Furtherfield.org news February 2008
Artwork by Bjorn Magnhildoen
Review Title - Norwayweb and Databdoies
Review by Marc Garrett.
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Morwayweb is a Net Art project by Bjorn Magnhildoen that Scrapes tax information of over 4 million Norwegians from different databases into a real-time artwork. “Norwayweb was originally part of a series called “Protocol Performance” realised in 2007 with the support of the Norwegian Cultural Council, section for art and new technology. This work uses specific data collected from a source or sources originating from the national system’s database. The information is scraped from about 4 million Norwegian tax payer’s databases. As soon as you visit the web page, you automatically trigger off the action of collecting the data. On the left side of the interface figures cascade down the page before your very eyes, which gradually evolves into what Magnhildoen calls a carpet. The term carpet is a reference to the textile based craft of weaving..”
Permlink: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=295
[PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine
Review Title - You Can’t Stay Here PAM!
Review/Interview by Eliza Fernbach.
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Eliza Fernbach Interviews Lee Wells from [PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine. The online Video Portal, a growing Internet community
collaborating with artists for exhibitions and distribution, based in New York. “Participation lies at the heart of the online video portal [PAM]. In fact the site has generated such response that the best way to communicate with the PAM founders is to find them in person. They are a visible, engaged group on the New York Art scene; Lee Wells, a curator and Artist in his own right, was introduced to Christopher Borkowski, a digital artist and IT specialist at the Guggenheim by Raphaele Shirley, whose credentials include working for Nam June Paik. Artist Aaron Miller had already been collaborating with Borkowski following on their student work at Rochester University. Conceived with Scope Art fair on the horizon, [PAM] was born in December 2005 two months after an impromptu brainstorming session at Shirley’s studio.”
Permlink: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=296
Exhibition - Addressable Memory
By Michael Takeo Magruder
Review By Rob Myers
Touring exhibition by Michael Takeo Magruder.
At TheSpace4 in Peterborough 22nd September - 18th November 2007, touring the UK throughout 2008.
Michael Takeo Magruder’s touring exhibition ‘Addressable Memory’. Technology & aesthetics of mobile phones, Internet news feeds, video screens, computer image processing & virtual reality are all turned on themselves. “Michael Takeo Magruder is portraying this landscape of digital memory with its own tools, producing portraits of its inhabitants with its own palettes. In Addressable Memory the first draft of history is allegorized as a process of combining and quantizing disparate experience and telemetry. Of mashing-up and composing. The technology and aesthetics of mobile phones, Internet news feeds, video screens, computer image processing and virtual reality are all turned on themselves. At TheSpace4 in Peterborough this show takes up all three rooms. It will be touring the UK throughout 2008.”
Permlink: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=297
Computer Arts Society February Meeting: Alan Sutcliffe, London, 19 February 2008
| 19 February 2008 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 8:00 pm |
Non-members are welcome to attend so please pass this notice on to anyone who may be interested. Like most CAS meetings there is no charge for admission.
The CAS is pleased to announce it’s first meeting of the New Year which will be given by the CAS founder and editor of PAGE:
Alan Sutcliffe - Recent Graphics and Animations using some Maths
Tuesday, 19 February 2008 (note 3rd Tuesday)
7:00; System Simulation Ltd, Bedford Chambers, The Piazza Covent Garden, London WC2E 8HA, England
http://www.ssl.co.uk/content/map.html
A simple method to generate irregular but smooth curves will be described, together with shading to give 3-d forms. The method uses the repeated addition of differences of differences of differences in one co-ordinate for unit change in the other co-ordinate. Drawing in the XOR mode gives unexpected benefits in this context. The anatomy of the XOR operator applied to grey-scales and colours will be illustrated. This is an extended version of the talk given at the Bridges Conference at Donostia in July 2007, updated with some more recent animations based on these and other mathematical methods.
