ArTiViSm:3

Cybersonica and Openlab Workshops with the Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival

ArTiVist — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:30:13 +0000

Cybersonica and Openlab Workshops with the Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival, Manchester, UK, ask:

What kind of device would you build that is activated solely by the push of a single button?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LONDON and MANCHESTER, UK, August 24, 2010: From September through October 2010, open source software educator Openlab Workshops and digital arts organisation Cybersonica challenge anyone interested in makings things for themselves to conceive, design and build a device with a single button input. What this device actually does once its button is pressed is entirely up to them.

In a world where our interaction with technology is dominated by qwerty keyboards, multi-functional hand-held devices, motion-detection controllers and touch screens what becomes of the lowly, single button? Openlab and Cybersonica’s One Button Challenge uses this physical and creative boundary to inspire inventiveness from simplicity.

This October, Openlab Workshops and Cybersonica present a One Button Challenge as part of the AND (Abandon Normal Devices) Festival in Manchester. In the run-up to the event, they are offering both a 5 week workshop in London at (and supported by) SPACE Studios and an intensive workshop in Manchester on how to design and build your own One Button Device. Both workshops culminate in an ‘interventionist’ display of one button objects starting October 5 in Manchester, throughout the conference hub and its environs. An online blog will document the progress of the workshops their final, public outcome.

The first workshop series will take place weekly on Wednesday nights, from September 1st until September 29th, 2010 at the media lab in SPACE Studios, 129 Mare St, Hackney, London.

The second workshop series will take place at Cornerhouse in Manchester from 11am-5pm on October 5 and 11am-5pm at FabLab, also in Manchester.

One Button Challenge is inspired by One Button Objects – a collection of playful interactive circuit-based creations presented at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA), SF, 12 March 2010 and co-curated by Heather Kelley from Kokoromi ([url]kokoromi.org[/url]) and Peter Kirn from Create Digital Music ([url]createdigitalmusic.com[/url]) and Create Digital Motion ([url]createdigitalmotion.com[/url]).

One Button Challenge is part of a season of collaborative activity organised jointly by Cybersonica and Openlab Workshops which also includes Make It Yourself – an exhibition of inventive Arduino and DIY electronic-circuitry projects to accompany the major solo exhibition Recorders by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Manchester Art Gallery between 18 September 2010 to 30 January 2011.

Openlab Workshops (http://openlabworkshops.org) are London’s leading independent organizer of workshops in art and technology using free software. Since 2009 they fulfill the need for practical education about digital art and technology by providing workshops focusing on open source and free software, with its idealistic emphasis on transparency, knowledge-sharing, and international collaboration. Workshops are developed and taught by working artists and media practitioners, giving participants access to direct, practical experience. Topics include: programming for artists and designers, interactive lighting, and sound design.

Cybersonica (http://www.cybersonica.org) is an annual celebration of electronic music, sonic art and audiovisual experimentation. Now in its eighth year, their rolling schedule of collaborative events and projects are a key destination for anyone interested in the theory and practice of how new technologies are shaping and changing the way musicians, digital artists, audiovisualisers and creative software developers make and present their work. Cybersonica’s programming brings together a vibrant community of sonic and audiovisual innovation, nurtures new talent and showcases the freshest and latest work in the field.

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) (http://www.andfestival.org.uk) is a cross-regional festival of new cinema and digital culture that spills from screens and galleries into the streets and imaginations of the Northwest. During 01- 07 October 2010 AND ventures into Manchester and Cheshire – investigating how normality is closely intertwined with the constructing and collapsing of identities. Expect cinematic shenanigans, installations, online projects, work in public spaces, debates, workshops and live events.

Contact: Evan Raskob (info@openlabworkshops.org) or Lewis Sykes (lewis@cybersonica.org) for more information.

Breizh Entropy Congress in Rennes, April 15-17

ArTiVist — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:48:16 +0000

================================
BREIZH ENTROPY CONGRESS
April 15-17 2010, Rennes, France
Call for Proposals
================================

Passionate individuals and non-profit organizations from the region of Rennes,
Brittany, France invite you to participate in the first Breizh Entropy
Congress.
This inter-disciplinary event focuses on free (as in freedom) creations and
culture.

Through a meeting fostering open-mindedness, exchange of ideas and learning,
we hope to show solutions to technical, social and political problems, and
celebrate free, reclaimed and creative art and technology.

We happily welcome entropy, as a means to break artificial boundaries between
disciplines and find unexpected ways of doing things that promote
liberalization, sharing and reclaiming of technologies that traditionnally
belonged to the realm of corporations and well-funded academic labs.

