Plazaville - G.H. Hovagimyan with Christina McPhee & Artists Meeting (2009)

"Plazaville is a new media video art work. It is based on the classic 1965 movie Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard. It is set in 21st century New York City. The scenes from the original Alphaville are being re-enacted, interpreted and improvised upon by the artists, actors and videographers. The piece uses the internet as one means of distributing the short video clips. This is somewhat like a serialized program but is not in any order. Viewers can download new scenes as they become available on the Turbulence website as well as iTunes and youTube. The videos can be viewed on computers, iPhones and large screen HD televisions (using AppleTV). The final presentation of the work is a video projection/ installation work at Pace Digital Gallery scheduled for April 2009. Plazaville is a 2009 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Produced by G.H. Hovagimyan with Christina McPhee & Artists Meeting."

Plazaville - G.H. Hovagimyan with Christina McPhee & Artists Meeting (2009)

Edward A. Shanken's essay NeMe: Hot to Bot

Edward A. Shanken's essay NeMe: Hot to Bot (originally published in Technoetic Arts 3:1) is now on NOEMA > IDEAS:

"The idea that non-living matter could be used to invoke, influence, and emulate living beings is probably as old as human life itself. Over thousands of years this concept has become deeply ingrained in the human imagination as a locus of desires and fears about the future; and about the role of art and technology in forming it. In reviewing some of this history, I shall focus on, for lack of a better term, the moral of the story; in other words, what prevailing attitudes towards robots and other surrogate beings at a certain place and time tell us about the values of that culture. This background sets the stage for a similar consideration of robots with regard to contemporary morals, mythologies, and values, as they relate to the production of robots and artificial life forms by artists. Norman White has written that, “For me, Art comes alive only when it provides a framework for asking questions.” The intersecting histories of art and automata offer a fertile context for people like White to frame interesting questions and make art come alive – and come alive in a sense that arguably extends beyond the merely metaphorical."

from: http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/shanken_hot_to_bot.html

Antikythera mechanism working model

"The Antikythera mechanism has fascinated both scientists and people with a singular obsession with brass and the idea that aliens held architectural design workshops for the ancient Egyptians, since its discovery in 1901 in a wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete. Dated to about 150–100 BC, the mechanism has been described as the first mechanical computer, and calculated the position of the Sun, Moon, and other astronomical information such as the location of other planets as well as allowing for rudimentary spreadsheets and solitaire.

Here Michael Wright, of the Imperial College London and noted Antikythera devotee, demonstrates his working model of the mechanism, gleaned from years of study and x-ray imaging. It should be noted that Wright was unable to reconcile all of the known gears found in the mechanism. Solitaire enthusiasts take heart, for Wright remains on the case with the help of The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.

Antikythera mechanism working model.mov [YouTube]"

Posted by Ross Rosenberg on ECTOPLASMOSIS!

atompunk + the dead media project

a recent mailinglist started by bruce sterling about the cultural period 1945-1965
http://www.antenna.nl/mailman/listinfo/atompunk

+the dead media project (i think nina had mentioned before): sterling's project for collecting information+notes on media archaeology...
he' s also offering 50$ to whoever publishes the The Dead Media Handbook
cool indeed.

principality of sealand

sealand is a sovereign micronation located on a north sea fortress, occupied since 1967 by a retired british army major. since 2000 a web hosting company named HavenCo has been based there, aiming at functioning as a data haven for companies and corporations..does it remind you of something?

with the kind support of the barlas

video vortex reader

http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/files/2008/10/vv_reader_small.pdf

as proposed by ana peraica and googled by die gabi!

Expanded Cinema blog - Joao Ribas (2006 - present)

"Expanded Cinema is an online platform for experimental film, early video, and sound-based, durational work. All of the material is being curated from available media online, emphasizing an overlooked facet of the archival function of new media. Joao Ribas"

Expanded Cinema blog - Joao Ribas (2006 - present)

Eric Archer's modded 8mm film cameras

perhaps we should file the following reblogged post about Eric Archer's modded 8mm film cameras under Media Archeology + Media Art or Media Archeological approaches to Media Art but in any case i thought it would be of interest to those involved in Media Art Histories as well... - jonCates



"Eric Archer mods old 8mm cameras to record sound instead of light. He chose vintage movie cameras because of their amazing design, and because the 8mm format fits well with semiconductor light sensors.

He starts by removing the film transport and shutter, leaving just the optics, "My standard modifications include a battery-powered preamp with audio line-out (1/4″ mono jack) + a viewfinder-mounted LED that indicates sensor overload, and a headphone amplifier (1/8″ jack). I’ve prototyped an accessory mount that holds the sound camera steady along side a video camera, focused on the same point for audiovisual recording.

Looking through the viewfinder, you see a normal image. The light sensor’s active region corresponds to a tiny spot in the center of the viewfinder; sweeping the camera across a scene can reveal different sounds, and their source can be pinpointed easily."

So how does it sound? Weird. Some recordings are like eavesdropping on a robotic mosquito's dream, while others evoke a microphone stuffed into a bucket of sand or the roar of escaping steam.

Eric Archer's Sound Cameras [via Ektopia]" - James Grahame from Retro Thing

The Media Art Notation System

Documenting and Preserving Digital / Media Art

Abstract
This paper proposes a new approach to conceptualizing digital and media art forms. This
theoretical approach will be explored through issues raised in the process of creating a
formal declarative model (alternately known as a metadata framework, notation system,
or ontology) for digital and media art. The approach presented and explored here is
intended to inform a better understanding of media art forms and to provide a practical
descriptive framework that supports their creation, re-creation, documentation and
preservation.


Richard Rinehart
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Ave., Berkeley, CA, 94720
University of California, Berkeley
rinehart@berkeley.edu




http://www.coyoteyip.com/rinehart_leonardo.pdf

THE WEB OF COKAYNGE; CANDLE AND BELL - Dain Oh (2008)

THE WEB OF COKAYNGE; CANDLE AND BELL - Dain Oh (2008)
http://thewebofcokaygne.info

Dain Oh (a current student in the Film, Video & New Media department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago whois also now studying with Media Art Histories bloggers Nina Wenhart and myself) is curating a screening program which is influenced by and reflects creatively on Media Art Histories. The program, called THE WEB OF COKAYNGE; CANDLE AND BELL looks at the file format of the (online) Animated GIF through the lens of (early) cinema in order to artistically "reflect the history of the moving image". This screening program takes place on Sunday December 7th, 5 pm at the Nightingale in Chicago. The full description of the event and artists included follows below. - jonCates

"THE WEB OF COKAYNGE; CANDLE AND BELL is an experiment that seeks to place curatorial process in the same realm as art. Through particular selection of work WoC mimics the conventions and histories of cinema as a Modernist medium while at the same time epitomizing the information society by working as a decentralized and interactive database. WoC displays different permutations of the moving image in relation to file formats, search queries and methods of artists and non-artists working with the medium of the Internet.

