Media Parasol
The online platform for media art festival documentation (yes, one exists!) tagr.tv took a rather unconventional tack in their coverage of Berlin's transmediale last week. The team shot a number of interviews using their own "mobile interview environment." The device, an umbrella outfitted with a camera and microphone, served as a nearly private location for one-on-one discussions with artists involved with the festival. The short clips are interspersed with more traditional installation shots, providing a unique "overview" (get it?) of select projects showcased during transmediale. (On a related note, be sure to check out transmediale's comprehensive streaming video archive from the 2009 session as well.)
Free Radio Berkeley's "How To Make a Radio Station"
See below for an instructional video from Berkeley's pirate radio station Free Radio Berkeley. The radio station is a major hub for information related to community-oriented micropower broadcasting, and they provide free workshops, legal information, and starter kits as part of their mission. In How To Make a Radio Station, FRB's founder Stephen Dunifer outlines how to build an FM transmitter.
How To Make a Radio Station from Free Radio on Vimeo.
In the Round
The question of the relationship between performance and its documentation is an interesting, if longstanding one. These relations have continued to shift with the emergence of newer and newer media, so that the telephonic or radio broadcast, camera, and internet transmission become implicated in the content they capture and deliver, often begging a chicken vs. egg-style question of whether the performance or the recording is paramount. The "Stage II" exhibition at New York's The Project gallery returns attention to the site of performance, even as it displays the residual ephemera of artists' actions. The work of artist Dave Allen stimulates a visceral connection with audiences in tapping into sound art's classic obsession with silence to deliver Silence Recordings, Hansa Studios, Berlin (2001), which fills the gallery space with the seemingly-silent recordings of vacant artist studios and empty concert halls. Lucky Dragons is a band and art collective whose work encompasses music, drawing, public collaboration, and more. For "Stage II," they present Showing (2009), a sculptural installation that proves the artists need not be physically present to make noise. An arrangement of their homebrew instruments featuring rocks, wood, and analog electronics sits in waiting for viewers to move them, generating a shift in their electrical field and a resultant shift in the shape of the sounds they are set to make. While these two projects provide perfect bookends for the exhibition, the show also includes work by Larry Krone, Rashaad Newsome, and Superamas, each of whom is engaged in the practice of splicing together object relationships, filmic clips, or cultural reenactments to establish a new interdependence between artist, viewer, stage, and document. - Marisa Olson
Now Accepting Applications for the 2010 Commissions Cycle
2009 Commissioned Artist
Rhizome is pleased to announce that the 2010 Commissions cycle is now open. Founded in 2001, the Rhizome Commissions Program is designed to support emerging artists with financial and institutional resources. In the seventh year of funding for the Program, Rhizome will award grants, with amounts ranging from $1000 to $5000, for the creation of significant works of new media art. This includes projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies to works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. Commissioned works can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, the web or networked devices. Artists who receive a commission will also be invited to speak at Rhizome's affiliate, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and to archive their work in the ArtBase, a comprehensive online art collection.
Applications will be accepted until midnight April 2, 2009.
For the application and more information:
http://www.rhizome.org/commissions
In the 2010 cycle, Rhizome will award nine grants total. Seven of these will be selected by a jury and two will be determined by Rhizome's membership through an open vote. Reflective of Rhizome's commitment to openness and community, this unique process encourages dialogue among artists and participants and provides members with the opportunity to survey the current field of practice.
Member voting will begin on April 6th. Information on Rhizome membership is here:
http://rhizome.org/support/individual.php
The Rhizome Commissions program is supported, in part, by funds from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York ...
See You See Me (2009) - Evan Roth
-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Flooded McDonald's (2009) - Superflex
Flooded McDonald's from Superflex on Vimeo.
Call for Entries: Prix Ars Electronica 2009
The Prix Ars Electronica is currently seeking submissions for 2009. The prizes will be awarded during the Ars Electronica Festival in September. There are currently eight award categories, including Computer Animation / Film / VFX, Interactive Art, Digital Musics, Hybrid Art, Digital Communities, u19 - freestyle computing, [the next idea] Grant, and the Media.Art.Research Award. The deadline is March 6, 2009.
Posted by c.kaczmarek
John R Math