Rhizome | Editorial

The Week Ahead: Bloc Party Edition

Michael Connor | Mon May 6th, 2013 6:45 p.m.

Events and deadlines that are on our radar this week:

Montréal

The fifth annual Sight & Sound festival hits town this week, marking the fifth anniversary of the artist-run new media venue Eastern Bloc.

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A Queer History of Computing: Part Four

Jacob Gaboury | Mon May 6th, 2013 12:11 a.m.

In Part Four of our ongoing genealogy of queer computing (Part One, Part Two, Part Three), we introduce a second generation of queer scholars who made important contributions to the field of computer science, and from whom we may trace a direct connection back to those familiar foundational figures.

On June 20, 2009 at 4pm at The Hampstead Quaker Meeting House in London, a memorial service was held for Professor Peter Landin. In attendance were his family and the friends whose lives he had touched over the last 78 years. It was a collision of worlds, a sudden mixing of two communities that Landin had kept separate his entire life. Landin's friend and colleague Olivier Danvy likened the event to the memorial for the French mathematical logician Jean van Heijenoort, author of From Frege to Gödel (1967).^[1] In the early part of his life, van Heijenoort had been the personal secretary and bodyguard of Leon Trotsky, the famous Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army. Van Heijenoort left service only two months before Trotsky's murder in Mexico City by Stalinist assassins, but was a devout Trotskyist until his death, publishing extensively on his relationship with the revolutionary figure and editing a volume of Trotsky's correspondence before his own death in 1986. In attendance at van Heijenoort's funeral, Danvy recalls, were two disparate groups of people: on one side the logicians, and on the other the Trotskyists, each one incapable of communicating their own sense of importance of the man to the other.

Peter Landin had also led something of a double life. He was a foundational figure in computer science, and a pioneer of programming language design based on mathematical logic and the Lambda calculus. He was ...

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Videos of Seven on Seven Now Online

Zoë Salditch | Fri May 3rd, 2013 3:06 p.m.

On April 20, 2013, a nice spring Saturday, some brilliant minds from art and technology met to share the ideas and projects that emerged from a one-day interdisciplinary collaboration. For those of you who were unable to join us for Seven on Seven this year, below are videos from each presentation so you can see their presentations for yourself.

Seven on Seven 2013: Keynote by Evgeny Morozov

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"Art and Not Bits and Bytes"

Michael Connor | Fri May 3rd, 2013 5:43 a.m.

Last Friday, Rhizome published a new artwork by Oliver Laric that was originally made for BiennaleOnline, but which could not be shown because HTML code and outgoing links were (surprisingly, for an online biennial) proscribed. Today, BiennaleOnline organizer David Dehaeck fires back in the pages of El País, saying "The BiennaleOnline is about art and not bits and bytes."

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The Strange Rituals of TEDxSummerisle

Adam Rothstein | Thu May 2nd, 2013 11:05 a.m.

I woke up early that morning with the intention of helping to fake a TEDx Conference.

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Commissions Deadline Extended to May 15

Michael Connor | Wed May 1st, 2013 1:21 p.m.

Over the past couple days, my inbox has been filled with pleas for deadline leniency from bleary-eyed artists around the world who, presumably upon stumbling from their beds after several weeks of napping, suddenly realized that proposals for Rhizome commissions were due imminently. Never fear: we hear your pleas. You now have until May 15. Get cracking!

I would like to remind you of several salient facts. Awards are typically between $1,000 and $5,000. Four of the awards will be given to artists from New York. One of the commissions will go to an artist (from anywhere) with a proposal for a socially-engaged project to take place in New York. Three commissions will be given to projects that engage with Tumblr. I'm not sure of the math, but some grants will also go to artists who are not from New York and engaged neither socially nor with Tumblr.

As always, members will vote for one of the commissions; voting will now open on May 16.

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