The Web of Cokaygne; Candle and Bell is a three part screening. In a traditional sense it maintains a beginning, a middle and an end. The first section is 0P3NFR4M3W0RK, an open DIY digital art exhibition initiated by Jon Satrom, instantiated by Dain Oh for the Web of Cokaygne; Candle and Bell and previously at (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest (initiated by jonCates and jon.satrom). The second portion is 787 Cliparts, by Oliver Laric. A video in which he displays hand-selected clip art that he has found on the Internet in a manner that suggest continuity in motion and the persistence of vision. The third and final section of WoC is a selection of animated GIFs by both artists and non-artists working with the Internet. The artists include Petra Cortright, Olia Lialina, Guthrie Lonergan, Tom Moody, Jon Satrom and Paul Slocum. The selected GIF's are important examples to reflect the history of the moving image. Examples are gif versions of: a goat found on a bowl from Iran's Burnt City, Muybridge's horse, then moving to commercial cartoons, video games and finally, new media and www gif's. The screening will be executed in real time and accompanied by a live piano performance.

The screening is on the 7th of December, 5 pm @ the Nightingale in Chicago." - Dain Oh

Prehystories of New Media - students' research papers online

Over the course of the fall semester, students of the Prehystories of New Media class (at The School of the art Institute of Chicago, SAIC) have been working on their research on various aspects of media art histories. In the upcoming week, their work will be published online on prehystories-papers.blogspot.com.

Works include research on Game Art, Media Art in Korea (see also: mediaart-korea.blogspot.com), pioneers of media art like Nam June Paik, Myron Krueger and Manfred Mohr and Human-Computer-Interaction.

The full list of topics will be published soon.

"IX" on the Rhizome Artbase

IX, a project developed by the computerwitches from the h3x3n collaborative, has recently been added to the Rhizome Artbase.

http://rhizome.org/object.php?48444

Matthew Fuller, "Software Studies: A Lexicon", 2008

link for pdf-download:
http://www.addebook.com/it/uncategorized/software-studies-a-lexicon-leonardo-books_7348.html



or from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Software-Studies-Lexicon-Leonardo-Books/dp/0262062747/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227376583&sr=8-1

Lev Manovich, "software takes command", 2008

Lev Manovich's most recent book can be downloaded from this site:
http://softwarestudies.com/softbook/manovich_softbook_11_20_2008.pdf



the software studies initiative at UCSD:
http://lab.softwarestudies.com/

Uncompressed Symposium

Symposium
Uncompressed
11 December 2008
Symposium about the preservation of video art focussing on technologies and the possibilities for a new fase in the developments.
Dutch spoken.
More information:www.nimk.nl/nl

lacma's art and technology project (1967-1971) catalogue

the long out-of print catalogue of LACMA's Art and Technology project (1967-1971) is available for free download here:

http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/MWEB/archives/artandtechnology/at_home.asp

Bruce Nauman, MAPPING THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage)

among tate's research projects one can find a few about media/installation art and preservation strategies..The case study for Bruce Nauman's MAPPING THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) is quite interesting.

http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/nauman/home_1.htm

simon biggs' linklist

Links to archives, collection and resources for digital, interactive, networked and new media arts

http://hosted.simonbiggs.easynet.co.uk/right/links.htm

Simon Biggs is Professor at Edinburgh College of Art, UK.

Preservation Insanity blog - Mark Toscano (2008)

Preservation Insanity blog - Mark Toscano (2008)

Preservation Insanity is a blog by Mark Toscano that includes "random tidbits of potential interest about film preservation." This may be of interest to those interested in Media Art Histories as it intersects with preservation, archiving and conservation of Media Art, in this case Film. - jonCates

KUNSTLERHAUS BUCHSENHAUSEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

KUNSTLERHAUS BUCHSENHAUSEN
INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME FOR VISUAL ARTS AND THEORY

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS 2009/2010

Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen invites visual and media artists, art
critics, theorists, and curators to apply for the three fellowship
positions in 2009–2010. The period for which candidates can apply is
September 7, 2009 – July 2, 2010.

[The closing date for submissions is December 5, 2008 (postmark)]

-----------------------------------------
[Institution]

Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen is a post-graduate center for production,
research, exchange in the fields of visual arts and art theory. Within
the framework of the International Fellowship Programme for Visual Arts
and Theory, the Kunstlerhaus provides a platform that facilitates the
development and production of artistic and art-theoretical projects in a
critical context. At the same time, Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen offers a
forum for direct exchange between professionals – artists,
theoreticians, critics, and curators – from the region and abroad, as
well as a point of interaction with local interested audiences.
Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen is affiliated with the Tyrolean Artists'
Association, the major association of visual artists from the region.

Buchsenhausen brings together two programmes under one roof. On the one
hand, it is the site of the International Fellowship Programme for
Visual Arts and Theory. On the other hand, it is the location of several
studios for artists based in Tyrol, who require space for working in a
professionally interesting environment.

The building - the eastern wing of the Buchsenhausen Castle, built in
the middle of the 17th century and situated not far from the center of
the city of Innsbruck - houses nine studios and a project space. Three
apartment studios are used by the fellows of the International
Fellowship Programme for Visual Arts and Theory. Six studios are
available to artists based in Tyrol. The project and presentation space
is equipped with multimedia facilities and is at the fellows' disposal.
The space was designed by Atelier van Lieshout.

-----------------------------------------
[International Fellowship Programme]

With its Fellowship Programme for Visual Arts and Theory, Buchsenhausen
actively promotes internationally relevant art production, research, and
discussion in the region of Tyrol.

The programme's aims are:

* To improve the production of a qualified discourse on art and society
in the local and global context;

* To improve exchange between cultural producers in the visual arts and
beyond (creating a network of experts);

* To support and expand the critical, socially relevant artistic and
art-theoretical production of knowledge;

* To facilitate the transfer of knowledge between the art field and the
public outside the art context.

The programme brings together the advantages of a residency with the
possibilities of a postgraduate non-university lectureship, without
offering a formalized educational programme. In terms of content, the
programme addresses a worldwide public made up of professionals in the
fields of contemporary art, architecture, art and media theory and
criticism.

The fellows, selected by expert jurors, find excellent working
conditions in Buchsenhausen, while the city of Innsbruck and its
surrounding area offer an interesting setting in terms of its art,
culture, and landscape. The grant and the residency not only allow
fellows to work on their proposed projects, but also give them the
chance to experiment and to reconsider their current practice.

The conveyance and discussion of the fellow’s own work occurs parallel
to the development of the individual projects. The public events take
place in series. The focus of these series of events is determined by
the respective emphases of the various fellows' works. Within the
framework of this discursive format, the fellows (or their guests) can
present various points in their research, open up their
works-in-progress to critical discussion, interact with experts who they
invite, work through content with the public, and/or try out new ways of
working.

