyranoid to describe a person whose utterances were being controlled by a second person, the source, via radio transmission. The cyranoid wears a headset which receives input from a microphone in a different location. The source then speaks into the microphone, and the cyranoid just has to repeat what they hear in their ear. So that the source knows what is going on, the cyranoid also wears a microphone which transmits everything it hears back to the source. In this way one person can control the utterances of another unbeknownst to other people. While the headsets used by Milgram were conspicuous and limited to transmitting verbal data, now, it is possible to use incredibly inconspicuous equipment to transmit both verbal instruction and for the source to receive a video stream of what the cyranoid is seeing. The internet means that the cyranoid and the source can be separated by huge distances, with sources simply ‘logging in’ via the web to a given cyranoid, being able to see and hear what the cyranoid hears and sees, and then being able to transmit thoughts to the cyranoid or living, breathing avatar.

The audiences are invited to participate in a social event cum performance seminar and experience being cyranoids, synchronoids or sources…

ALEX GILLESPIE holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Cambridge. His research concerns the Self and self-reflection and explores the social interactional and cultural basis of the self. He is a Lecturer at Stirling University and, currently, Co-chair of the Organising Committee for the Fifth International Conference on the Dialogical Self.

BRIAN O’NEILL is a clinical psychologist at Southern General Hospital, Glasgow. He is interested in cognitive impairments, the disability they cause and how assistive technology for cognition might provide useful treatments. He also is founding member of Thunder Bug sound system.

ROBB MITCHELL is an artist, curator and events organiser who has exhibited and lectured widely in the UK and abroad, among other venues in: Market Gallery (Glasgow), Edinburgh College of Art, Intermedia Gallery (Glasgow), Galerie Bortiers (Brussels), Artspace (Sydney), FACT (Liverpool), Mediabath (Helsinki), ICA (London), CCA (Glasgow), National Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh), Ars Electronica (Linz) and Eyebeam (NYC).

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Supported by the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL and the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email Maria X at drp01mc [at] gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

22 NOVEMBER with JOSEPH TABBI
:
Toward a Semantic Literary Web: Three Case Histories

Supported by Goldsmiths Department of English and Comparative Literature

In this talk, Joseph Tabbi introduces a new literary and arts collective, Electronic Text + Textiles, whose members are exploring the convergence of written and material practices. While some associates create actual electronic textiles, Tabbi has explored the text/textile connection as it manifests itself in writing produced within electronic environments. His online laboratory consists of two literary web sites, EBR (www.electronicbookreview.com), a literary journal in continuous production since 1995, and the
Electronic Literature Directory (www.eliterature.org), a project that seeks not just to list works but to define an emerging field. Rather than regard these sites as independent or free-standing projects, Tabbi presents their development in combination with the current (and similarly halting) development of semantically driven content on the Internet (e.g., The Semantic Web, or Internet 2.0).

His purpose is to determine to what extent *concepts* can flow through electronic networks, as distinct from the predominant flow of *information*. The latter, in which documents are brought together by metatags, keywords, and hot links, is arguably destructive of literary value. Where tagging and linking depend on direct, imposed conectivity at the level of the signifier, the creation of literary value depends
on suggestiveness, associative thought, ambiguity in expression and intent, fuzzy logic, and verbal resonance. At a time when powerful and enforced combinations of image and text threaten to obscure the differential basis of meaning as well as the potential for bringing together, rather than separating, rhetorical modes, Electronic Text + Textiles seeks to recognize and encourage the production of nuanced, textured languages within electronic environments.

JOSEPH TABBI is the author of two books of literary criticism, Cognitive Fictions (Minnesota, 2002) and Postmodern Sublime (Cornell, 1995). He edits ebr (www.electronicbookreview.com) and hosted the 2005 Chicago meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He is Professor of Literature at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

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Supported by the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL and the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email Maria X at drp01mc [at] gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

1 NOVEMBER with VERONIQUE CHANCE & RACHEL STEWART
:
Live Run(ner) & Thinking Blue Sky

Veronique Chance’s research project (PhD Candidate Goldsmiths) considers the dynamic relation between the physical presence of the body and its presence as a screen image, through which she examines the impact of visual media technologies on our conceptions and perceptions of the body as a physical presence. The effects of these technologies on traditional notions and conditions of physicality and representation mark, she suggests, a shift in our relationship to, and understanding of the body as a physical presence as we become more used to interacting and communicating with the body through the immediacy of screen images. This has led to questions regarding the body as a material presence and to the technologically mediated image becoming associated with notions and ideologies of disappearance and disembodiment. Chance understands the condition of the body as being very much embedded in the material world and approaches her project through the proposition of what she calls ‘the physicality of an image’, through which she argues for a reconceptualisation of the materiality of the body through its physical presence as an image.

