18:18
Franchino: Petals #1 / Capozzo: Code.specific / Limiteazero: Laptop orchestra
C.STEM | Art Electronic Systems and Software-Art practices
1-2 June 2006, Sede 32 Dicembre, Turin
An upcoming exhibition / conference / club event in Turin looks set to blow the lid on the Italian generative art scene. C.STEM is organized by artist Fabio Franchino, and is possibly the first Italian event dedicated to generative and software-based procedural art. In a traditionally conservative Italian art scene this should prove an interesting event.
C.STEM will show the work of 3 Italians and one Norwegian, with myself (Marius Watz) representing the Nordic contingent. The remaining three are Fabio Franchino, Alessandro Capozzo and Limiteazero, all significant Italian artists or artist groups working with code. Their work has long been seen on blogs and web sites, and despite individual differences shows a tendency towards poetic, self-contained works. Aesthetics is a clear focus for all three, with a warm organic feel given to even the most abstract visuals. Whether this is an Italian specialization is hard to say, but it is interesting to note local differences in style and expression. Compare for instance to the Austrian scene with its focus on hard-edged abstraction.
Fabio Franchino shows an interest in autonomous virtual drawing machines, and has an at times painterly approach to his images. At home in print media, he creates sumptious compositions like City on sea, Suff and Petals. Other works like Homo and Blow are carefully exposed chaotic systems, in what is practically a kind of generative photography. Yet others (Silus, Toys) explore permutations of algorithmic form systems.
Alessandro Capozzo is more concerned with structure and topologies than with surface. His online works often deal with organic growth processes, but recently he has been branching out into installations and more complex interactive projects. One example is RGB, “an interactive musical installation for 2-9 users” where colored flash lights are used by the audience to influence the live music. Code Specfic is a new Processing application which interactively visualizes the structure of its own source code.
Limiteazero is an architecture, media design and media art studio based in Milan. Together, Paolo Rigamonti and Silvio Mondino create installations that are elegant not just in their simplicity, but also in their pureness of concept. Their Laptop orchestra sees the user “conducting” the sound and visuals on 15 laptops, turning them off and on to create a variety of soundscapes. The glass of a_mirror mirrors the world around it, but not without adding its own visual modifications, tracing the outlines of what it “sees”.
As for myself, I will be showing a new series of 4 prints called C/M/Y/K, produced as offset-print posters to be given away in the gallery. This project marks a welcome experiment with a medium I have not worked with for a long time, and it’s exciting to be able to exploit the sheer detail and scale of large prints.
For the purpose of stimulating discourse, C.STEM will feature a short panel of presentations moderated by theorist Domenico Quaranta. See the event program for details. The panel will then be followed by a C.STEM club event, with projections by the artists in many different locations. C.STEM is organized by Fabio Franchino and produced by Associazione Culturale 32 Dicembre with the support of Teknemedia.net.
For the record, I generally try not to blog exhibitions I am participating in. But this show is too interesting not too, purely by virtue of the quality of the work shown by the Italian contingent. I hope it will prove a fruitful platform for future C.STEM events.
11:44
This call for works is very exciting, as there are very few bigger exhibitions of electronic art in the Nordic region. Electrohype in Malmö did an excellent biennial for many years, but had to close down due to short-sightedness of the local funding bodies.
i/o/lab in Stavanger has long been aiming to become a full-fledged node in the Norwegian electronic art network. With the Article project they will contribute significantly to the scene.
Article is one of the main projects for Stavanger 2008 – European Capital of Culture. Article 2006 will be a pilot project for the 2008 installment, but also to underline that Article is intended as a biannual event BEYOND the scope of the European Capital year.
Article will be comprised of: a main exhibition; a conference related to the themes of the biannual; in-depth practical and theoretical workshops and seminars; and contributions from local resources and other collaborative partners.
The goal of Article is to promote artforms which don’t merely employ electronic techniques in its production and display, but also actively comment on technology, the ethics and politics of technology and the evolution and dissemination of technology. Article wishes to establish an open arena for artforms which critique and engage social processes and present reflected positions on the expressive qualities and contexts of the media.
By «Unstable artforms» we intend to encompass art which is not institutionalised and stabilised by traditional frameworks of production and distribution, art which crosses disciplinary boundaries, which engages unusual contexts and references, or art which is not anchored by permanent, static objects. [...]