For former and current fellows and their projects please visit
http://buchsenhausen.at.

-----------------------------------------
[Fellowship]

* a grant of EUR 650/month to cover living expenses;
* an individual studio for working and living, furnished with a large
shared kitchen;
* a production budget for the realization of the proposed project;
* the possibility of inviting experts to Buchsenhausen in order to have
a professional exchange;
* the opportunity of an exhibition at the end of the fellowship in
Buchsenhausen or at the Kunstpavillon in Innsbruck.

-----------------------------------------
[Facilities]

* free access to the 'labor', the project/gallery space;
* free use of the available multimedia production equipment in the 'labor';
* free DSL/WLAN internet access;
* professional artistic advice from the general advisors (2 terms / year);
* technical advice if required.

-----------------------------------------
[Eligibility]

Professional visual/media artists, art theorists, art critics, and
curators from all over the world are eligible for the fellowship.

-----------------------------------------
[Requirements]

The candidates must submit a project proposal. Work on the submitted
project forms the core of each fellow's activities during his/her stay
in Buchsenhausen. A description of a series of public events intended to
accompany the individual work during the duration of the fellowship
(four to six events) is also an integral part of the project proposal.
If the application is successful, the fellows are required to specify
the details of the presentation series and carry out the proposed programme.

The fellows must be present in Buchsenhausen for a minimum of two thirds
of the allocated fellowship time. Working knowledge of English is required.

-----------------------------------------
[Selection]

The selection of fellows is made by a jury of experts and based on the
quality and relevance of the project proposal and the work samples
submitted by the applicants. The jury includes the director of
Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen, a member of the board of the 'Tyrolean
Artists' Association' and one external expert. The members of the jury
also fulfill the role of advisors who can be consulted for their
expertise at least two times during the fellowship.

Jury 2009/10: Stephan Dillemuth, Annja Krautgasser, Andrei Siclodi

The selection procedure occurs in two stages.

In the first stage, the submitted applications are evaluated and the
jury makes a shortlist of candidates who will be invited to
Buchsenhausen for personal interviews.

The personal interview with the jury forms the second stage. For the
interview, the applicants have to come to Innsbruck to personally
present their working plans and aims during the fellowship.

Buchsenhausen will pay for accommodation in Innsbruck for one night, but
cannot cover the costs for travel to Innsbruck.

There is no legal right to be awarded a fellowship at Kunstlerhaus
Buchsenhausen. The jury is therefore under no obligation to justify
decisions. The jury's decision will be communicated in written form in
January 2009 (first stage) and March 2009 (second stage).

-----------------------------------------
[Application procedure]

Applications must include the following documents:

* the project proposal (max 2,000 words, in English or in German,
3 copies)
* a visual portfolio/documentation of recent works (artists: max 2
catalogues, max 10 photos or slides, 1 DVD or 1 CD-ROM; theorists/art
critics: max 3 recent writing samples)
* a curriculum vitae (3 copies)
* a completed application form

Download the application form at http://buchsenhausen.at, complete it
and send it together with the required material listed above to:

Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen,
Ref.: "Fellowship 2009/10"
Weiherburggasse 13/12
6020 Innsbruck
Austria

CLOSING DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS (postmark): DECEMBER 5, 2008

For additional information, please contact: office@buchsenhausen.at,
phone +43 512 278627, fax -11.

--

Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen
Weiherburggasse 13/12
6020 Innsbruck, Austria

phone +43 512 278627
fax +43 512 278627-11
office@buchsenhausen.at

www.buchsenhausen.at
www.kuenstlerschaft.at

member of
www.innsbruckcontemporary.at
www.baettle.net

@ DOCAM's International Summit + Media In Motion conference

3 of the Media Art Histories bloggers, Rolf Wolfensberger, Nina Wenhart and myself will be in Montreal this week @ DOCAM's Media In Motion + their fourth International Summit @ McGill University. Rolf presents in the International Summit:

http://www.docam.ca/en/?p=355

+ Nina + i present in the MEDIA IN MOTION: The Challenge of Preservation in the Digital Age conference:

http://www.docam.ca/en/?p=361

we're all be presenting our Media Art Histories research, in abbreviated forms.

MEDIA IN MOTION is a project of DOCAM and Media@McGill. DOCAM is "an international research alliance on the documentation and the conservation of the media arts heritage, initiated by the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology." DOCAM and the Daniel Langlois Foundation are world leaders in the conservation and preservation of Media Art. Media@McGill is "a hub of research, scholarship, and public outreach on issues and controversies in media, technology, and culture" and is based in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University.

i'm rly looking fwd to the discussions + developments that follow. - jonCates

http://www.docam.ca

http://media.mcgill.ca

http://www.fondation-langlois.org

"The Atlas of Cyberspace", Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, 2001

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/atlas/Atlas_with_cover_high.pdf

As published today (Oct. 22nd 2008) on the nettime mailinglist, the Atlas of Cyberspace, originally published in 2001 is now fully available for download & licensed under creative commons.

"Net.art Preservation" on Rhizome.org

Last month, during September 2008, a discussion developed on Rhizome.org about "Net.art Preservation" the discussion is archived and viewable as well as extendable here:

http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/40319

- jonCates

Art Game documentation archive on Internet Archive

"A new game video collection at the Internet Archive - games for art's sake.

We are pleased to announce a new game video collection hosted by the Internet Archive, called "games for art's sake" - http://www.archive.org/details/game-art. This is devoted to providing online documentation of both individual works and exhibitions of game art, art games and related work made "for art's sake".

Games constitute a large and important field of contemporary art. How this art will withstand the passage of time remains an open question. This collection is intended to provide a stable and enduring site for the hosting of documentation about games made for art's sake.

Artists, curators and others with relevant documentation of game art are encouraged to contribute their files to the collection. To do this, first upload them to the Internet Archive's open source video collection, using the tool at http://www.archive.org/create/. Then email us at and we will moved them into the "games for art's sake" collection. This will be viewable at http://www.archive.org/details/game-art

Julian Oliver
Helen Stuckey
Melanie Swalwell"

(New) Media Art in Museums symposium

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka organized and hosted the "(New) Media Art in Museums: production - keeping - presentation" symposium last week in Rijeka, Croatia. The event featured presentations by those working in the fields of New Media Art exhibition and Media Art Histories such as Darko Fritz, Slavko Kačunko and many others. unfortunately there is not yet an online archive of papers or documentation from the event, but hopefully there will be soon. below is the brief description of the event. - jonCates

"(New) Media Art in Museums: production - keeping - presentation
Rijeka 15 - 17 October 2008
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka organizes the international symposium (New) Media Art in Museums that will be held 15 - 17 October 2008 at the City Hall in Rijeka.
The aim of the international symposium (New)Media Art in Museums is to consider status of (new)media art in museum collections, conditions of keeping, protection, modes of exhibiting and all the changes that (new)media art introduces into the everyday practice of contemporary museums."
more information http://www.mmsu.hr/

Armin Medosch on new tendencies / bit international

Below is a repost of a posting by Armin Medosch from the Curatorial Resource Upstart Media Bliss (CRUMB) list that was similarly reposted by Paul Brown on the Digital Arts Histories (DASH) list. - jonCates

"as the new tendencies / bit international exhibition is currently shown at ZKM,
I thought the following is interesting for some people on this list as it
contains a lot of material for the study of kinetic, cybernetic and computer
art. there is also an argument contained her about the writing of histories and
above all the thesis that this early 'computer avantgard' shows many of the
problems which affect media art till today.