NB: We are grateful for any kind of distribution of this CfP!

FORMATS
We gladly accept your proposals for the following formats. You can submit
a proposal alone or as a group. The list is not exhaustive.
- Lecture (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). One hour slot to
explain or present your project or idea.
- Panel discussion (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). One hour
of debate on the subject you propose.
- Lightning talk (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). 5 minute short talk to
outline your idea and give a web link to the audience.
- Workshop (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). Hands-on practice in electronics,
mechanics, chemistry or software, led by yourself. Can be any length between 1
and 8 hours.
- Music concert (Thursday 18:00-24:00). If you play music licensed under
CC or any other free license, be most welcome. All styles accepted. Duration
30min – 2 hours.
- Artistic performances (Thursday 18:00-24:00). Duration 10min – 2 hours.
- Exhibition and artistic installations (during the complete event). Come and
bring your cool hardware and/or artistic projects.
- Posters (during the complete event). We will have space in the exhibition
room for you to stick posters about your projects, ideas or events.

SUGGESTED PROPOSALS
Free hardware
- Free your manufacturing: FabLabs & RepRap
- Free your vintage electronics: DIY vacuum tube fabs
- Free your silicon: DIY semiconductor fabs
- DIY thin film technology
- Drones (UAVs)
- Soldering workshops
- Electronics workshops

Free devices
- Free your applications: file format reverse engineering
- Free your drivers: device protocol reverse engineering
- Free your logic design: open FPGA cores and tools
- Free your PCBs: free “traditional” electronics designs
- Home automation

Free software
- Innovative & original free software tools
- Free games
- Reverse engineering tools & techniques
- Pentesting tools
- Graphics & live audio processing tools
- Free software economy

Free radio
- Free your waves: open source software-defined radios
- Free your communications: wireless mesh networks
- Amateur radio
- Open hardware mobile phones

Free science
- Any type of uncommon science experiment contributing to free knowledge
- Cyclotrons
- Gyrotrons
- Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging devices
- Free your space exploration: google LunarXPrize projects
- Free your energy generators: alternative & DIY power stations
- Artificial intelligence & neural networks
- Cognitive sciences
- Alternative scientific paper review/publication systems

Free society
- Ensuring access to public data
- Political debates on net neutrality
- Ethical & problematic free licensing schemes
- Visions of freedom
- Intellectual property
- Future of free software and legal threats
- Preserving the commons
- Access to knowledge
- Escaping control society
- Liquid democracy

Free individuals
- Privacy
- Accessibility
- Hijacking of established practices and purposes
- Darknets
- Hackerspaces
- TAZ
- Creative hijacking of public space

Free art
- Free artwork and/or artwork made with free software
- Artistic performances
- Artistic installations
- Any style of freely-licensed music
- Computer-assisted music
- Remix culture/Transformative works
- Free cinema
- Demoscene

…And anything that does not fit…

http://www.breizh-entropy.org/cfp.html

Open Up-workshop on digital facades: collaborators needed (Madrid, Spain)

ArTiVist — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:03:39 +0000

Call for collaborators
Open Up Workshop: projects for the digital façade of Medialab-Prado
Deadline: February 8, 2010
Dates of the workshop: February 9 through 23, 2010
Venue: Medialab-Prado in Madrid (Spain)

Join us for the Open Up international workshop! This event is focused on the development of 8 selected projects for the digital façade in Medialab-Prado cultural center’s building. The goals of the workshop are to explore the relationship between the urban screen and public space, to experiment with the screen’s communicative, narrative and visual capacities, and to investigate its potential to offer new forms of participation.

According to its field of interest, each collaborator can be part of any team, bringing his/her knowledge and ideas to the workgroup and, at the same time, learning from the group and the teachers: Jordi Claramonte, Chandler McWilliams, Casey Reas, and Víctor Viña. Directed and coordinated by Nerea Calvillo.

For residents out of Madrid, Medialab-Prado will cover for the stay of a limited number of participants at a Youth Hostel during the workshop.

No entry fees.

