YOUR CULTURETV BLOG ON GLOBAL ART NEWS, VIDEOS, MUSEUM, GALLERY, PICKS & TIPS

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Mario's Furniture 2 TELIC until 3.12. Los Angeles


Mario's Furniture 2, an installation and interactive game, will be exhibited at TELIC Arts Exchange in Chinatown from October 28th to December 3rd. Created by artists Hillary Mushkin and S.E. Barnet, Mario's Furniture integrates wireless technology with artistic production and performance. In most video games you just sit on the couch, but when you play Mario’s Furniture you MOVE the couch, in fact you move the whole living room!

Mario's Furniture began in 2002 as a video installation, including a single night of performance. Four years later, Mario’s Furniture 2 - created with programmer Clay Chaplin and electronic specialist Lorin Parker - is now a wireless environment where viewers become players, physically moving objects before a relentlessly panning camera, all the while watching themselves and their scores in real time on a large-screen projection.

In Mario’s Furniture 2 the body is actualized in real and virtual space simultaneously. Players can’t merely manipulate an avatar with a joystick. Playing Mario’s Furniture involves strenuous physicality, parodying conventional video games in which avatars are put in peril while players sit on a couch. Players must physically move the couch to play the
game. Mario’s emphasizes how camera and screen effect the construction of social relationships. Players see themselves (and not a stand in) under the camera’s scrutiny, humorously mirroring the absurdity of living within the frame.

Mushkin and Barnet look at technological and narrative ways in which video and digital media unfold and complicate meaning. The game critically remarks on aesthetics and narrative boy-logic of computer games while reflecting on theories of the digitally decentered subject. The artists’ racing antics against the camera alludes to Chaplin and Keaton, Mario Brothers, Tomb Raider and the deadline pressed “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Monday, October 30, 2006

Natural Habitat 4.11.- 17.12. Montevideo, Amsterdam (NL)


In the Natural Habitat project artists are working at the interface of nature and technology. Here they investigate the extent to which nature and technology complement each other, and whether a distinction can be made between what is natural and what is technology. In Natural Habitat the boundaries between nature, culture and technology become increasingly blurred.

Natural Habitat consists of an exhibition and a seminar
For more information about the seminar: Art and Science in their Natural Habitat

Background
In our environment today nature is ever less natural, and applications of technology are ever more natural. The way that our industrialized world deals with nature is based on technological control and scientific analysis. In this context it is not surprising that the expression ‘disposable landscape’ is being heard with increasing frequency in The Netherlands, and one also hears of a ‘cultivated landscape’. The message is clear: the landscape is subject to continuous change as a consequence of human interventions, making it ever more difficult for one to relate to that landscape. Pure or untouched nature is something which is found only in our imagination any more. In the publication Next Nature by Mieke Gerritzen and Koert van Mensvoort, Michiel Schwarz correctly asserts that the question ‘what is nature?’ is no longer relevant, and must be replaced with the question ‘how do we relate to nature?’. ‘In the age where we have genetic engineering, artificial beaches, nature-identical food flavorings and virtual environments, what we traditionally used to view as 'nature' has now become an object of human design. 'So-called nature' has become a culturally-constructed nature in a mediated world. In this world, it is perhaps fitting that we now manipulate not only what we believed to be nature, but we happily also manipulate our images of nature... What the images of multiple natures reveal to us, then, is the 'new ecology' in which we now find ourselves. A new ecology, where natures, technologies and media are all caught up together.’ He concludes his argument with the question, ‘What sort of nature do we want?’
Only a small group of artists shared an ecological consciousness in art in the 1960s. Artists involved in what was called the Land Art movement placed the relation between man, nature and the environment at the heart of their work. Presently this discourse has reached far beyond the narrow confines of art, and the framework in which we regard the natural environment, and its boundaries, has become an important point for discussion within the cultivated urban milieu throughout the Western world, and certainly in The Netherlands. In art too reflection on nature from purely aesthetic grounds, or from an intrinsic art value, has become passé. With the developments in digital culture and research by artists into artificial life and its expressions, traditional and humanist ideas about nature are being revised.

The exhibition

Artists respond in various ways to the influence of technology on nature. Sometimes they play with our feeling of nostalgia for an idealized pre-industrial era in which man and nature lived harmoniously alongside and with each other. It is a desire for virgin nature that we can really only find any more – skillfully packaged – in amusement parks, zoos and other theme parks where nature is made natural. The imitation of wild nature, the taming of nature and the extension of nature are important points of departure for these artists. By these means they try to return nature – the power and existence of which we hardly recognize any more – to our environment. Beside that, there is attention for nature as science, in which processes of change play a large role. Artists focus on the possibilities that underlying mechanisms of processes from biochemistry, genetics and evolution might provide for art by implementing these as purely visual and image-generating systems. Self-organizing processes such as growth and evolution are theoretically still capable of being understood, but not visible in everyday life. Translated by artists, this science becomes perceptible at the level of the senses.
On the other side, there are artists who themselves go in search of ways to create living nature. Sometimes they make use of scientific methodologies and mechanisms, in order to see to what extent unnatural processes can become part of our environment. Computer processes and networks are examined for the creation of new and interesting visible phenomena. Artists are particularly interested in processes in which simple rules lead to complex behaviors. Efforts are undertaken to make digital life as real as possible, so that people can identify with it. Individuals from complex ecosystems eat each other up, reproduce or die a lonesome death. These examples reveal that these artificial processes perhaps have more relation with ‘wild nature’ than with what we see at this moment in our natural environment.
Finally, artists devote attention to invisible technology – technology that merges into our environment, architecture or body so that it becomes invisible and functions as a natural part of the environment. This puts to the test our conditioned way of seeing, and the artists focus on the possibility that nature takes on new meanings. According to them, recognisability ultimately underwrites true-to-nature images. Here a new image of Nature arises