Article start:

Since more than 10 years the Croatian media artist Darko Fritz has been
researching the archives of the Museum for Contemporary Arts Zagreb to gather
material about the New Tendencies series of exhibitions and events in Zagreb,
Ex-Yugoslavia, now Croatia, from 1961 to 1973 and the Bit International journal
published by that same art movement. An exhibition in 2007 at Neue Galerie Graz
and now at ZKM Karlsruhe shows the works of this important but almost lost art
movement, were it not for the effort of Darko Fritz. For the Graz exhibition a
little catalogue came out with contributions by Peter Weibel, Jesa Denegri and
Margit Rosen. I have data mined those articles and present this material in the
manner of a literature review for other researchers to study it and draw their
own conclusions. All translations from German are my translations.

Full text: http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/731
http://www.thenextlayer.org/

best regards
armin"

Cybernetics Serendipity Redux discussion On YASMIN

September 2008's Cybernetics Serendipity Redux discussion On YASMIN:

http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/viewtopic.php?t=4385

is available as an online archive. The discussion addresses issues related to the restaging of critical exhibitions and events from recent Media Art Hystories. YASMIN, the host of this discussion, is a "moderated list for art-science-technology interactions around the Mediterranean Rim". below is the initial introduction to the discussion. - jonCates

Cybernetics Serendipity Redux
September 2008 discussion On YASMIN, led by Ranulph Glanville.

40 years ago, Jasia Reichart's exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity" showed that cybernetics, computing and art had arrived.

40 years later, while computers and art remain, cybernetics has nearly vanished, although there is a reviving interest in art.

In celebrating Cybernetic Serendipity we have the chance to re-open the debate, to reconsider the relationship particularly between cybernetics and art, and to do so taking into account the way that cybernetics has developed during its period of near invisibility.

So what is new in cybernetics, and how can that inform art: and, what is new in art, and how can that inform cybernetics.

This is a chance to reopen the connection, to explore again, and to move beyond some of the current models taken from cognitive science, computing, AI and AL, and complexity, to the (much more radical) field of their origin, cybernetics.

List of Discussants
Albert Mueller: albert.mueller ( @ ) univie.ac.at
Andreas Giannakoulopoulos: andreas ( @ ) utopia.gr
Andrew Brouse: abrouse ( @ ) gmail.com
Enrique Rivera: or.enrique ( @ ) gmail.com
Ian Clothier: I.Clothier ( @ ) witt.ac.nz
Jasia Reichart: jreichardt ( @ ) btopenworld.com
Julien Knebusch: jknebusch ( @ ) gmail.com
Mitchell Whitelaw: mitchell.whitelaw ( @ ) canberra.edu.au
Paul Brown: paul ( @ ) paul-brown.com
Paul Pangaro: pan ( @ ) pangaro.com
Ranulph Glanville: ranulph ( @ ) glanville.co.uk,
ranulph ( @ ) mac.com
Roger Malina: rmalina ( @ ) alum.mit.edu
Stephen Jones: sjones ( @ ) culture.com.au

ISEA2010 info

The ISEA Foundation Board is pleased to announce that Medienwerk NRW, Germany will host ISEA2010 as part of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010.

Medienwerk NRW is a consortium from the North Rhine-Westphalia area of Germany including currently 16 institutions working in different areas of media culture: Music, Performance/Dance, Art, Research, Education and Digital Heritage.

HMKV which acts as the branch office of Medienwerk NRW will organise the conference in cooperation with ISEA2010's artistic director Dr Andreas Broeckmann in Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg and other cities of the Ruhrgebiet between August 20 and 29, 2010 - integrated into a month of media arts within the RUHR.2010.

The programme will include conferences, exhibitions, audio-visual and dance performances, projects in public space, artist presentations, workshops, an E-Culture Fair and Artists-in-Labs-programme.

ISEA2010 will be held from 20 - 29 August 2010. The call for proposals, papers and presentations will be published on June 1 2009 with a deadline of 15 September 2009.

The website is now online at http://www.ISEA2010RUHR.org, with a Newsletter available for subscription at the site.

For further details see:
http://www.medienwerk-nrw.de
http://www.kulturhauptstadt-europas.de/

Digital Humanities 2009 Call for papers

Digital Humanities 2009–the annual joint meeting of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, and the Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l’étude des médias interactifs–will be hosted by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland in College Park, USA.

Coinciding with MITH’s 10th anniversary as a working digital humanities center, we look forward to welcoming this distinguished international community to a campus that has fostered numerous early adopter projects in the field and which continues to innovate with new work on tools, text analysis, electronic editing, virtual worlds, digital preservation, and cyberinfrastructure. As a setting for digital humanities research, MITH also enjoys unusually close relationships with the campus’s iSchool or Information School, the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (the oldest of its kind), and the University Libraries, all of whom are co-sponsors of the conference.

For full information about the conference: http://www.mith2.umd.edu/dh09/

Call for Papers

September 11th, 2008

We are happy to announce the Call for Papers has been sent out and is available on our website with detailed information about submission and formatting. Translations of the call are also available.

The joint international conference is the oldest established meeting of scholars working at the intersection of advanced information technologies and the humanities, annually attracting a distinguished international community at the forefront of their fields. Submissions are invited on all topics concerning digital humanities, e.g.

* text analysis, corpora, corpus linguistics, language processing, language learning
* libraries, archives and the creation, delivery, management and preservation of humanities digital resources
* computer-based research and computing applications in all areas of literary, linguistic, cultural, and historical studies, including electronic literature and interdisciplinary aspects of modern scholarship
* use of computation in such areas as the arts, architecture, music, film, theatre, new media, and other areas reflecting our cultural heritage
* research issues such as: information design and modelling; the cultural impact of the new media; software studies; Human-Computer interaction
* the role of digital humanities in academic curricula
* digital humanities and diversity

Submissions may be for papers, posters, or sessions. Potential participants may also read ADHO’s reviewer guidelines for assessment criteria.