More information, call guidelines and submission form:
http://medialab-prado.es/article/open_up_convocatoria_para_colaboradores
Selected projects: http://medialab-prado.es/article/open_up_proyectos_seleccionados
Email: medianeralab (at) medialab-prado.es
Venue:
Medialab-Prado
Plaza de las Letras
Calle Alameda, 15
28014 Madrid (Spain)

Workshop INTERACTIVOS? in the framework of the exhibition When Process Becomes Paradigm

ArTiVist — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:42:42 +0000

INTERNACIONAL CALL FOR PROJECTS
Workshop INTERACTIVOS? in the framework of the exhibition When Process Becomes Paradigm

A collaboration of LABoral and Medialab-Prado of Área de Las Artes del Ayuntamiento de Madrid.

CALL DEADLINE: 15th of February 2010
DATES OF WORKSHOP: 8th to 20th of April 2010
LOCATION: LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón (Spain)

Call for the presentation of projects to take part in Interactivos? When Process Becomes Paradigm, as part of the programme for artists and creators of LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. A maximum of eight proposals will be selected to be collaboratively developed in the workshop that will take place prior to the opening of the exhibition When Process Becomes Paradigm, on April 23rd 2010.

The exhibition When Process Becomes Paradigm reveals a huge shift from a culture based on the concept of manifestation and the final product (industrial society) to a culture of process. The Interactivos? workshop leading up to the exhibition is devoted to the production of artworks which follow the thesis of the exhibition. As in the exhibition, the probes and prototypes made during the Interactivos? workshop are processes that evolve, develop and alter over time. The projects developed during Interactivos? will be shown in the exhibition.

Check the guidelines at www.laboralcentrodearte.org

VideoChronic: Video Activism and Distribution in Indonesia

ArTiVist — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:18:48 +0000

EngageMedia and Kunci Cultural Studies Center are pleased to announce
the launch of Videochronic. This publication is the result of a
collaborative research project charting how activists are engaging with
video technologies in Indonesia, addressing some of the issues of
technology-mediated social movements, and exploring the potential and
limitations of online video distribution.

The past decade in Indonesia has seen a dramatic increase in the use of
video as a social change tool by community, campaign and activist
organisations. Access to the tools for producing and distributing video
have become increasingly democratised over this period.

But how are video activists taking to using new video distribution
technologies? Beyond the hype how are these tools being used on the
ground? This research explores how social change video work is currently
being distributed in Indonesia, from VCD to vodcasting, Creative Commons
to Copyright, and considers how are activists might approach
distribution in the future.

This 140 page book presents both English and Indonesian versions of the
research as well as colour illustrations including a visualisation of
the development of video activism and online video.

The research can be downloaded as PDF or hard copies may be ordered.

Full details at
http://engagemedia.org/videochronic

Mapping Festival Call for entries

ArTiVist — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:28:26 +0000

Call for entries 2010!

The 6th edition of the Mapping Festival is coming and the call for entries too!

From May 6th through the 16th 2010, the Mapping Festival will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, in differents venues: Bâtiment d’art contemporain, Théâtre du Grütli, Théâtre de la Parfumerie, Zoo & Spoutnik / Usine and Uptown Geneva.

You have many ideas and projects, the call for entries is now open, so we are counting on you to be there and spice up the Mapping Festival menu!
This year again, the festival will promote the mix of disciplines, and you will be able to apply for the following categories:
VJing
Audiovisual set
Installation
Outdoor projection
Lecture / Workshop / Presentation / Demo
This year, the application is on line on our web site: www.mappingfestival.com
Beware, the delays to apply are short: you can apply until January 4th 2010.

We are looking forward to receiving your applications and all the team wishes you the best for 2010!

Appel à projet 2010!

La sixième édition du Mapping Festival aura lieu du 6 au 16 mai 2010 à Genève (CH) !

Différents lieux genevois accueilleront cette année le Mapping Festival: Le Bâtiment d’art contemporain, le Théâtre du Grütli, Théâtre de la Parfumerie, Zoo & Spoutnik / Usine and l’Uptown Geneva.
Vous avez plein de concepts derrière la tête, l’appel à projets est lancé, nous comptons donc sur vous et vos idées pour venir mettre votre grain de sel et assaisonner le menu du Mapping Festival.
La pluridisciplinarité est toujours à l’honneur du festival et voici les différentes catégories qui sont mises en avant:
VJing
Performance audiovisuelle
Installation
Projection / Performance en extérieure
Conférence / Workshop / Présentation / Démo
Cet année les inscriptions se feront en ligne via notre site internet : www.mappingfestival.com. Quelques clics et c’est dans la boîte. Attention: les délais sont courts, nous attendons vos candidatures jusqu’au lundi 4 janvier 2010.
En se réjouissant de recevoir vos dossiers, toute l’équipe du Mapping Festival vous adresse ses meilleurs voeux pour 2010 !

