070707: UpStage Festival – call for participation

I received this announcement by way of Helen Varley Jamieson, the Project Manager for UpStage. I think this will be interesting and great fun! I certainly plan to participate. Check it out:

A festival of live online performances to celebrate the launch of UpStage 2. 

You are warmly invited to create your own original cyberformance and perform it to a global audience, using UpStage.

Purpose-built for live interactive performance events, UpStage is easy and fun to use. It works via a web browser so you don’t need to download or install anything to create or attend a performance. The UpStage team can help you to learn how to use the software and give advice on devising work in UpStage and creating graphics.

To learn more about UpStage, come to the next open session: Wednesday 7 March, 9pm New Zealand time – check here for your local time.

To submit a proposal, email the following information to info@upstage.org.nz:

  • working title of your cyberformance and 3-4 sentences about it;
  •  names and locations of people involved;
  • brief background /bios (not more than 300 words);
  • preferred time(s), in your local time, for presentation on 070707;
  • contact email and postal address.

Performances can be on any theme or topic – adapt a stage classic, tell your own story or go for the avant garde! The only rules are it must be no longer than 21 minutes, and must be created and performed in UpStage.

The deadline is MARCH 31 2007; selections will be made shortly after this and you will be advised as soon as possible. The festival will take place online in UpStage, and screened at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington, NZ, on 0707070 (7 July 2007). There us no entry fee; participated artists will be listed in a printed programme and on the UpStage website, and will receive a DVD of the festival and copies of promotional material.

For further information email: info@upstage.org.na



					

Ten thousand Deer in the virtual Woods

This is fantastic news! Press release as it appeared yesterday on the Tale of Tales website:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ten thousand Deer in the virtual Woods
The Endless Forest crosses the 10,000 registered users mark

Today, the number of confirmed registered players of The Endless Forest has exceeded ten thousand, while the artistic game project has been downloaded over 64,000 times since its first release in September 2005.The Endless Forest is a social screensaver. A multiplayer game without goals or chat. A peaceful environment where every player is represented as a deer, running around, rubbing trees and sleeping in the sun. And casting Forest Magic on each other or partying under a night sky filled with floral fireworks during ABIOGENESIS, a spectacle created in realtime by authors Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn whenever the mood hits them.Tale of Tales is a Belgian games development company founded by former internet artists Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn, better known as “Entropy8Zuper!”. Their goal is to explore the potential of the games medium as an artistically expressive form of entertainment.

The Endless Forest is supported by Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxemburg, Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds and Design Vlaanderen.

The Endless Forest can be downloaded for free from
http://Tale-of-Tales.com/TheEndlessForest/

Cybertheaters mailinglist

A few months ago I started off a mailing list: Cybertheatres is a list devoted to the discussion and exchange on networked performance practices, that is, performances that employ the Internet and /or other networking technologies and techniques as media, but also as hybrid stages. Other than networked performance, the list also has an interest in diverse hybrids between theatre /performance and technologies.

The list, as well as this blog, are components of my PhD research in cybertheaters. The aim of the list is to send out news about relevant events, performances, symposia, lectures or any other activities to people interested in the field. I also hope that this will become a space for discussion on issues around the intersection of performance and technologies. Anybody subscribed to the list can post out to everyone, as well as search the archives and use the chatroom provided by JISCmail .

If you are interested in the field of performance and technologies as an artist, theorist, researcher, or technologist, if you enjoy to watch such events, or if you’d just like to know more about the field and what’s happening, come and join the mailing list.

Deptford.TV Diaries: out now!

deptford.tv diaries

Deptford.TV is an audio-visual documentation of the regeneration process of Deptford (South-east London) in collaboration with SPC.org media lab, Bitnik.org, Boundless.coop, Liquid Culture and Goldsmiths College.

Since September 2005 we started assembling AV material around the area, asking community members, video artists, film-makers, visual artists and students to contribute statements, feedback and critique of the regeneration process of Deptford.

The unedited as well as edited media content is being made available on the Deptford.TV database and distributed over the Boundless.coop wireless network. The media is licensed through open content licenses such as Creative Commons and the GNU general public license.

This book is a compilation of theoretical underpinnings, interviews and written documentation of the project.

Contributors: Adnan Hadzi, Maria X, Heidi Seetzen, James Stevens, Erol Ziya, Bitnik media collective, Andrea Pozzi, Andrea Rota and Jonas Andersson, alongside selected public-license texts from Hakim Bey, Jaromil and Guy Debord.