All proposals should be submitted by uploading them to the ConfTool. The deadline for submitting paper, session and poster proposals to the Programme Committee is October 31, 2008. All submissions will be refereed. Presenters will be notified of acceptance February 13, 2009.

ISEA2009 Call For Artworks and Art Projects, Papers, Workshops, Open Spaces and more

http://www.isea-web.org

2nd Call for Artworks and Art Projects, Papers, Workshops, Open Spaces and more - ACROSS EIGHT SUB-THEMES
Abstracts for papers and descriptors of artworks/projects, panels and workshops etc are sought for ISEA 2009 that will illuminate both the near and long term Future of Digital Media Culture. Papers which present research outcomes, track trends or developments, describe case studies or works in progress, are speculative projection, challenge existing paradigms or record a history, are all welcome.

Submissions are encouraged from any professional, craft or scholarly field that relates to communications art/design, cultural expression, practice and aesthetics, and the technical means by which they are enabled.

The sub-themes:
Citizenship and contested spaces
Interactive storytelling and memory building in post-conflict society
Interactive textiles
Tracking emotions
Posthumanism: New technologies and creative strategies
Positionings: local and global transactions
Transformative creativity - participatory practices
Entertainment and Mobility

Citizenship and contested spaces:
Over the past decades international mobility, forced and voluntary migration has changed the social fabric of many societies. Alongside a growing ethnic and cultural diversity within countries, the nation state as discrete, bounded entity is itself increasingly being eroded under the influence of global capital and digitisation. This theme invites contributions that explore and challenge established and common sense notions of citizenship and interconnected value hierarchies particularly in politically, socially and culturally contested contexts. It aims to encourage debates on alternatives to the hegemonic model of democracy, and seeks alternative visions and creative strategies for citizen practices in contested spaces based on the (perceived) potential of digital technologies.

Interactive Storytelling and Memory building in post-conflict society
Invited are innovative and advanced strategies of constructing inter/active storytelling through collaborative and participatory practices that build on, mobilise and explore the long tradition of oral story telling. Of interest are how stories operate in the formation of memories within post-conflict (but still conflicted) society individually and collectively, and what potential they may have in conflict transformation and identity re/formation. Considerations of aesthetic and ethical concerns both within the narrative domain as well as in technological realisation and dissemination / distribution are welcome too.

Interactive Textiles
The theme invites contributions related to creative and technical production and application processes that challenge and extend conventional methods of working with textiles and their perceived material properties. It aims to give consideration to innovative ways to produce and use textiles, materials and forms that are capable of extending and responding to interaction. The panel will profile fibre and fabric structures that promote expression, communication and enhanced or altered behaviours. What kind of ‘second skins’, artifacts and constructions can be created that support interactions and context awareness?

Where are the hardware, software and material challenges, the ethical concerns, sustainability issues, aesthetic, cultural and activist potential? Themes may include-
• Information gatherers and communicators
• Mobile and personalized communication systems
• Enhanced aesthetics,
• Adoption strategies
• Wireless sensor networks and wearable computing
• Performance measurements in the medical and sports sectors


Positionings: local and global transactions
The theme takes its point of departure the processes through which spaces are being constructed, re-mapped and negotiated in the contemporary situation of global capital, digitisation and migration. Issues of space are highly pertinent in terms of its constitution, perception, appropriation, consumption. These issues cannot be divorced from a scrutiny of the social, political, cultural and medial conditions under which spaces are being produced, trans/formed, and re/presented. Of particular interest are new and convergent models of space and spatial dynamics, and thus of reality construction, whether real, virtual or augmented, and the challenges they pose to the relationship between local(ised) and global(ised) transactions in the cultural domain and the re/formation and re/presentation of identities connected to them.

Transformative Creativity - Participatory Practices
The theme highlights the operations and limitations of conventional (post-modernist) aesthetic models and cultural representation in relation to the clash of different ideological perspectives, vested interests and authority, whether they concern outright economic interests, political power or the relationship between different domains of knowledge production like art and science, or authorship and expertise, production and consumption. Contributions are invited that challenge established templates of creative practice and audio-
visual / multimedia re/presentations and their associated hierarchies of value, modes of understanding and agency in society. This strands focuses on the prototyping and probing of innovative ways of dialogic exchange, of collaborative and participatory creative engagement across the domains of creative practice and the ‘production of theory and reflection’. Proposals are thought that reconsider the transformative potential of creativity in society and scrutinise the role of and relationship between artist and collaborators/participants through the use of digital technologies and the development of innovative/alternative circuits of distribution, debate and social and political inter/action.

Tracking emotions
The theme invites contributions related to emotions. It aims to give consideration to innovative ways to scan, model, simulate, stimulate, reproduce and trigger emotions. The theme takes its point of departure the human emotions utilized in different creative processes. Where and how can artists and researchers utilize new technologies to find about spectators’ - users’ emotions? How do we trigger, research, teach, and organize, emotions? Emotions are extremely complex but with the new technologies we are for the first time able to quantify and scan them. How do we differentiate in different emotional experiences? How artists make certain that artworks trigger wishful emotions? Of particular interest are new scanning technologies, different emotional models -whether describe emotions and related processes or use emotions or metaphors based on emotions to describe different processes and new art forms where spectators emotions are used for interactivity or reshape of the artworks.

Posthumanisms: New Technologies & Creative Strategies
Posthumanism operates at the interface of transhumanism and cyborgology, drawing attention to the convergent spaces of biology and artifice. Its manifestation through a range of biopolitical events, along with an aesthetic staging of bioethical encounters ruptures the polarized views of bioconservatism and technoprogressivism, provoking a series of conflicts that demand multi-layered conceptual apparatus to unravel. The sensory habitus of posthuman prostheses initiates the re-staging of design principles to anticipate the demand for new sensory experiences, technologies, services. This theme explores and expands our understanding of how innovative hardware and technologies are constituted by shifts of new art and design forms and how modes of sensory experience alter arts. For example, what kind of experience is generated through imaginations of posthumanity in different art and design forms? What do viewers expect from artists in terms of adopting posthuman technologies and modes of sensory delivery? How do we prepare and critically engage new generations of artists, designers and consumers through these technologies?

Entertainment and Mobility
Theme seeks to identify the development of entertainment and mobile media toward arts and to understand how gaming and mobile expressions, technologies, products, services and media can shape new art forms and reshape existing art forms. Areas of possible presentation include, but are not limited to, the following:
Uses of mobile technologies in arts.
Uses of gaming in arts.
New gaming technologies
New mobile technologies
Cataloging and archiving mobile artifacts
Mobile and gaming experimenting.
New art forms utilizing mobile technologies
Mobile technologies and the delivery of art and culture experiences, services and resources
Usability
Mobile collaborating

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS, ARTWORKS AND INITIATIVES, PROJECTS AND WORKSHOPS ETC - 17 NOVEMBER 2008

Go to http://www.isea2009.org for further detailed information on symposium sub-themes, broader ISEA2009 activities and information on how to submit your paper/project proposal.

