nathaniel stern:

New images, video and text (including Manifesto-like "rules" for Compressionist works) are up at http://Compressionism.net

I think the most exciting bit is probably the new video, with some great footage of "action Jackson" and my Compression methods - he's a custom-made, battery-operated and fully portable appendage for 360- degree Compressionist scans.

Compressionism is a digital performance and analog archive. In the current studies, I compress bodies, spaces and objects by traversing their surfaces with an image scanner, along varying 3-dimensional paths - I literally glide, run, hover and swoop across windows, trees, or lilies while the scanner head is in motion. The resulting digital images, which are transfigured down to the size of a small piece of paper, are then re-stretched to their original size, sometimes cropped or colorized. The final prints ask us to 'look again' at the relations between subjects, objects, actions and perceptions.

http://compressionism.net

related: Check out the Boing Boing post @ http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/19/turning_scanners_int.html about Mike Golembewski's scanner photography. Basically, he's turned his scanner into a (very large format pinhole camera- beautiful stuff!

nathaniel
http://nathanielstern.com

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Now that video game fanatics are dying for the cause and others have pledged eternal allegiance to particular hardware types, play has ascended to the level of hard core devotion. In the last few years, Brody Condon's work has been concerned with overlaps between the similarities in life cycles and social networks of video game developers, medieval knights, and a particular new age cult. His current solo show, at New York's Virgil de Voldere Gallery through February 11, is aptly titled 'Worship.' On view are hacked video games--including an eponymous video documenting the ritualistic worship 'performed within the confines of the 3D massively multiplayer online game Anarchy Online,' a polygon sculpture of game engineer John Carmack, and a Lamborghini Countach made of cast plastic branches and based on a model that once came with the video game Need For Speed. Each takes their place in a pantheon of deified subjects and objects. Populated by sleek Elvises, floating gurus, and candy-colored crystals, Condon's work is as fun as it is historically-informed. He sees parallels between the evolution of painting and the trajectory of video game design, with portraits becoming more life-like and landscapes taking on richer detail. This insight leads him to make 'new media' work that doesn't always need to be plugged-in, and which is as skillfully crafted as it is a display of our own consumption. - Marisa Olson

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DIGITAL ART WEEKS 2006 ETH Zurich [Kon.[Text]] Symposium Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday July 13th to Sunday July 16th, 2006

Digital Art Weeks 2006 ETH Zurich: http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch Parallel Event - Interactive Futures, 2006 http://cfisrv.finearts.uvic.ca/interactivefutures/ Co-sponsor - Computer Systems Institute ETH Zurich: http://www.jg.inf.ethz.ch Co-sponsor- sitemapping.ch, Swiss Federal Office of Culture: http://www.sitemapping.ch Research Partner ? The Situated Body http://www.situated-body.net/

CALL FOR PAPERS, PANELS, DEMONSTRATIONS & PERFORMANCES

The Digital Art Weeks PROGRAM (DAW06) is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of symposium, workshops and performances, the program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances during the Digital Art Weeks Festival each year, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of the application of technology in the arts.

[Kon.[Text]], this year's Digital Art Weeks SYMPOSIUM concerns the use of the Performative Surround in the arts and the technology that drives it. The Performative Surround pertains to the immersive quality and quantity of the setting of a performative artwork that uses electronic media enhancement. Enhanced media art is any artwork that uses electronic media to communicate in part or in whole its message to the viewer. The viewer may be therewith integrated into the performative arena through the use of the communicative powers of the applied media.

In a series of lectures, demonstrations, panels and performances, artists and researcher will examine the use of electronic media in articulating the performer's presence through the possibilities of the multi-sensuality of electronic media. The possibilities of blurring the divide between public and performer to bond them through the powers of dissemination and inclusion ...

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Now that video game fanatics are dying for the cause and others have pledged eternal allegiance to particular hardware types, play has ascended to the level of hard core devotion. In the last few years, Brody Condon's work has been concerned with overlaps between the similarities in life cycles and social networks of video game developers, medieval knights, and a particular new age cult. His current solo show, at New York's Virgil de Voldere Gallery through February 11, is aptly titled 'Worship.' On view are hacked video games--including an eponymous video documenting the ritualistic worship 'performed within the confines of the 3D massively multiplayer online game Anarchy Online,' a polygon sculpture of game engineer John Carmack, and a Lamborghini Countach made of cast plastic branches and based on a model that once came with the video game Need For Speed. Each takes their place in a pantheon of deified subjects and objects. Populated by sleek Elvises, floating gurus, and candy-colored crystals, Condon's work is as fun as it is historically-informed. He sees parallels between the evolution of painting and the trajectory of video game design, with portraits becoming more life-like and landscapes taking on richer detail. This insight leads him to make 'new media' work that doesn't always need to be plugged-in, and which is as skillfully crafted as it is a display of our own consumption. - Marisa Olson

http://www.virgilgallery.com/v2/?ikDirId=1410

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Music, Art and Climate Change
In Association with Newcastle Science Festival 2006 & Furthernoise.org

You are invited to submit either an electro / acoustic composition or a visual art presentation lasting no longer than 10 minutes on the theme of climate change.