To order (5 GBP for book, 10 GBP for book & DVD) send an email to info@deptford.tv, go to OpenMute, Amazon, or download it for free here:

http://www.deptford.tv/about/diaries/DeptfordTV-diaries1.pdf
http://www.deptford.tv/about/diaries/DeptfordTV-diaries1-cover.pdf

Pink Tank

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Check out the project Pink Tank, a 3D online media magazine that has just come out. The main person behind the project is artist Alex Spyropoulos, previously a member of the Personal Cinema collective.

According to the Pink Tank website, the project is “Akin to a magazine but not a magazine, akin to a forum but not a forum, akin to a video game but not a video game Pink Tank is a 3D online space for creative thinking and entertainment. Visitors to Pink Tank may explore the 3D environment, read articles, listen to soundscapes, recordings and music, play mini games, watch videos, interviews, animations, documentaries and lectures and take part in discussions.”

Pink Tank is currently under development, so watch this space for more news about the project.

New Thursday Club: 22 February with Prof. BILL GAVER

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Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW [To find us check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/ ]

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

THE HOME HEALTH MONITOR

Domestic ubiquitous computing systems often rely on inferences about activities in the home, but the open-ended, dynamic and heterogeneous nature of the home poses serious problems for such systems. In this work, we propose that by shifting the responsibility for interpretation from the system to the user, we can build systems that interact with people at humanly meaningful levels, preserve privacy, and encourage engagement with suggested topics. We describe a system that embodies this hypothesis, using sensors and inferencing software to assess ‘domestic wellbeing’ and presenting the results to inhabitants through an output chosen for its ambiguity. In a three-month field study of the system, customised for a particular volunteer household, users engaged extensively with the system, discussing and challenging its outputs and responding to the particular topics it raised.

BILL GAVER is Professor of Design at Goldsmiths, and a Principle Investigator on the Equator IRC. Bill has pursued research on innovative technologies for over 15 years, his work spanning auditory interfaces, theories of perception and action, and interaction design. Currently he focuses on design-led methodologies and innovative technologies for everyday life.


Other Thursday Club events this term:

8 MARCH with SUE BROADHURST

DIGITAL PRACTICES

Sue is Subject Leader, Reader in Drama and Technologies at the School of Art, Brunel University of West London. Sue is also a writer and practitioner in the creative arts. Her new book /Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity/ has just been published by Palgrave. She is co-editor of the /Body, Space and Technology /online journal and is currently working on a series of collaborative practice based research projects entitled “Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance”.

22 MARCH with IGLOO

International and award winning artists Igloo create intermedia artworks, led by Ruth Gibson & Bruno Martelli.

‘In the mid-sixties, Fluxus artists began using the term ‘intermedia’ to describe work that was ….composed of multiple media. The term highlights the intersection of artistic genres and has gradually emphasized performative work and projects that employ new technologies.’ [Marisa Olson – Rhizome.org]

Igloo projects are created with teams of highly skilled practitioners drawn primarily from performance, music, design, architecture, costume, computer science and technology backgrounds. Their work combines film, video, motion capture technology, music and performance with digital technology. The work is developed in a variety of formats and made for distribution across a range of platforms, including gallery installation, internet sites, large and small scale performance and Cd Rom.
Visit www.igloo.org.uk/

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email maria x at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk

New Thursday Club: 15 February with JON MEYER

The Thursday Club is supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

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DIGITAL ART IN THE CONTEMPORARY ART CONTEXT

If you are a digital artist wishing to present work in the contemporary art context, you face some practical, cultural and theoretical hurdles. In this talk I’ll discuss some of these challenges, drawing on lessons I’ve learned as a computer scientist studying on the Goldsmiths MFA in Fine Art program. I’ll show work I’ve done as part of the program and talk about common responses. My goal is to start a discussion about useful strategies for contemporary artists using digital media.

JON MEYER is a digital artist, working in London and New York. Meyer received a B.A. in Artificial Intelligence from Sussex University and an M.S. in Computer Science from New York University. His artwork has been in group shows in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles and Osaka, including the SIGGRAPH 2005. He is currently in the final year of his M.F.A in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College.
Jon has over fifteen years of experience in the software industry, specializing in computer graphics, animation, and user interfaces. He worked as a Program Manager on the Sparkle team at Microsoft and as a Research Scientist at New York University’s Media Research Laboratory. Jon has taught multimedia at NYU and at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design. http://www.jonmeyer.com


THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

For more information email maria x at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk
To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/