CALL FOR WORKSHOPS, ROUNDTABLES/PANELS/FORUMS/TUTORIALS AND OPEN SPACES

Proposals are sought for ISEA 2009 that will illuminate both the near and long term future of Digital Media Culture. Submissions are encouraged from any professional, craft or scholarly field that relates to communications art/design, cultural expression, practice and aesthetics, and the technical means by which they are enabled.

CALL FOR ARTWORKS AND INITIATIVES
ISEA 2009 invites artists, creators and researchers to submit their works. Submissions are encouraged from any art, craft or professional field. Artists, early career scholars and PhD students are particularly encouraged to submit.

REVIEW PROCESS
All paper and project proposal will be double blind peer reviewed by an international panel and published in the proceedings. Other, more substantial publishing opportunities may arise in due course.

Fields of inquiry and practice: ISEA 2009 accepts submissions from following fields of inquiry and practice: electronic art, cultural activism, socially and politically engaged practices, mobile environments, locative media, GIS, interactive and nonlinear storytelling, electronic fiction, hypertext, interactive television and cinema, multimedia, new media, streaming media, cinema and video, video art, video installation, interactive and networked performance, digital aesthetics, theory, history, computer games, games culture, games system design, games theory, bio-art, nano-art, sound, electronic music, interactive architecture, MOOs, MUDs, RPG, augmented reality, virtual reality, virtual worlds,

DATES FOR SUBMISSION

Dates for the submission of 500 word abstracts/proposals: 17th of November 2008

If you have any further questions or problems, please don’t hesitate to contact admin@isea2009.org

READ this instruction paragraph carefully
ONLY SUBMIT A 500 WORD ABSTRACT FOR PAPERS AND/OR A DISCRIPTOR OF ARTWORKS, ART PROJECTS ETC FOR THE 17TH OF NOVEMBER DEADLINE. PROVISION FOR SUBMITTING PAPERS ON THE WEB PLATFORM IS FOR A LATER DATE. YOU WILL BE GIVEN PLENTY OF NOTICE FOR THIS BY THE CHAIR OF YOUR CHOOSEN PANEL. ARTWORKS AND ART PROJECTS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED UNDER THE SAME PLATFORM. YOU CAN ATTACH ONE PDF DOCUMENT WITH IMAGES INSTEAD OF A PAPER IF YOU WISH TO SUPPORT YOUR ARTWORK OR ARTPROJECT WITH VISUALS. THE INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE MAY REQUEST FURTHER INFORMATION FROM YOU AT A LATER DATE. THE PLATFORM WILL BE OPEN FOR YOUR SUBMISSIONS IN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS.

MEDIA ART CURATING FORUM - PERTH

MEDIA ART CURATING FORUM - PERTH

Designed for regional gallery, museum and library professionals this forum
addresses commonly asked questions about exhibiting and curating
contemporary media arts.
Coincides with the Experimenta Playground exhibition.

Media art: video installations, interactive artworks and web based art are
now part of mainstream contemporary visual arts and are continually
growing in popularity. Topics include: exhibition design and presentation;
technical/equipment requirements; maintenance and logistics; installation;
invigilation; and audiences.

Monday 17 November, 2-5pm
Western Australian Museum Perth Cultural Centre, James Street, Perth

Free. RSVP is essential as places are limited;
education@museum.wa.gov.au | (08) 9427 2792

Who should attend: Public gallery, museum and library directors and staff,
volunteers, artists, independent curators, arts educators and students.

This project is an initiative of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia
Council, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body and
assisted by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the
Australian, state and territory governments.

http://www.experimenta.org/top_mediaartcurating.html

PhD in Digital Humanities at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London

Below is info on a PhD program in Digital Humanities at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London as it may be relevant to those of you interested or involved in Media Art Histories. - jonCates

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 22, No. 273.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu

Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:34:40 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>

"Enquiries about the PhD in Digital Humanities, Centre for Computing in
the Humanities, King's College London, are welcome. Now is a good time
to begin thinking seriously about an application for anyone who requires
funding, since most sources are now known and open to applications.
Anyone interested should write directly to me.

See http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/cch/pg/phd/ for a
brief note about the programme. Note that the PhD is a research-only
degree. Admission is primarily decided on the basis of a research
proposal of ca. 5 to 10 pages. Normal procedure is for potential
candidates to develop a draft in consultation with the department over
several iterations. All manner of subjects within the digital
humanities are welcome at least for initial discussion. Most degrees
are supervised collaboratively between the Centre and one or more
other departments in the School of Humanities, School of Social Science and Public Policy
or potentially one of the other Schools at King's. Enquiries concerning full- and
part-time PhDs are welcome, as are enquiries about what we are now calling a
"semi-distance PhD", pursued by someone who lives abroad but visits according to an
agreed schedule.

Yours,
WM"

florian cramer/ software art

Winner of the 2007 Media.Art.Research Award of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Florian Cramer has written some very interesting articles on software art, net art and net literature. Check them out at his personal site
you can also download his book "WORDS MADE FLESH. Code, Culture, Imagination"

check out also the Software Art repository site

time to bid farewell

http://www.netzwissenschaft.de/

Data Mining / RYBN collective

Since the end of the Eighties, the Data Mining technologies have been used in order to increase the profit of commercial and financial activities. Nowadays, they are used by many other activities, such as humanitarian missions, research, intelligence and security agencies, etc... The development of this practice in several fields whose finality is not only economic, is symptomatic of the tendency to turn more effective a society economisation phenomenon.

The rise of this tool also coincides with the digital data amount exponential increase, due to a growing digitalization use, and Internet proliferation use (continuous flows, growing storage spaces, compression formats). However, these virtual datas are digital transations of economic, social and/or political movements. But their always growing use has generated a new opacity, making them far less readable.

In this context the RYBN collective has undertaken a Data Mining based research project, since March 2006, in order to create several artistic pieces of work. Diverted from their original goals, Data Mining tools and Digital Monitoring technologies are used in order to create a series of images of our society, pictured through its data flows. The resulting digital visualizations are based on cartographic principles, and are real-time updated.

Anti Data Mining is both an artistic research, a socio-economic and a geopolitical investigation, as well as a real-time archaeology process focusing on the data flows which acompose a part of our contemporary society.

tron online

tronline!!!





















this classical 1982 Disney-film about hacking and computer games can be watched online here: http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0330/v/swf/qplayer.swf?VideoIDS=XMzUxMDU5NTY&embedid=-&showAd=0

(quality is ok)

prehysteries of new media

http://prehysteries.blogspot.com/

the "prehysteries of new media" blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it is the base for a forthcoming book and consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.

it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.

the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today.