Deadline: 15 June 2006
URL: iolab.no/article/
URL:PDF with call details
The i/o/lab initiative was set up by Kevin Foust, Jens Laland and Hege Tapio. The programme committee for Article consists of Jon Brunberg, Kevin Foust, Juha Huuskonen, Mogens Jacobsen and Hege Tapio.
19:20
The EXTEND workshop with Casey Reas, Ben Fry, Zach Lieberman and yours truly is now underway. Today is the second day, yesterday was spent giving personal introductions and dividing the 18 participants into groups. Each day we have micro-lectures. Zach started off by talking about animation and movement, and showed some examples from his making things move workshop.
The participants have shown significant interest in data visualization, and so Ben presented some background to computational information design. He used his Linkology project as a specific example.
Casey is currently speaking about the history of Processing (traced back to ACU and other MIT projects) and how to sketch with code. He is also talking about the importance of the concept of libraries as a way of extending Processing, and in particular to bring it beyond the screen. In particular, he is demonstrating the new PDF library with some code examples that will soon be posted to the Processing site.
I will sporadically be blogging the workshop over on Code & Form, a new blog I just opened to support workshops, teaching and code experiments.
13:56
Wednesday 7th of June – Saturday 10th of June
at Atelier Nord Oslo/Norway by Susanne Jaschko & Erich Berger
Free participation
[...]
Urban public space operates as an interface between the individual and the public. It is a highly social, political and economic space. Nowadays digital technologies are omnipresent in this space, employed as systems for communication, control and organisation. The use and application of these technologies have strongly effected our understanding, perception and behaviour of public and private spaces.
The workshop will deal with the public space as field of artistic expression. We will analyse the properties and conditions of public space and the potential for art responding to this specific environment. Special attention will be laid on art and design using the existing technological infrastructure.
Deadline: 19 May 2006
URL: Complete text of the call for participation
10:56
Call for proposals in Paris and São Paulo:
For the fourth edition, we are looking for projects in all disciplines, especially, performances, circus, visual arts, architecture, game art, biotech art, artistic interventions in public spaces, networked performances (in the framework of collaborations with festivals in France and abroad)…
Main artistic themes: Mobility, network and ubiquity | The intimate, the unusual and the strange | The urban and nature | Art in the city
Deadline: 30 May 2006
URL: http://www.festival-emergences.info/2006/callspro.htm
MOBILEFEST 2006 Symposium Call for Papers & Projects MOBILEFEST is the First International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity, and will take place in September, in São Paulo, Brazil. In its first edition, it aims to discuss the sociological, cultural and esthetics implications that mobile phones and their technologies have been promoting globally. In fact, the global transformations the world has been gone through have modified the way we realize, interpret and represent reality. [...] MOBILEFEST 2006 seeks paper and presentation proposals responding to the Symposium themes: How can Mobile Technology contribute to democracy, culture, art, ecology, peace, education, health and third-sector?
Deadline: 11 May 2006
URL: http://www.mobilefest.org/
00:08
Due to the current concert tour (which is going very well, expect an update very soon) blogging has been a low priority. Here are a few interesting things we’ve noticed recently:
- Atelier Nord has a call for participation for a workshop called The Empire’s New Clothes - Art, Fashion and Technology. The deadline is today – Monday 24 April, so if fashion is your thing hurry up and send them a CV and statement of intent. Apologies for the late post of this call
- Switchboard is a new Processing library written by Jeffrey Crouse. It implements a general application layer for using web services with Processing. Services already implemented to varying degrees are “google, yahoo, msn, allmusic, shoutcast, foaf, and rss/atom feeds”.
- Linkology by Ben Fry is a project for New York Magazine showing link connections between the top 50 blogs. I’ve been meaning to blog it forever, but never got around to it so I’m simply linking it here.
- Visualcomplexity keeps adding new projects. Some new favorites are Essence of Rabbit (by our Berlin friends at Pictoplasma) and Font 004 - Community by Marian Bantjes. Interesting to see that Visualcomplexity is including projects that don’t fit a strict infoviz focus. If you haven’t checked in for a while then take a look and consider subscribing to their RSS feed. It’s well worth it.
Photos and video of the Generator.x tour should go online in the next few days.
