The Crystalpunk Workshop of Soft Architecture workshop lives in 2 distinct spheres: in the corner of a gigantic building in a tiny Dutch city and online where as much realtime roomness is broadcasted as possible. Participation is local, you are invited to bring your laptop and start making noise, to join a workshop or to come listen to a presentation. To those faraway we must mention that, apart from this workshop, there are very few reasons for visiting Utrecht and the more we admire you for doing so. From the deepest Africa you are encouraged to turn yourself into a soft architectonic bootlegger: to render on-line data into representations formal and fluid, in monotones or RGB, spatially exact or rolling like a wave.

MORE »

This is just a brief reminder that after a 3 year hiatus, the event promotion organization formerly known as clonk returns to Toronto on Friday August 26th with the first in a series of events under a new moniker; Vague Terrain. Vague Terrain will serve as a promotional vehicle for forward thinking electronic music/arts events in Toronto and digital arts online as a quarterly journal.

MORE »

The intern will work with the Education Associate for Access to conduct research on interactive distance learning. Based on this research, the Museum will develop a plan for acquiring interactive distance learning technology and launching its own distance learning program.

MORE »

“MATISSE

MORE »

Looking for artists, or suggestions for artists working with ring tones for an upcoming show at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. The 2 programs will explore different ways the phone has been used in cultural and creative contexts through film, video and new media works.
Send suggestions/responses to Laura Deutch at ldeutch@berkeley.edu. Thanks!

MORE »

The Centre for the Study and Development of Narrative

Asterisk*, (the centre for the study and development of narrative) is based at Shandy Hall in North Yorkshire where Laurence Sterne wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is a concept developed by The Laurence Sterne Trust that aims to use the spirit and intellectual resources of Shandy Hall to inspire artists and the public to explore and experiment with nonlinearity, and to examine and develop the convergences between art forms within our contemporary culture. It aims also to illustrate how new technology can, in the hands of artists, be used to deliver entirely new artistic opportunities. In the autumn and winter of 2005, Asterisk* will offer two residencies of three weeks duration each. These will provide exceptional opportunities for artists keen to experiment with current practice in diverse media, specifically exercises in non-linearity, with an emphasis on interactivity and audience participation. Intersections with technology are encouraged and technology specialists will be available for collaboration. Deadline Friday 26 August.

MORE »

KISSS Project launch and Press Conference

August 25, 2005, 6-8pm
The Auditorium
Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK
80 - 82 Whitechapel High Street
London, E1 7QX
+44 (0)20 7522 7888
Admission Free

This KISSS: Kinship International Strategy on Surveillance and Suppression event will feature a series of performances, video screenings and presentations from Coco Fusco, Anne Bean, Deej Fabyc, Joanna Callaghan, Paula Roush, Raresonick, Camilla Brueton, Season Butler and Maxine Hall. Due to high demand bookings are advisable: kisss[at]elastic.org.uk. Related.

MORE »

Lea:
¿Blog?

Blog, one of the most spread forms of expression on the web, varying
from personal diaries to community weblogs, professional knowledge exchange resources, political campaigns and more. In their different
manifestations, blogs (moblogs, videoblogs, photoblogs, etc.), became a phenomenon influencing in many cases upon social and cultural areas: journalism, politics, alternative knowledge sources, literature, art, etc.

The ¿blog? project takes blog as art and as a stage for net artworks
investigating the language, the aesthetics, the impacts and the practices of blogs, blogging and the blogoesphere.
In this context, it's worth mentioning the blog.art project --one of
the first projects dealing with the notion of blog as art -- operating for about a year and publishing blog-defined art projects.

¿Blog? project acts (is envisioned to act) as a platform for an open
discussion on the topic and as a pool for submitting works.
No-org.net invites submissions of art projects making use of blog as a tool, subject, or both as well as texts investigating the blog-art interplay in a broad sense.

Selected texts and artworks will be exhibited (separately) on the
no-org.net website. The launch of the project will be accompanied by an
opening event and the discussion, that will get documented on the
no-org.net website.

http://no-org.net/blogs

MORE »

Recently Tom Moody wrote (in part):

Does one have to write code to make art or music with digital tools? Two proponents of code are designer/MIT Media Lab professor John Maeda (on the hi-fi end of the digital spectrum) and the BEIGE crew […snip]

The beef about using consumer software is that an engineer makes aesthetic choices for you.[…snip]

[…] An analogy I’ve used is the purist artist who thinks you have to grind your own pigment to paint, either because store bought colors aren’t good enough or out of some strict truth-to-materials dictate. I think that applies to John Maeda—his “if you aren’t programming you aren’t using the computer

MORE »

Jim Andrews:

Here is some unusually good generative visual art available for viewing on the Net: http://www.complexification.net/gallery . This is work by Jared Tarbell of New Mexico. I find this work quite exciting. Many of you have probably seen this work before. I have too, but only tonight have something to say about it.

What I like about it is the fusion of algorithm and art. Of course there is much generative algorithmic visual art, but this work is rather distinguished in its particular fusion.

For instance, Box.Fitting.Img is both beautiful visually and, also, the work grows from an algorithm that one may easily infer from watching the piece. It starts with 5 boxes. The color of the boxes is determined by the color of the pixel of an underlying, invisible image. Though as the piece grows, one gets other indications of the underlying image. In any case, a box grows until it touches another box. Then it stops growing and other boxes start growing in the interstices remaining.

Very simple algorithm. Plain to see. But brilliantly so, really, and unusual in its visual results.

And much of his work is this way: the algorithms are evident if you watch closely. They are simple but often generative of unusual results. And his sense of color and shape is finely drawn. No clumsy grab bag goin on here. The sense of composition is fascinating. Composition within a pseudo-random generative process.

Another wonderful part of the work is that all the source code is available to view. It's all done in a language called Processing invented not too long ago by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. Java based. Some other strong work is emerging from this language such as Martin Wattenberg's, and Marek Walczak's ...

MORE »