Audiovisual Composition by Mick Grierson

Audiovisual Composition by Mick Grierson
Soundrugs I | Soundrugs II

Soundrugs (a misleading title, indeed!) kicks out audiovisual inertia and related issues, with the presentation of the artist/researcher Mick Grierson. It is not very common to see artists working closely and appreciating sound and moving image in equal terms. Sound and image in isolation are completely different entities in contrast when they are combined, mixed-up together. Their relationships are intricate enough to create a specific mode of perception that of audio-vision. This particular perceptive mode that was termed audio-vision by Michel Chion is explored by people like Grierson in his live performances and compositions. Let’s leave Grierson himself to present some of the concepts behind Audiovisual Composition.

The relationship between sonic and visual material is complex. Essentially, both sonic and visual material yield effects of their own when experienced in isolation. These effects are difficult to discuss in themselves, let alone in combination. Chion states that when combined, new effects are apparent. This makes the process even more complex. Despite this, difficulties regarding the interpretation of audio and visual material do not prevent artists from exploring that material. However, audiovisual composition which exploits structural relationships by its nature rises out of a desire to understand the combined audiovisual effect.

source:
http://www.intothepill.net/soundrugs.html
http://www.intothepill.net/soundrugs/article_grierson.pdf

Rites of Remediation - Carl Diehl (September 13, 2008)

"The commercial success of any new technology relies on remediation... The liminal processes of recombination and re-use, of errors, uncertainty and experimentation exist in the increasingly hurried twilight time... Techno-rites involve deploying heightened attention to the limitations of one medium, thus setting the stage for the premature arrival of the “New.” Memories of the margins, of errors as wanderings and wonderings are obscured..."

from

Rites of Remediation - Carl Diehl (September 13, 2008)
http://metaphortean.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/rites-of-remediation/

Ars Electronica 2008 - podcasts available online

the podcats of this year's ars electronica festival are now available online (http://www.aec.at/en/festival2008/stream/podcasts.asp)

what you will find there:
- the prix ars electronica forums: the winners of the categories interactive art, hybrid art, digital communities, computer animation and digital musics present their projects and discuss it with the audience
- the festival conference: dealing with the topic of "a new cultural econpmy", basically discussing copyright issues from various points of view
- the boltzmann conference: participants discuss issues of interactive art

at the moment, there are only the mp3 files, if you return to the website in about a month, you will also be able to download the webcasts

Prix Ars Electronica Forum

Jury members and the winners of the various categories of the Prix Ars Electronica will give presentations and discuss their work with the audience.

These presentations will be streamed as well, below you will find the schedule for the panels:

- Hybrid Art - 7.09.2008, 10:30 - 11:30 MEZ
with: Richard Kriesche (AT) - Member of the Jury;Helen Evans (FR/UK), Heiko Hansen (FR/DE), Yann Marussich (CH), Julius Popp (DE)

- Interactive Art - 7.09.2008, 11:30 - 13:00 MEZ
with: Sonia Cillari (IT) - Member of the Jury; Julius von Bismarck (DE), Jeff Lieberman, Dan Paluska (US), Norimichi Hirakawa (JP)

- Digital Musics - 7.09.2008, 14:00 - 15:30 MEZ
with: Paul D. Miller (US) - Member of the Jury; Sergi Jordà (ES), Günter Geiger (AT), Martin Kaltenbrunner (AT), Marcos Alonso (ES), hans w. koch (DE), Teri Rueb (US)

- Digital Communities - 7.09.2008, 15:30 - 17:00 MEZ
with: Isaac Mao (CN) - Member of the Jury; Wu Yuanjing (CN), Jeana Frost (US), David Sasaki (US)

- Computer Animation - 7.09.2008, 17:00 - 18:30 MEZ
with: Jürgen Hagler (AT) - Member of the Jury; Chris Lavis (CA), Maciek Szczerbowski (CA), Jason Walker (CA), Taku Kimura (JP), Amael Isnard (FR), Manuel Javelle (FR), Clément Picon (FR)

Ars Electronica Festival 2008

Today, Thursday the 4th of September, the 29th Ars Electronica Festival starts in Linz, Austria. This years's topic "A new cultural economy - The limits of intellectual property" deals with copyright issues and open access.

For everyone who can't be there in person, Ars offers webcasts and podcasts of the various symposia and conferences. The program can be found here: http://www.aec.at/en/festival2008/program/content.asp



For webcasts go here: http://www.aec.at/en/festival2008/stream/webcasts.asp,
for podcasts follow this link: http://www.aec.at/en/festival2008/stream/podcasts.asp

The Museum of Jurassic Technology on wmmna

wmmna (we make money not art) has a detailed post on The Museum of Jurassic Technology today. the Museum is a project that is part art, part fictional/fantastical archive and all meta-museum... after the jump are photos from the exhibitions inside the Museum and after the wmmna post's jump are more photos and an interview with founder David Wilson:

The Museum of Jurassic Technology - sascha pohflepp (2008.08.16 12:46 AM)
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/the-museum-of-jurassic-technol.php

an io9 post on John Whitney + Douglas Trumbull filed under Retro Futurism

IBM System/360 Mainframe (1968) VS Monolith (1968)

"Star Gate" sequence by Douglas Trumbull
from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968)

from i09 in their wonderful Retro Futurism category comes a reblogged Media Art Histories connection. this connection traces a few points of contact between John Whitney's DIY cam machine, his experimental film Catalog, Douglas Trumbull's Star Gate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Monoliths (as alien/alien technology) and the mainframes of IBM (as similarly monolithic tools in an artists' residency program at IBM)...

"In the late 1950s, animator John Whitney (perhaps most famous for assisting Saul Bass to create the opening title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo) built a mechanical analog computer using the mechanisms from several WW II anti-aircraft guns. He used the resulting “cam machine” to produce short experimental animated films, releasing a demo reel in 1961 under the title Catalog. 2001 special effects artist Douglas Trumbull saw Whitney’s Catalog and was inspired by the artist's slit-scan technique, using it for the animated sequences in 2001. According to writer William Moritz, Whitney submitted “a proposal for a monolith as a computer-generated effect that would have looked different from anything else in the film. He was turned down.” Nevertheless, Whitney became IBM’s first artist-in-residence in 1966, and is considered one of the forefathers of computer animation."

"How a War Surplus Anti-Aircraft Gun Helped Inspire 2001: A Space Odyssey" - Lynn Peril (1:00 PM on Thu Aug 14 2008)
http://io9.com/5037142/how-a-war-surplus-anti+aircraft-gun-helped-inspire-2001-a-space-odyssey

the collection and preservation of MMOs @ The University of Texas at Austin

Megan Winget (in World of Warcraft)

a recent post on kotaku reports that The School of Information and project partner The Videogame Archive @ The Center for American History (both @ The University of Texas at Austin) have received funding for and are beginning to study the collection and preservation of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games including World of Warcraft (WoW), EverQuest (EQ) and Ultima Online (UO)

the methods discussed include interviews w/the developers, documenting oral histories from the players and in game documentation (i.e. screen recordings) of 'epochal moments'

Library Journal has an interview w/the the project head Assistant Professor Megan Winget. Winget says that this study is in the context of her primary research interest, which is in "the preservation of new media artifacts, specifically new media art, of which videogames are a major exemplar."