Call For Papers VIRT3C@Hull 2010 Developing the Virtual Society: Conflict in Adoption of Collaborative Networks

ArTiVist — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:16:57 +0000

Call For Papers

   The Inaugural Interdisciplinary Conference of the Virtual
   Communication, Collaboration and Conflict (VIRT3C) Research Group at
   the University of Hull

VIRT3C@Hull 2010 Developing the Virtual Society: Conflict in Adoption
of Collaborative Networks

19-20 March

http://virt3c.wordpress.com/

Public Keynote speaker: Geert Lovink

Keynote speakers:

Gabriella Coleman [Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU]

Mathieu O’Neil [Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV & Australian National University]

Our plenary theme is Developing the Virtual Society: Conflict in Adoption of Online Collaborative Networks. As virtual society develops, and peer technologies and practices pump in its heart, this conference brings together academics of all disciplines to discuss conflict in the adoption of collaborative networks. This is a time of confrontation between older forms of communication and organization and new ways of sharing, collaborating and acting collectively.

We seek to explore conflicts emerging in the transition from, and resistance to, horizontal participatory networks, as well as conflict within collaborative networks. We welcome suggestions for panels and papers on any area relating to our theme, and particularly in the following areas:

   Network Theory
   P2P and FLOSS methodology adoption
   FLOSS methodology
   Open source conflicts and forking
   Adoption by NGOs and the developing world
   Adoption by social movements, hacktivism, cyberconflict
   Institutional resistance to networks
   Online P2P places and conflicts

We encourage contributions, including, but not limited to, politics,
economics, computer science, business, psychology, sociology, and law.

With your abstract of no more than 300 words please include the
following information:

Name, postal address, email
Institutional affiliation and position (if applicable)

Please send abstracts in Word or pdf format to the organisers at athina.k (at) gmail.com

Provisional Deadline for abstracts: 15th January 2010

Call for projects on digital facades:oPEN uP

ArTiVist — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:44:51 +0000

Deadline: December 10, 2009
Dates of the workshop: February 9 through 23, 2010
Venue: Medialab-Prado in Madrid (Spain).

Worskhop tutors: Jordi Claramonte, Chandler McWilliams, Casey Reas, and Víctor Viña. Directed and coordinated by Nerea Calvillo.

Open Up is a workshop for the development of projects for the digital façade in Medialab-Prado’s building. This call is addressed to the presentation of proposals to be collaboratively developed during the workshop-seminar taking place in Madrid from February 9 through 23, 2010.

The goal is to explore the relation between the urban screen and public space, to experiment with the screen’s communicative, narrative and visual capacities and to investigate its potential to offer new forms of participation such as receiving and participating in the different phases of content production. Selected projects will be developed under the supervision of teachers, technical assistants and an extensive group of collaborators.

Projects presented in this call will have to explore aspects such as: development of strategies for public participation, activation of urban space through the screen, foster public visibility of agents that normally have none, visualization of public collectives; interaction with portable devices, etc.

All those interested in collaborating in one of the selected projects can sign in from January 5 through February 8, 2010.
Check the call guidelines and submit your project before December 10, 2009. No entry fees.
http://medialab-prado.es/article/open_up
More information and call guidelines:
medianeralab (at) medialab-prado.es
Venue:
Medialab-Prado
Plaza de las Letras
Calle Alameda, 15
28014 Madrid (Spain)

Database of Virtual Art : Collective Tool for the Field

ArTiVist — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:04:13 +0000

Pioneer in the field, the Database of Virtual Art (DVA) has been
documenting the rapidly evolving digital installation art for more than
a decade. Cooperating with known media artists, researchers and
institutions as members allows the DVA to develop into the collective
project in the field. There have been a number of online archives
supported over the years, but almost all no longer have funding and have
either disappeared or exist in a frozen condition.

The DVA is beginning a renewed phase of further development with
existing and new members. Based on the *concept of expanded
documentation* it epitomizes a collective, *facebook-like* project
dedicated to media art. 500 artists selected from over 5000 applicants
offer the best selection of thousands of high quality artworks. Besides
the artists, more than 300 theorists and mediaarthistorians are
contributors. The DVA is a scholarly project and from the beginning a
university-based endeavor.