For the Thursday Club Chance will present Live’ Run(ner), an artwork in progress that will record and transmit live the Great North Run through her own live experience of running the event. The idea is to recreate a live transmission of her eye-view in real-time, as she run the course, (literally ‘moving image’). Viewers would experience the event through her eye-view as she runs, through being able to ‘pick up’ a signal on their home computers and at wireless hotspots in the City.

VERONIQUE CHANCE is an artist practitioner and educator working across a range of media. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Fine Art by Practice at Goldsmiths. She also works as a Mentor for Artists in Residence Project, Morley College, London; Associate Lecturer, Foundation Course, Wimbledon School of Art; and Visiting Tutor, Fine Art/ArtHistory, Goldsmiths.

&

Rachel Stewart’s research (PhD Candidate Goldsmiths) is based around an engagement with the psycho-geography of the everyday sky and its representation with contemporary visual culture. Stewart is interested in how experiences of freedom, imagination, spirituality, orientation and weight are contextualised within manifestations of the skies of the post-human landscapes of C21st.
Her research addresses the literary and visual trope of the sky, specifically the blue sky. The specific material she will discuss is an index of sky photographs that she has been collecting for a number of years. The photographs all detail a sky at the occurrence of ‘a sky event’ i.e. the sky above the screening of James Benning’s Ten Skies, or the Whitechapel exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s Atlas, or the sky above Manuel de Landa talking of the sky as a painting of intensive different at the Creative Evolutions Conference in 2005. The photographs detail only the particular sky and contain no other visual information. They could be construed as ‘eventless’. However, seen together these images create a visual subject, a subject that works in a familiar way but also starts to describe a new set of relations with this space.

RACHEL STEWART is a contemporary art curator and PhD candidate at Goldsmiths Visual Cultures. As a curator she has worked both in partnership with Helen Hayward and on behalf of other organisations on commissions that include working with Mark Wallinger, Amy Plant, Lothar Goetz, Daziell+ Scullion, James Ireland, Simon Periton, Mark Titchner, Florain Balze and Rose Finn-Kelcey. From 1994-1998 Stewart set up, edited, published and distributed independent arts magazine ENGAGED.

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Supported by the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL and the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email Maria X at drp01mc [at] gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

11 OCTOBER with CHRIS BOWMAN
:
GEO Landscapes and other sites of investigation….

Chris Bowman (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) gives an overview of his recent project GEO Landscapes. This presentation is an introduction to Phase 01 of the GEO Landscapes project which was recently demonstrated at BetaSpace, an experimental exhibition venue for interactive artworks at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and explores prototype narrative structures which simulate ‘on-site’ engagement by a potential visitor to a given site ( in this instance the Brickpit Ring walk at the Sydney Olympic Park) or multiple sites of investigation. The long-term aim of GEO Landscapes is how to create an augmented interactive audio-visual story-telling experience using interpretive mobile technologies and this will be defined over an iterative series of phased developments. The ultimate experience is designed to be accessed through three principle technologies; a) handheld mobile devices, b) interactive audio visual public display and c) and web-community.

Bowman’s creative work for GEO Landscapes and other ‘sites of investigation’ features an exploration between corresponding video sequences, selected narratives and site-specific information (GPS) captured across two or more locations. Socially, this drawing together of the virtual and the augmented space is designed to enrich the presence of the individual in the spaces or places and thereby enhance the interconnectivity of the user in the associated environment that supports remote creative collaboration and information access.

CHRIS BOWMAN is an Australian based artist, writer, director and teacher who works with film, and convergent media display systems. His research interests include interactive narrative systems, schematic representations of spatio-temporal interactive artworks and related film theory. Chris currently lectures in the Visual Communication Program in The Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at UTS. He is an active member of the Creativity and Cognition Studios and Co-Director of the Digital Design Group both at UTS.