The winning entries and a selection of runners-up in each category will be presented in a lunchtime concert in King's Hall, Newcastle University on Friday 17th March.

A CD/ROM of the best entries will be compiled by Furthernoise.org will be available at the concert and through the web site. The winners in each category will also be presented with prizes of £150.

Although the prizes are only available to students all submissions will be considered for inclusion on the CD-ROM.

The deadline is the 10th February 2006.

Any questions regarding performance requirements should be discussed with
Alison Lewis on [0191] 222 6093 or a.m.lewis@ncl.ac.uk

To submit, just send a link to your MP3 [don't send the actual file!]
to david@furthernoise.org
http://www.furthernoise.org/
or send a CDR marked 'Music & Climate Change' to -
86 Sidney Grove, Fenham,
Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE4 5PE.

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Pauline Oliveros at the UPGRADE. if you sleep on this u will never forgive yourself!

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live news visualization via pain stimulation: an Internet connected wireless device that can be fixed on any part of the body. it automatically detects the information from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide updated continuously & analyzes them looking for specific keywords such as death, kill, murder, torture, rape, war, virus etc.. each time the text of the news contains one of these keywords, the wearable device is activated through the Wi-Fi network, providing an electric impulse. this impulse is calibrated so a certain (safe) amount of pain can be felt. [unbehagen.com & wifi-art.com|via christophebruno.com]

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A new project by La Fabricadecosasbonitas (The Factory of Pretty Things) has recently been awarded money as an "incentive for further production" by Vida 8.0. The Spanish activists plan to take 20 robot-demonstrators to the G8 summit, to be held in the summer of 2007 in Germany.

Their ANA project was inspired by a news article published in early 2005 on the Pentagon’s intention to send "robot soldiers" to Iraq in March of that year.

The ANA or autonomous non-violent agent project satirizes about the terrible consequences of dehumanizing armed conflict and mechanically systematizing the solution of political disputes. Given the amount of cynicism we seem able to assume, robots can replace people in some of their tasks, including killing. They might even become the actors in the new millennium’s protest movements.

The image above shows a first prototype. The superior part of the final robot could wear glasses equipped with camera, earings with microphones, clothes bearing protest messages and it would also carry posters with slogans. The inferior part is a robotic vehicle (inspired by Segway) equipped with sensors to avoid obstacles and police.
All materials are recycled.

Julio and

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While regine is away, I'm posting pieces about notable and award-winning works at Japan Media Art Festival. Some will be exhibited at Tokyo Metoropolitan Museum of Photography from February 24 till March 5.

Khan Artist, by Osman Khan (see also: "What's your net worth?" and "Sur la table"), looks just like a credit processing machine in front of the Artist. The Artist actually is registered as a validated merchant with the machine, and the Artist (or through a sales rep proxy) asks the visitor to make a purchase. When a purchase is made, no product or service is returned in kind at the time of transaction. The Artist's name will show up on the itemized list of the visitor's monthly statement.

[Khan artist.]

This work is partly inspired by what happened after the tragedy of 9/11.

For the macro well being of a capitalist system, what is actually bought or sold becomes secondary to the actual act of consumer transactions transpiring. We saw this occur, as the government urged people to begin spending and purchasing in an effort to revive the American economy after the tragedy of 9/11. It was not important what was bought or sold, as long financial transactions kept flowing through the economic machine, the path to recovery would be under way. Perhaps it can be seen that a consumer society is actually more dependent on the acts of purchasing then the exchange of goods or services.

Simple as it looks, this work asks several provocative questions about art and consumption.

Khan Artist was selected as Jury Recommended Works out of the finalists of the 2005 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Related projects by the same artist: net worth, data dump, and art dispensing machine (ADM).

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The Digital Aestheticisation of Oneself

"ABSTRACT: Digital cameras have made self-portraits increasingly common, and frequently we post our self-portraits online. This paper compares online photographic self-portraiture with self-representations in weblogs and the creation of visual avatars. Contemporary projects and quotidian practice is connected to the history of self-writing and self-portraiture, as well as to psychoanalytic theories of how we use our own mirror images to come to an understanding of our selves. The paper concludes that our contemporary fascination with reflections and shadows is an expression of our newfound subjectivity as individuals able to represent ourselves rather than simply succumb to the generalisations of mass media." From Mirrors and Shadows: The Digital Aestheticisation of Oneself by Jill Walker

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