NEW FEATURES of the DVA :::
::: Optimized upload system allowing contributors to add, revise, &
cross-link information in a clear online procedure.
::: Artists can easily upload videos, as well as work descriptions,
digital documents, technical data, institutions and bios.
::: This rich online resource has a systematic thesaurus built from
various international keyword systems.
::: Any contributor from the field can submit to the news-ticker.
www.virtualart.at
Inviting a new wave of contributions to use the enhanced and improved
interface.
::::::: Database of Virtual Art ::::: ADVISORY BOARD ::::::
Roy ASCOTT, Beryl GRAHAM, Erkki HUHTAMO, Jorge LA FERLA, Gunalan
NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL, Martin ROTH, Steve WILSON
http://www.virtualart.at/about/advisory-board.html

CREATIVE RIGHTS On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft

ArTiVist — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:31:17 +0000

CREATIVE RIGHTS
On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft

Azin Feizabadi
Gilbert & George
Christian de Lutz
Triple Candie

Creative Rights Library

Opening: 27 November 2009, 8pm
Duration of Exhibition: 28.11.-7.2.2010, Sa+So 2-6pm
Winter pause: 18.12.2009-3.1.2010

Workshop: “Copyright and Related Themes for Artists, Musicians, Filmmakers
and other Creative Professionals” in German with the Berlin based lawyer Andreas Lichtenhahn, 28 November, 3pm (for free, registration necessary)

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to announce the fourth exhibition in the series Art and Law: The exhibition Creative Rights. On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft investigates questions concerning the use, re-use and misuse of images and information in the contemporary art world from artistic, legal, political and philosophical viewpoints. The exhibition “Creative Rights” consists of three parts: The exhibition with four ar-tistic positions, the Creative Rights Library with extensive material on the presented artists and other recent law cases as well as a workshop on the theme of copyright.

The exhibition shows four positions offering unique views on appropriation, fair use (a term defining legal use of images outside of copyright restrictions) and ‘copyleft’( the decision of the artist to forego the protections of copyright).

Triple Candie (curatorial duo Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett) provoked controversy in 2006 with their exhibition David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective in which they exhibited color and black and white copies from books, brochures, catalogues and websites documenting the work of the American artist David Hammons. The resulting exhibition, part of which is on display in “Creative Rights” as a curatorial quotation, cast a unique critical light on both Hammons work and art world traditions, and was both highly praised and criticised.

Repetitions-Revolutions-Rituals by the Iranian-German artist Azin Feizabadi documents a project started by the artist in 2004 when he sprayed an image of a woman in a headscarf using a stencil throughout the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. The work, initially an homage to his mother, the artist Farkhondeh Shahroudi, who as an 18 year old during the Iranian Revolution, sprayed left wing graffiti in Tehran, was missused in 2006 by the German glossy newsweekly Focus for its cover, with the words ‘The Multi-cultural Lie”. Feizabadi has chosen to ‘reappropriate’ the image in a specific way.

Christian de Lutz’s work The Copyright Piece (2009) situates itself on the border between infringement and fair use, making reference to this legal gray area, as well as functioning as a critique of both the current financial and art markets. The artwork consists of a CD with a sound piece which the artist created by substantially altering a piece of music. In addition to the CD there is an artist text and a contract, which offers the work to a collector under certain circumstances.

Planed (2007) by Gilbert and George, the Italian-British artist duo, is featured in the exhibition as an example of ‘copyleft’, a chosen alternative to traditional copyright. The artists offered the work as 9 files for download, in cooperation with the BBC and Guardian newspaper. The work was offered for free to the general public, without any stated restrictions.

In addition to the exhibition there is the Creative Rights Library, a collection of articles, manifestos and documents covering a number of topics pertaining to copyright and ‘copyleft’. It features two current cases of artists in copyright disputes. The American artist Shepard Fairey, known for his now famous Obama campaign posters, is currently in a legal dispute with the Associated Press (AP). The other case is that between Richard Prince and the photographer Patrick Cariou. Richard Prince used photographs from Cariou’s book ‘Yes Rasta’ in his recent series of collages ‘Canal Zone’. Cariou filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Additionally the library will have materials on the artists in the exhibition as well as material on both US and German copyright law, Creative Commons, the Stanford University Fair Use Project as well as the Swedish and German Pirate Parties.

As a third part of “Creative Rights” on Saturday, 28 November at 3 PM Art Laboratory Berlin will also present a workshop on Copyright and Related Themes for Artists, Musicians, Filmmakers and other Creative Professionals (see above).

-Regine Rapp, 2009

If you have any questions or wish material about the exhibition, please contact
presse@artlaboratory-berlin.org

For further information about Art Laboratory Berlin please also visit our website:

http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-press-current.htm