Jane Veeder interviewed by criticalartware (2003)

"Multiple histories are great; the problem you have is when there's no history. The discourse on, what do you want to call it, electronic art, digital art, didn't really start until 1990. Before that it was Art History majors who had done their thesis on an Abstract Expressionist painter, deciding that their niche was going to be writing about Video Art. And then they thought they had a handle on video and then it started going digital. So that got really confusing. You would get these articles that were reportage, they weren't any kind of real analysis or critical insight because they just weren't makers themselves. Dan Sandin said, 'Computer Art is unusual because you can't understand it just by looking at it.'" - Jane Veeder.

Jane Veeder interviewed by criticalartware (2003.09.29)
http://criticalartware.net

OpenCollection software

"OpenCollection is freely available open-source software for managing and publishing online collections of digital media. While primarily designed to handle museum and archival collections, its support for a wide variety of image, audio and video formats and its ability to store extensive contextual information about people, places and events makes it an effective solution for arts organizations needing to manage multimedia documentation archives and/or publish them online."

http://www.opencollection.org

Dirty New Media - Jake Elliott (2008)

Dirty New Media: Art Activism and Computer Counter Cultures - Jake Elliott (July 2008)

"A talk by Jake Elliott from "The Last Hope" - Hackers on Planet Earth 2008. This talk presents a short history of electronic art by illustrating connections between artists, activists, and hackers. The connections and histories presented include: the demoscene and its origins in software piracy; video and conceptual artists in the 1970s and their activist work; contemporary artists working with circuit bending and other detournements of modern technologies; the Chicago “dirty new media” community; contemporary artists, hackers, and activists creating software and electronic art with a punk/anticapitalist ethos. Excerpts of work from these different artists and communities are screened and discussed. http://dai5ychain.net/jake/ http://criticalartware.net/ http://4rtcr4x0rz.com/"

"Written forms of self-documentation" as "future oriented"

"Written forms of self-documentation, such as diaries, are future oriented." - That Different Place: Documenting the Self Within Online Environments - Andreas Kitzmann (2003)

on Media Art Histories of Virtual Realities

below is an excerpt on Media Art Histories of Virtual Realities from "Recombinant Poetics: Emergent Meaning as Examined and Explored Within a Specific Generative Virtual Environment", the 1999 doctoral thesis of Bill Seaman.

"Myron Krueger envisioned the responsive, interactive potential of computer-based artificial realities (his term for virtual reality). Krueger writes:

The responsive environment has been presented as the basis of a new aesthetic medium based on real-time interaction between men and machines. In the long range it augurs a new realm of human experience, artificial realities which seek not to simulate the physical world but to define arbitrary, abstract and otherwise impossible relationships between action and result. We are incredibly attuned to the idea that the sole purpose of our technology is to solve problems. It also creates concepts and philosophy. We must more fully explore these aspects of our inventions, because the next generation of technology will speak to us, understand us and perceive our behaviour...The design of such technology is an aesthetic issue as much as an engineering one. We must recognize this if we are to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made. (Krueger, 1977, pp.423-433)

This premise is central to my project, where I have sought to intermingle the technological with the artistic. Myron Krueger specifically points in this direction when positing the history of Virtual Reality. In his essay "The Artistic Origins of Virtual Reality," he writes:

The dawn of Virtual Reality is most often traced to a paper by Ivan Sutherland presented at the national computer conference in 19654 and another written by him in 19685. There were also two relevant dissertations at the University of North Carolina in 1970 and 1976.6 Otherwise, during most of the 70’s and the first half of the 1980’s, the idea of virtual reality was dormant in the technical community, except for the classified work of Tom Furness in the U.S. Airforce. (Krueger, 1993, p.148)

He later continues:

The premise of this essay is that the ideas [related to virtual reality, emphasis Seaman] were actively pursued in the arts from the beginning, that virtual reality’s rebirth as a technical field was triggered by the efforts of artists and that increasingly the involvement of artists now would foster more rapid development of the field in the future. (Krueger, 1993, p.148)

In the essay, Krueger outlines the importance of the artist’s aesthetic development of Virtual Reality, or what he terms "Artificial Reality." I will here outline a series of different artistic involvements as drawn from Krueger’s text:

Mort Heilig’s Sensorama, 1960, developed a full-immersion experience involving stereo film and stereo sound as well as "physical" feedback attributes; Salvitori Martirano in the 60’s explored 3D sound experiences; Michael Noll explored telepresence, stereo viewing apparatus, 3D drawing and tactile communication for visualising dance; Dan Sandine and Myron Kreuger explored computer-controlled responsive environments; the PULSA group led by Patrick Clancy explored large outdoor environments; Aaron Marcus implemented a symbolic, interactive, computer-environment in the early 70’s; Krueger’s exploration of shared tellecommunication space in Metaplay 1970 and the Videoplace exhibition in 1975; Kit Galloway and Sherry Rabinowitz exploration of telepresence or "composite spaces"; Dan Sandin, Tom Defanti and Gary Sayers development of the Data Glove; a later pattented Data Glove by musician Tom Zimmerman; research into the head-mounted display by artistically trained Mike McGreavy; artist Scott Fisher’s virtual reality work for NASA; Jaron Lanier, musician — interested in exploring musical production in virtual space and president of VPL research; Durand R. Begault, interested in 3D sound; Mark Caniglio’s exploration of sensors on dancers; Graham Smith’s interest in new forms of unencumbered VR. (Krueger, 1993, p.148)"

"This is Tomorrow" - exhibition catalogue

the complete catalogue online can be found here:
http://www.thisistomorrow2.com/images/cat_1956/cat_web/FrameSet.htm

BITMAP: as good as new - vertexList (2008)

"BITMAP: as good as new is a group exhibition celebrating the history of the digital image, the aesthetics of early computing, and early video-game consoles. BITMAP, recently featured at the Museum of Modern Art, highlights old-school CRT’s, pixels, and 8-bit music. The exhibition will be held at Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Curated by vertexList. Exhibit runs June 25-July 25, 2008, free to the public.

B I T M A P: as good as new" is proud to feature:

Cory Arcangel, Lee Arnold, Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Christine Gedeon, Kimberley Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI, Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, Jim Punk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and CJ Yeh.

The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery
Drexel University
33 and Market St.
Philadelphia PA 19104
215 895 2548

Opening reception:
Thursday, June 26th, 5-7pm + special screening of "8 BIT" @ 4 pm