In 1967 Alan Sutcliffe wrote a program, to compose electronic music, which ran on an ICL 1900 computer. The music was realised, from a paper tape of the score, in the electronic music studio of Peter Zinovieff. When this won second prize in the International
Computer Music Competition at IFIP 68 in Edinburgh he was prompted to propose the formation of a Computer Arts Society that he chaired until 1979. During 2007 he has exhibited in Bremen, Graz, Donostia and Karlsruhe. An early graphic, thought lost, turned up in the CAS Collection during its hand-over to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Alan now edits PAGE – the bulletin of the CAS.
http://www.computer-arts-society.org/
To join CAS - go to http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk and open an account, then join list CAS
We also moderate the Digital ArtS Histories list: DASH - as above
Conference: Economies of the Commons - Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online, 10-12 April 2008, The Netherlands
Economies of the Commons
Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online
International Working Conference
De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, April 11 & 12, 2008
Seminar on Intellectual Property Rights
The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Hilversum, April 10, 2008
www.ecommons.eu
New Perspectives on Digital Literature: Criticism and Analysis, at dichtung-digital
A new special issue of dichtung-digital entitled ‘New Perspectives on Digital Literature: Criticism and Analysis’ is now available at http://www.dichtung-digital.de (click on ‘english’ and ‘Current Issue’).
The issue is edited by Astrid Ensslin and Alice Bell and focuses on the close reading of digital literature and includes eight essays analysing a range of texts including hypertext fiction, online fanfiction, computer games and machinima:
- Thea Pitman - Hypertext in Context: Space and Time in Latin American Hypertext and Hypermedia Fictions
- Bronwen Thomas - Canons and Fanons: Literary Fanfiction Online
- Robin Stoate - Internet Detectives: Performativity and Policing Authenticity on the Internet
- Jessica Pressman - Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries’s Nippon and the Aesthetic of Compilation
- Matthew S. S. Johnson - Combat to Conversation: Towards a Theoretical Foundation for the Study of Games
- Dave Ciccoricco - “Play, Memory”: Shadow of the Colossus and Cognitive Workouts
- Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Justin Parsler - Illusory Agency in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
- Michael Nitsche - Claiming Its Space: Machinima
Thursday Club, Goldsmiths, London, 24 April 2008, 6-8PM - Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph [rescheduled]
| 24 April 2008 | ||
| 6:00 pm | to | 8:00 pm |
THURSDAY CLUB - supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL
6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW
FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME
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/
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24 APRIL with KATE PULLINGER & CHRIS JOSEPH
Flight Paths: a networked book
“I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat. I push the loaded trolley across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track. I pop open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky. And I see him. It takes me a long moment to figure out what I am looking at. He is falling from the sky. A dark mass, growing larger quickly. I let go of the trolley and am dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can’t move, I am stuck there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles toward the earth. I have no idea how long it takes – a few seconds, an entire lifetime – but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes about its business around me until…
He crashes into the roof of my car.”
The car park of Sainsbury’s supermarket in Richmond, southwest London, lies directly beneath one of the main flight paths into Heathrow Airport. Over the last decade, on at least five separate occasions, the bodies of young men have fallen from the sky and landed on or near this car park. All these men were stowaways on flights from the Indian subcontinent who had believed that they could find a way into the cargo hold of an airplane by climbing up into the airplane wheel shaft. No one can survive this journey. “Flight Paths” seeks to explore what happens when lives collide – the airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted above. This project will tell their stories; it will be a work of digital fiction, a networked book, created on and through the internet. The project will include a web iteration that opens up the research process to the outside world, inviting discussion of the large array of issues the project touches on.
Questions raised by this project include: what are the possibilities for new narrative forms? How do we “write to be seen” or “write to be heard” when creating multimedia narratives, and can we imagine writing to be smelled, tasted, felt? What are the effects of collective authorship across multiple forms?
KATE PULLINGER [www.katepullinger.com] works both in print and new media. Her most recent novels include A Little Stranger (2006) and Weird Sister (1999). Her current digital fiction projects include her collaboration with Chris Joseph on ‘Inanimate Alice’ [www.inanimatealice.com], a multimedia episodic digital fiction; and ‘Venus Redemption’, a game for female casual gamers. Pullinger is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University [www.creativewritingandnewmedia.com].
CHRIS JOSEPH [www.chrisjoseph.org] is a digital writer and artist who has created solo and collaborative work as babel [www.babel.ca]. His past projects include ‘Inanimate Alice’ (with Kate Pullinger), an award-winning series of multimedia stories; ‘The Breathing Wall’ [www.thebreathingwall.com, with Kate Pullinger and Stefan Schemat], a digital novel that responds to the reader’s rate of breathing; and ‘Animalamina’ [www.animalamina.com], a collection of interactive multimedia poetry for children. He is editor of the post-dada magazine and network 391.org, and is currently Digital Writer in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies [www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk], De Montfort University, Leicester.
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