09:48
Barcelona is always a nice place to be, but the upcoming second week in May may hold particular interest to creatives working with digital media. The reason is the OFFF festival for "Post-Digital Creation Culture". Now in its fifth year, OFFF has moved away from its Flash-oriented roots and embraced the full spectrum of experimental digital work. According to the festival site, OFFF is exploring “software aesthetics and new languages for interactive and visual expression.”
The festival’s biggest pull is probably the presentations by a core of well-known creatives, with names like Kyle Cooper, Weworkforthem, Nando Costa and many more. This year the list is also conspicuously full of names from the computational design and generative art fields: Ben Fry, Golan Levin, Casey Reas, Marcos Weskamp, Zach Lieberman etc. It’s an interesting mix, and while the actual program of events hasn’t been announced yet there are sure to be some good presentations.
A special partner event of OFFF is the EXTEND: Advanced Processing Workshop. Co-produced by OFFF and Hangar (an art centre for the audiovisual arts), the one-week EXTEND workshop will be led by Ben Fry, Casey Reaz, Zachary Lieberman and Marius Watz. The workshop is intended for artists and designers who already know how to code, but who would like to experiment with new topics, learn how to extend the Processing tool itself or just play around in a constructive environment.
The workshop fee is set at a low EUR 50, so it should be accessible to freelancers without design agencies who can bankroll them. The number of places are limited, however. To be accepted, applicants must submit a personal biography and a description of previous experience with Processing.
Application deadline is 21 April. See the following call for more information.
15:37
Pixelache 2006 in Helsinki will feature a seminar on art in a mobile context, supported by Nokia’s Connect To Art project and Sulake, developers of the famous Habbo Hotel.
Thursday 30 March, 1-5 pm, Kiasma seminar room
More information at:
http://www.pixelache.ac/2006/pikseliahky/seminar06
Featuring presentations from Sampo Karjalainen / Sulake, Atau Tanaka / Sony CSL Paris, Antye Greie + Sue Costabile / Minimovies and many others..
Participation fee is 250 euros. There are a few places reserved for artists / students / researchers without a participation fee.
Signing up and more information: send e-mail to seminar06@pixelache.ac latest tomorrow Wed 29 March!
The seminar is supported by Nokia Connect to Art and Sulake.
The program looks interesting, even if it looks a bit thin on the use of mobile devices as a computational platform. The delivery of video and sound over mobile networks is of course intriguing, but hardly revolutionary. Sulake’s presentation on “mobile virtual worlds” looks to be the exception.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Pixelache 2006 Helsinki program.
15:32
Update: The Rhizome Commissions call has been extended until 7 April.
Two call for proposals:
Artists are invited to submit proposals for new works of Internet-based art. There is no required theme. The works can manifest offline, as long as the Internet is a primary vehicle in the creation of the work, and the final work is accessible online, whether through a web browser, software, or some other use of internet technologies.
Deadline: 1 April 2006
URL: http://www.rhizome.org/commissions/
enter. explorations in new technology art is the Arts Council England East’s strategy for performance work encompassing new technologies. enter invites national and international artists to submit proposals for three commissions that consider live interaction with audience and space. [..] BUDGET £15,000 for each commission (including artist fee, material & production costs, installation & documentation)
Deadline: 1 June 2006
URL: http://www.enternet.org.uk/
I am posting calls for proposals here on an experimental basis, and would like feedback on whether this is of interest to Generator.x readers. Calls posted will be relevant to the scope of this blog, and should comprise a low volume of posts. But if readers don’t find them useful I won’t continue to post them.
13:32
Call for works for a giant public screen in Birmingham.
On the 6th May 2006 the BBC Big Screen launches its 2nd Summer Film Festival, which will run through to the end of June. Big Screen Birmingham is on the lookout for new films to include within this year’s Film Festival, welcoming films of all genres. However, they can be no longer than 30 minutes in length and should be submitted in mini-DV format.
Big Screen Birmingham is a 25 square metre video screen with full sound system situated in Chamberlain Square, with an estimated daily footfall of 125,000 people. The Birmingham screen broadcasts 24 hours a day, with sound muted at night.
Deadline 31 March, 2006. More on Big Screen at Wikipedia: BBC Big Screen.
Also note: The Prix Ars Electronica deadline has been extended until 24 March.
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