School Day
The spring show of ITP, New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, which was open to the public last Sunday and Monday, was a like science fair, with students eager to show the results of their projects, and also like a job fair, with middle-aged men in suits prowling for fresh-faced innovators. There’s an atmosphere of authentic creative exploration surrounding the projects displayed, but more often than not the starting point is a vaguely corporate-sounding buzzword: Sustainability! Wearable technologies! Arduino! Connecting to nature was a particularly hot topic, with variations on it ranging from urban botany—like the iPhone app Twigster that helps users identify species of plant life they encounter in parks—to the New-Age crunch of Root Boots, bark-covered footwear that encourages the wearer to stand still and contemplate nature by providing pleasant, low-frequency vibrations when at rest and making scary uprooting sounds when lifted. Voice from the Past also followed the trend of adapting technology to slow the pace of life down; the program lets callers leave a voice message and designate a time in the near or distant future when the recipient will be notified of it. The inverse of that was the whimsical Traveling Sound Museum, with sounds of events like the 1293 sacking of Jaisalmer by the emperor Ala-ud-din Khilji and the 1835 arrival of European explorers in Galapagos in mason jars displayed on an antique wooden cart. (The creator cagily batted away questions about what the burlap in the jars was hiding, and where they “really” came from.) Other projects let computers and audience share the credit for art-making. The “cobots” ShadowBot and SoundBot moved in response to environmental light or noise, respectively, to create messy, Spirogram-like doodles. With the heavy crowds at the ...
Reminder
Join us tomorrow, May 16th at 3pm, for this month's New Silent Series event, No Fun: Infinite Sound and Image. Produced in collaboration with the annual experimental music festival No Fun, which kicks off tonight at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, the afternoon will feature films and performances by Jim O'Rourke, Makino Takashi, Robert Beatty, Takeshi Murata, Sarah Lipstate, Dominick Fernow, C. Spencer Yeh, Megan Ellis and Carlos Giffoni. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
Spamtrap (2007) - Bill Shackelford
"Spamtrap" is an interactive installation piece that prints, shreds and blacklists spam email. It interacts with spammers by monitoring several email addresses I created specifically to lure in spam and an old unused personal email address I use to lure in spam. I do not use these email addresses for any other communication. I post these individual email addresses on websites and online bulletin boards that cause them to be harvested by spambots and then to start receiving spam.
Because I know that all email sent to these email addresses are spam, I have set the installation to print and then shred each email as it arrives. Simultaneously the installation is feeding spam blacklists on the web with information gathered from all the received spam (a newly added feature). This in turn helps to feed spam filtering systems across the web that are working to reduce the amount of spam we all receive. Click here for more information about Spamtraps.
The installation uses a Pentium II computer connected to a wireless network, personal printer, personal shredder, aluminum rails, Spamtrap email addresses, automatic printing software, email client software, antivirus software, and a SpamCop user account. The paper is recycled after the spam email has been shredded.
Spam Architecture (2007) - Alex Dragulescu
The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.
Second Round of Member Voting Begins
The second round of member voting for the Rhizome Commissions Program, known as the Ranking Phase, is here. Through this process, Rhizome members will determine two projects out of twenty-five finalists to receive awards. Members are asked to list proposals in order of preference from 1-25 (with 1 being greatest). The results are determined by single transferable vote, also known as instant runoff voting. These votes are tallied to determine the grant winners. All of our Voting Procedures are detailed here. The Ranking stage is open from May 14th through June 4th.
Members, vote now!
Not a member? Join today!
Note to Applicants: Your proposals are considered by both members and, separately, by a jury who will determine seven of the total awards. All awards will be announced mid-June and all applicants will be emailed in advance.
Posted by c.kaczmarek
Call for Artworks:
cfp: Online interactive works in the Digital Humanities
Posted by Nanette Wylde
Workshop:
Youth Sound Art Camp Workshop
Posted by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA)
marc garrett