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Supported by the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL and the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email Maria X at drp01mc [at] gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

Agence TOPO is looking for multimedia titles to expand its Electronic Showcase
www.AgenceTOPO.qc.ca/showcase

Agence TOPO is an artist-run center dedicated to the production, creation, dissemination and distribution of independant multimedia works. We currently aim to expand our on-line catalogue of multimedia titles distributed through our online Electronic Showcase.

The Electronic Showcase of the TOPO Agency is a site of reference, promotion and sale of interactive cd-roms, dvd-roms, video dvds and other artistic publications integrating a multimedia component.

Agence TOPO is interested by artistic artworks from Canada and abroad, innovatives in terms of narrative structure, artistic content or interactive strategies. The artworks of our current catalogue fall within one of the following categories: multimedia fiction, narrative, poetic or random, interactive or random poetry, interactive cartoon, interactive art, interactive video, dvd-video and reference work. To this list can be added any other type of artwork involving an original interactive dynamic, a content or a thematic that responds to the editorial lines of the Electronic Showcase. Artist’s portfolios, catalogues, and Web sites reproduced on a cd/dvd will not be considered.

By referencing and distributing works created since 1995, the Electronic Showcase retraces some reference points in the short history of interactive art on a physical media, the evolution of technology and the definition of a new language.

We thus invite the multimedia artistic community to propose new titles to our selection committee. Do not hesitate to contact us for more information or even to let us know about an ongoing project you would like to suggest.

You will find an interactive form online at http://www.AgenceTOPO.qc.ca/vitrine/submit.html

Thank you for your collaboration.

Agence TOPO
C/o Clara Bonnes / Sandra Dubé
5455, de Gaspé, #1001
Montréal (Québec)
Canada H2T 3B3
Tél. (514) 279-8676

http://touscene.com/touworks/

The east side of Stavanger, Norway is expanding rapidly, incorporating culture, business and residents. The city’s habits and patterns are changing at a speedy rate but what kind of changes does this imply? Looking at the route that starts at Nytorget, Pedersgata ending up at Tou Scene, this project invites artists, citizens, city planners and local businesses to comment the route, a 15-minute walk. We hope these comments will highlight the route as an extraordinary experience/walk in itself and question and explore this specific environment.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Creative people from all artistic fields are invited to propose work inspired by sites on this route. The selected artists will be offered a 10 days research period developing work in Stavanger followed by a 5- day showing/event and 2 days of aftermath. The artists will be sharing their process and working methods during the workshops and participate in worktasks, lectures and a seminar as a shared process. Each artist selects a site that will be negotiated with the curators and the local residents. Private homes, shop windows, the public restrooms of the old square, a street corner and a bush can all become hosts for artistic triggers and the work be everything from alternative road signs, ephemeral shops/temporary cafés, people as places/sites, walk in cinema etc. Work can result in installations, interactions, sound pieces and live work, the sky is the limit and we hope to get surprised, shocked or amazed by your suggestions!

SCHEDULE 2008

1. A 10-day workshop/research 14th - 23rd of March
2. 5 days of showing 4th - 8th of June
3. 2 day seminar/aftermath 29th - 30th of August

Artist fees: travel and accommodation will be covered. You will also receive payment for workshop, showing and seminar which is Euro 150 (NOK 1200) per day.

Application form

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Dreaming Methods presents a new project - Dim O Gauble
http://www.dreamingmethods.com/uploads/dimogauble/

For news and information visit the Dreaming Methods blog
http://dreamingmethods.blogspot.com

The Facebook Review

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18436918096

Welcome to the pre-natal version of The Facebook Review, the first and only Literary Review that uses Facebook as its means of publishing, of marketing, and of editing. We are essentially an online magazine with the (titular) difference of location. Our manifesto is humble and somewhat weak-kneed. Apologies. All we want is to publish the best work by Facebook members and to do so free-of-charge, free-of-cost, and completely within the confines of the Facebook network and software environment.

Process:

Submissions will be accepted, for now, from the following disciplines: poetry, short fiction (sub 1600 words), prose poetry, drama (again, sub 1600 words) and creative non-fiction. Other genres may be accepted at some point in the future. The first issue will have no set start date, and will go live at some point in the future when enough good material has been submitted and the group has enough “subscribers” (read: members.) That first issue will be edited by our managing editor, Jacob McArthur Mooney. All future editions (which will then occur in monthly installments) will be edited by something called an “editorial train.” What’s an editorial train, you ask? Please read on…

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