Friday, October 27, 2006

Texelectronica Symposium and exhibitions Dallas USA


An annual international event, Texelectronica brings renowned digital artists and scholars to the Dallas–Fort Worth area to explore the ways that new media affects and is affected by culture. Co-sponsored by the University of North Texas and the French Embassy, this year's inaugural festival includes a symposium, exhibitions, and special nightly performances and events. For more information visit www.texelectronica.com

Andorgallery will be featuring a light and sound piece by the Canadian collective Artificiel, with their collaborator Pascale Malatarre designing the installation. The work is based on a simple concept: playing voice recordings through high power audio amplifiers and feeding them through large 1000 watt light bulbs. The tungsten and glass materials of the bulbs act as rich but band-limited filters, resulting sometimes in understandable whispers, other times purely synthetic tones, creating flowing and ebbing waves of light and sound.

At their opening reception, they will also be hosting additional digital art installations and performances by regional and international artists that are part of the Texelectronica Festivalschedule for other events and the symposium that will be going on Thursday through Sunday. organized by UNT and the French Embassy. And be sure to check out their

Performances at the reception start at 8pm and will include Yao Bin, Frank Dufour, Washboard Leo, and some of the local Laptop Deathmatch crew.

And if that’s not enough, their awesome new neighbors, House of Dang, will be having a Halloween party next door!!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Night Garden until 7.1.2007 Mediamatic, Amsterdam (NL)

Night Garden, an exhibition in the form of a sub-technical INDOOR garden, is teeming with technology, art and food.

Visitors can expect to be transformed into a cybernetic NOCTURNAL animal, build robots at a garden robot production studio, wander through a digital alter-garden, learn about air fluctuations, experience PSYCHO-chemical garden furniture and eat at a prototype restaurant serving more than 30 sorts of SPROUTED micro-greens.
Participant artists are Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Felix Hess, Mateusz Herczka, Ralf Schreiber & Christian Faubel, Petra Blaisse, Debra Solomon en Michael
Samyn & Auriea Harvey.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

HABITATS: a 4 day Cultural Festival 9.-12.11.

HABITATS: a 4 day Cultural Festival :: Artists, scientists, and cultural commentators are joining together to create a collective vision of a sustainable habitat. The Habitats conference and festival is a 4 day event organized to promote an exchange between art, technology, and environment. With public and private cooperative efforts leading to cleaner water, the Gowanus Canal area has experienced an increase in wildlife and improved prospects for commercial and cultural revitalization. Habitats celebrates this process. Instigated by Eidolon Culture, The Habitats conferences will include speakers such as best-selling author Steven Johnson ('Emergence' and 'Mind Wide Open'); long-standing community organizers such as the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (GCCDC) ; electronic artists such as Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening Foundation) ; site specific sound and video recordings, live music performances, site specific installations, collaborative projects, recycled art, workshops and active audience participation.

The placement of the artworks in their site-specific rendition, the sharing of thought provoking ideas of contemporary cultural relevance, and the active role of audience interaction all create a 'Habitat' -- a place defined by the indispensable nature of everyone and everything within it. Habitats is being Presented by Eidolon Culture and Sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Polytechnic University: Integrated Digital Media Institute (IDMI), CEC Arts Link, New York State Council on the Arts, and Material for the Arts.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

DIGITAL ART FESTIVAL TOKYO 2006


"DIGITAL ART FESTIVAL TOKYO 2006" will be held mainly by a Japanese TV program for the new century NHK "Digital Stadium" (Digista) which seeks new talents of digital art. The digital artworks from CG, animation, film works, to interactive installation, which have been introduced in the Digista, will get together at Ariake and Shibuya in Tokyo from December 1st to 10th.

Friday, October 13, 2006

13terShop by Florian Thalhofer and Kolja Mensing


13terShop - startig today! [13terShop] - 31 days in a shopping mall After the huge success of [13terStock], Florian Thalhofer and Kolja Mensing do the same thing again. - Almost - this time we spend one month in shopping mall in Bremen. We are collecting stories at one of the first shopping malls that was built in Germany, 34 year ago. We will be here for one month and we live in a camping-trailer right where the trucks arrive to deliver the goods. Every day we will publish stories and interviews and produce a new Korsakow-documetary. You can watch it while it is being made! www.13terShop.de

Laurie Anderson: Interplay Live Webcast 21.10.

Laurie Anderson will present a special audio-visual lecture exploring the intersections of art, science and creativity. One of the permier perfromance artists in the world, Ms. Anderson has consistently intrigued, entertained and challenged audiences with her multimedia persentations. Anderson's artistic career has cast her in roles as various as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, ventriloquist, electronics whiz, vocalist and instrumentalist. Following her presentation, Ms. Anderson will be joined in conversation by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, director of the USC Brain and Creativity institute and a leading researcher of cognition, emotions, and neural systems.

This special presentation is part of the HASTAC In|Formation Year, devoted to twelve months of public programming from a number of universities meant
to promote the human and humane dimenstions of technology and to encourage conversation and exchange between humanists, artists, technologists, and scientists (www.hastac.org).

Friday, October 06, 2006

‘MASKIN’ - Trondheim Matchmaking 2006 12.-15.10.

TRONDHEIM ELECTRONIC ARTS CENTRE presents

‘MASKIN’ - Trondheim Matchmaking 2006
-annual international festival for electronic arts and new technology- http://www.matchmaking.no in cooperation with NoMuTe, Nordic Music Technology Conference, 2006 Dokkhuset 12th-15th of October, Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art October 13th - November 12th

44 lecturers; artists, musicians, researchers and composers; from 16 countries.

Exhibitors, performers and lecturers are amongst many others: ,
Stelarc, Australia / Norman T. White, Canada / Jørn Hokland, Norway / David Gamez, UK / Ken Rinaldo, USA / Jørgen Larsson, Norway/ Sabrina Raaf, USA / Pierre Bastien, Netherland / Øyvind Brandtsegg, Norway / Peter Votava, Germany / Anna Notaro, UK / Paul Lansky, USA / Frank Ekeberg, Norway / Alex Mesker, Australia / Gyrid N. Kaldenstad, Norway/ Stefania Serafin, Denmark / Erich Berger, Finland / Stian Westerhus, Norway / Ingar Zach, Spain / Philippe Depalle, France

Trondheim Matchmaking is an arena for presentations of innovative ideas and artistic projects – a place where competence and resources within electronic arts and new technology are maintained and developed. This year the main theme of the festival is ‘MASKIN’ (Machine), and it is coordinated with NoMuTe, Nordic Music Technology Conference. As part of the festival an exhibition opens at Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art.

The subject of the festival relates to the possibilities and limitations that lies within the new technologies that we to an extending degree surround ourselves with. And man’s relation to them. How is this expressed within the arts, as base for ideas, and as tool for production and presentation.

The festival opens October 12th at 17.30 at Dokkhuset, and during the weekend there will be both lectures, exhibition opening (at Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art) and concerts. The festival finishes of with the world premiere of ’Heart Chamber Orchestra’; a concert with the artist duo ‘Terminalbeach’ and Trondheim Sinfonietta.

DOKKHUSET
Seminar program, Thursday: 17.30-20.30
Concert, Thursday: 21.00
Seminar program, Friday: 10-17.00
Seminar program, Saturday: 10-17.00
Concert, Saturday: 20.00
Concert, Sunday: 20.00

TRØNDELAG CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Exhibition opening, Friday: 18.30

BLÆST
Club night, Saturday: 23.00

Complete program and extended background information could be found at the web page of the festival: http://www.matchmaking.no
Order tickets in advance at ticket@teks.no

Collaborating partners at this years festival are NoMuTe -Nordic Music Technology Conference, New Music Trondheim and Cinemateket.

Trondheim Matchmaking was made possible through support from
Trondheim city council, Arts Council Norway, Sør-Trøndelag county council and Fond For Lyd og Bilde.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

SEQUENCES 13.-28.10 Reykjavik

SEQUENCES is an international crossmedia festival in Reykjavik with the focus on time based art phenomena. The festival links contemporary visual art with other media, especially sound and performative art. It will take place in different locations in the city center of Reykjavík, accompanied by exhibitions and video/shortfilm nights. SEQUENCES will invade established spaces (museums and galleries) as well as public spaces in the city center of Iceland’s capital. A fine selection of international and local artists will participate in this unique event. The strong interrelation between visual arts, sound and performance arts is significant for Iceland’s vibrant art scene. These nexuses are accountable for specific dynamic creative processes which develop especially in time-based art projects.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

THE COPY AND PASTE SHOW

The Copy and Paste Show explores the evolution of copy-and-paste culture, where the copying of digital material has become a major technique in the construction of online identity and style. Featured artists include: Seth Price, 808, and artists collaborative, Ida Ekblad and Anders Nordby. Each explores how copy and paste techniques, paired with different digital tools, influence web aesthetics, music production, and relationships on and offline.

TIME SHARES Organized by Rhizome and co-presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Time Shares is a series of online exhibitions dedicated to exploring the diversity of contemporary art based on the Internet. Every six weeks, Rhizome and invited curators will launch a new exhibition featuring an international group of artists. The series is a component of Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology.