Saturday, January 31, 2009

FORTHCOMING

White Heat, Cold Logic

Edited by Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, Nicholas Lambert and Catherine Mason

Technological optimism, even utopianism, was widespread at midcentury; in Britain, Harold Wilson in 1963 promised a new nation "forged from the white heat of the technological revolution." In this heady atmosphere, pioneering artists transformed the cold logic of computing into a new medium for their art, and played a central role in connecting technology and culture. White Heat Cold Logic tells the story of these early British digital and computer artists--and fills in a missing chapter in contemporary art history.

In this heroic period of computer art, artists were required to build their own machines, collaborate closely with computer scientists, and learn difficult computer languages. White Heat Cold Logic's chapters, many written by computer art pioneers themselves, describe the influence of cybernetics, with its emphasis on process and interactivity; the connections to the constructivist movement; and the importance of work done in such different venues as commercial animation, fine art schools, and polytechnics.

The advent of personal computing and graphical user interfaces in 1980 signaled the end of an era, and today we do not have so many dreams of technological utopia. And yet our highly technologized and mediated world owes much to these early practitioners, especially for expanding our sense of what we can do with new technologies.

Paul Brown is Visiting Professor of Art and Technology at the University of Sussex. Charlie Gere is Reader in New Media Research, Institute for Cultural Research, at Lancaster University. Nicholas Lambert is Research Officer, School of History of Art, Film, and Visual Media, at Birkbeck College, University of London. Catherine Mason is an art historian at work on a book about computers and artistic practice in art schools and academic institutions.

Contributors: Roy Ascott, Stephen Bell, Paul Brown, Stephen Bury, Harold Cohen, Ernest Edmonds, María Fernández, Simon Ford, John Hamilton Frazer, Jeremy Gardiner, Charlie Gere, Adrian Glew, Beryl Graham, Stan Hayward, Grisham Howard, Richard Ihnatowicz, Malcolm Le Grice, Tony Longson, Brent MacGregor, George Mallen, Catherine Mason, Jasia Reichardt, Stephen A. R. Scrivener, Brian Reffin Smith, Alan Sutcliffe, Doron D. Swade, John Vince, Richard Wright, Aleksandar Zivanovic.

About the Editors

Paul Brown is Visiting Professor of Art and Technology at the University of Sussex.

Charlie Gere is Reader in New Media Research, Institute for Cultural Research, at Lancaster University.

Nicholas Lambert is Research Officer, School of History of Art, Film, and Visual Media, at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Catherine Mason is an art historian at work on a book about computers and artistic practice in art schools and academic institutions.


February 2009
The MIT Press
A Leonardo Book
ISBN:0-262-02653-8
568 pp., 63 figures


Monday, January 26, 2009

transmediale 09 (live) streaming

As part of its online programme, Berlin's festival for art and digital culture *transmediale.09 DEEP NORTH* will offer a selected package of live video streams from the House of World Cultures in Berlin from 28 January to 1 February 2009.
For details of where and what we will stream please visit

Dedicated transmediale IRC channels provide platforms for extended discussion leading up to and during the actual event, giving the remote community a powerful voice and a chance to engage with the sessions in Berlin. For details how to get involved please visit

Friday, January 23, 2009

useful linklist published by DOCAM (20090122)

GLOSSARIES AND THESAURI

Variable Media Glossary. Depocas, A., Ippolito, J., and Jones, C. (eds) (2003). Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art Science and Technology.
http://www.variablemedia.net/e/preserving/html/var_pub_index.html


Capturing Unstable Media Glossary, V2
http://capturing.projects.v2.nl/glossary.html


UNESCO Thesaurus
http://www2.ulcc.ac.uk/unesco/


Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP), Glossary
http://www.imappreserve.org/cat_proj/glossary.html


Dictionnaire des arts médiatiques. 1996, Groupe de recherche en arts médiatiques, Université du Québec à Montréal.
http://132.208.118.245/Accueil.html


Inside Installations Glossary
http://glossary.inside-installations.org


Bay Area Video Coalition - Glossary
http://www.bavc.org/preservation/dvd/resources/gloss.htm


Digital Curation Centre Glossary
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resource/glossary/


AMIA Glossary
http://www.amianet.org


Besser, Howard. Introduction to imaging : issues in constructing an image database : revised edition. Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, 2003.
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/introimages/glossary.html
[includes Glossary]


InterPARES Glossary (International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems)
http://www.interpares.org/display_file.cfm?doc=ip1_glossary.pdf
[archival context]


Grand dictionnaire terminologique, Office québecois de la langue française
http://www.granddictionnaire.ca


Kodak Glossary of Film/Video Terms.
http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Education/Film_Video_Glossary/index.htm


Lexical and Classification Resources from CoOl
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/lex/
[With links to glossaries and thesauri, this CoOl site offers information specific to magnetic media preservation as well as other areas of archival research.]


Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science (ODLIS), Joan M. Reitz.
http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_r.cfm


WordNet
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/


Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Glossaries
http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/format/gloss.html


Recording institute of Detroit, Audio Recording Terms Glossary
http://recordingeq.com/glossary/glospt.htm


Structured Glossary from the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee of the Commission on Preservation and Access
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/lynn/
[This extensive glossary breaks terms down by document medium, format, properties, content, and condition. It also includes storage terms, specific preservation terms, methodology, and more].


Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/


Tech Terms Dictionary
http://www.techterms.com


Technical Glossary of Common Audiovisual Terms (developed by National Film and Sound Archive - Australia)
http://www.nfsa.afc.gov.au/preservation/audiovisual_terms/


Universal Preservation Format Glossary
http://info.wgbh.org/upf/glossary.html
[Developed in conjunction with the Universal Preservation Format, this glossary has cross-domain definitions of preservation terms and provides links to glossaries that have additional source information.]

OTHER TERMINOLOGY SOURCES / RESSOURCES

Documentation and capturing methods for unstable media arts, V2
http://archive.v2.nl/v2_archive/projects/capturing/1_2_capturing.pdf


Description models for unstable media art. V2.
http://archive.v2.nl/v2_archive/projects/capturing/1_3_metadata.pdf


Class Hierarchy for cmcm_final Project, V2
http://archive.v2.nl/v2_archive/projects/capturing/cmcm/html/


CIDOC CRM – Conceptual Reference Model
http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/


Audio and Video Carriers, TAPE (Training for Audiovisual Preservation in Europe)
www.tape-online.net/docs/audio_and_video_carriers.pdf


JISC Techwatch A-Z Technologies
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/services/techwatch/aztechnologies.aspx


Computer Forensics Tools Testing Website
http://www.cftt.nist.gov/


Disk Imaging Specification Comments and Responses
http://www.cftt.nist.gov/DI-SPEC-COMMENTS-AND-RESPONSES-5.doc


Sustainability of Digital Formats, Library of Congress
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/intro/intro.shtml


UK Archival Thesaurus
http://www.ukat.org.uk/
[SKOS implementation]


Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Home Page
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/


Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Reference
http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/


Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)
http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/


DCC Curation Lifecycle Model
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/docs/publications/DCCLifecycle.pdf

Saturday, January 17, 2009

DOCAM


The videos of the 2008 DOCAM Annual Summit are now available

Posted: 15 Jan 2009 05:06 PM CST

ata-sm

2008 DOCAM ANNUAL SUMMIT

This year, DOCAM’s fourth international Summit took place on October 30 and 31, at McGill University. During this two-day conference, which was held at the Tanna Schulich Hall of the New Music Building, audience members had the opportunity to learn about the progress of DOCAM’s research and to meet distinguished speakers among whom was renowned media artist Antoni Muntadas.

View the videos of the presentations! http://www.docam.ca/en/?p=514



View the Summit’s program.
View the abstracts and biographies of the participants.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Primary Language Screening at the The Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts

Screening
Primary Language
20 January 2009
Start 20.30 hour
Entrance 3,50 (students 2,50)
Reservations info@nimk.nl

Throughout the history of video art, artists have devoted their work to the the subject of language. Particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, a number of outstanding works were produced which celebrate language and its relation to image, imagination and memory. The NIMk collection holds some of these seminal video works and later ones and presents them in a screening within the context of the current Speaking Out Loud exhibition.
The introduction will present excerpts of Freeing the Memory, 1976, by Marina Abramovic, Primarily Speaking, 1981, by Gary Hill and Studies of myself II ,1973, by Douglas Davis.
More information: www.nimk.nl/en

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
T 020 6237101
F 020 6244423
E info@nimk.nl

CFP: Objects of Knowledge, Objects of Exchange: Contours of (Inter)disciplinarity."


The Humanities Center at Harvard University is pleased to announce its annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference. This year's topic is " Objects of Knowledge, Objects of Exchange: Contours of (Inter)disciplinarity." Below is our call for papers. We would like to ask that you forward the CFP to the graduate students in your department. Thank you very much!

Call for Papers

Objects of Knowledge, Objects of Exchange: Contours of
(Inter)disciplinarity (http://objectsofknowledge.org/)

Mellon Graduate Student Conference
Humanities Center – Harvard University

April 3-4, 2009

Timetable
Deadline for abstract submission: February 15, 2009.
Notification of acceptance: February 23, 2009.
Submission of final papers: March 22, 2009.
Pre-circulation of papers: March 23, 2009.
Conference: April 3-4, 2009.

Note: Selected domestic and international panelists will be eligible for transportation reimbursement.

As fields of knowledge production, circulation, and consumption, academic disciplines and their intersections are privileged arenas in which to examine the emergence of objects of knowledge, their contestation and circulation. However, disciplines are themselves artifacts, engaged in processes of mutation and consolidation, among many others. How does a discipline or a field of study define its object, and how is it reciprocally defined by it? Are objects of knowledge extant entities, or defined entirely by their construction within overlapping fields and processes of knowledge? How does theory contest or reinforce objectifying processes? Can objects of knowledge be said to circulate - as text, image, written or recorded music, oral traditions and practices of habitation/embodiment, or, equally, physical and social formations, subatomic particles, etc. - and by what attributes and effects may they be known? How is the identification (or instantiation) of such objects to take place? What are the dynamics and consequences of identification and/or specification in this context, and are they desirable? What are the pitfalls of transactional models of the movement and circulation of ideas, and how might alternative models be formulated? Beyond narratives of progress, how do systematic or contingent understandings of the elaboration of thought attempt to break with teleological formulations? Are processual methodologies and/or immanent criticism successful in withdrawing themselves from a progressivist frame, and is or would such a withdrawal be desirable?

This conference will seek to interrogate the contours of interdisciplinarity through discussion focused around objects of knowledge in their constitution, negotiation, and exchange. We invite paper proposals from across the disciplines (including, but not limited to, the natural and social sciences, humanities, and the arts) and encourage reflections on the following questions and foci.

Four foci:

1) Negotiating temporalities and spatialities: How do ideas move through space and time, and how are they shaped by movement? Recent and contemporary developments in communication practices and technology promise to bring about mutations in and opportunities for collaboration and research, at the same time insinuating themselves into the fabric of the ideas that arise from and through them. Does interdisciplinary investigation enable novel understandings of space and time as they relate to the production of objects of knowledge/exchange? How does such investigation reflect the social, technological, and environmental conditions of its production? In what ways can the mutual constitution of subject and object of inquiry be situated along spatial and temporal dimensions?

In this topic area we encourage proposals to trace specific ideas or phenomena along temporal and/or spatial axes, illustrating ways in which circulations of populations, individuals, methodologies, and ideas reflect or shed light on the following: narrativity, historicity, movement, architecture, and urbanism, among others.

2) Ethical engagement and praxis: What are the ethical dimensions of interdisciplinarity? It is a commonplace to refer to the apparent dichotomy between "theory" and "praxis," yet epistemological orientations are deeply implicated in social and political affairs across its various meanings and arenas. Must theory necessarily be committed to a certain ethical engagement? In the broadest sense, what are the politics of the production and use of knowledge? To approach these questions we invite contributions addressing the stakes of knowledge production in specific cases including, for example, the role of the university in the production and regulation of knowledge and the ethics of collaboration between the university and the private sector. To what extent does the increasing public engagement with environmentalism reflect a transfer of the idea of human rights to the Earth conceived as a (humanized?) being?

In this topic we invite reflection on subjects including but not limited to violence (people/society/environment); transportation infrastructure and globalization; reflexivity in the writing of theory; politics, ethics, and regimes of power; the human genome; animal and human rights; governmentality; and health and social suffering.


3) Images of thought / beyond the image: While the image (by opposition to the written or printed word) may become the element of informational exchange most central to unfolding 21st century society, what sites in the understanding or production of images (including moving images) illuminate the stakes of such a transformation for theoretical investigation? If the cinema provided a "moving image of thought" in the 20th century (John Marks), does the formulation continue to pertain as image production and consumption explode beyond the confines of the theater? How do other kinds of images - particle collision diagrams, disk images, audio recordings, crowdsourced political advertisements, QR codes, photo-searching, etc. - complicate the moving image as an image of thought, and perhaps our understanding of thought itself? How may the expansion of critical practice beyond sight to include other domains of sense data further complicate the centrality of the image to our understandings of intellectual history and the future of theory?

We invite papers on topics including photographic and film criticism, new media and technology, imaging techniques in research across disciplines, image as functional or illustrative metaphor, musical notation, image making practice and its role in research in the social and natural sciences (from nano-technology to the human genome to the universe), formal and informal image-making in social praxis, visual and multi-sensory representations of knowledge domains, kinesthetics, and the circulation of art objects and the art world.

4) Performing transdisciplinarity? (Experimental panel) As part of our interrogation about the circulation of ideas and the contours of interdisciplinarity, we hope to include on the second day of the conference an experimental panel in which four participants will engage with a common topic from their diverse (inter)disciplinary and methodological standpoints. To this end, we will circulate a topic to voluntary experimental panel participants 5 weeks prior to the conference and those participants will be asked to write a very short (15-minute) presentation on the topic. During the panel, the presenters will deliver their remarks, with each presentation followed by 15 minutes of moderated roundtable discussion. The goal will be to encourage the development of a set of reflections on the same topic from four distinct methodological and/or disciplinary standpoints. In order to identify potential participants, if you are interested in taking part in this experimental panel, please indicate your interest in your cover letter.

ABSTRACTS FORMAT

Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a cover letter, in which you briefly explain your reasons for attending the conference and state how the paper is relevant to your research. In the letter, state whether you are eligible for transportation reimbursement. Co-authored papers are welcome.

Email to: info@objectsofknowledge.org
Deadline: February 15, 2009.
Accepted panelists will be notified by February 23, 2009.
Any questions should be directed to: info@objectsofknowledge.org

Monday, January 12, 2009

Networking. The Net as Artwork (English Version) by Tatiana Bazzichelli

Copying from a post at the http://faces-l.net list:

"Networking. The Net as Artwork" by Tatiana Bazzichelli is finally ready in English language. It is promoted by the DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Center of Aarhus University.http://darc.imv.au.dk/?p=62You can download it from this link:http://darc.imv.au.dk/wp-content/files/networking_bazzichelli.pdf
A reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy and of the Italian hacker communitiy from the 1980s to date.Preface by Derrick De Kerckhove. Epilogue by Simonetta Fadda.
Contents:Networking means to create nets of relations, where the publisher and the reader, the artist and the audience, act on the same level. The book represents a first tentative reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy, through an analysis of media and art projects which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies, from video to computers, contributing to the creation of Italian hacker communities.The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, diffused through independent and collective projects where the idea of freedom of expression is a central theme. In Italy, thanks to the alternative use of Internet, during the past twenty years a vast national network of people who share political, cultural and artistic views has been formed.The book describes the evolution of the italian hacktivism and net culture from the Eighties till today. At the same time, it builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who become networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to Neoavant-garde practices of the 1960s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail art, Neoism and Luther Blissett.A path which began in BBS, alternative web platforms diffused in Italy through the 1980s even before Internet even existed, and then moved on to Hackmeetings, to Telestreet and networking art of different artists such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others.Tatiana Bazzichelli (Rome, IT, 1974), is a communication sociologist and an expert in network culture, hacktivism and net art. She is a Ph.D. Scholar at Aarhus University.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

The Whole Earth Catalog archive online


An interactive Flash-based archive of The Whole Earth Catalog is online at: http://www.wholeearth.com

The Whole Earth Catalog was an influencial counter-cultural publication launched in 1968 by Stewart Brand. As the archive states: "We thought it was important to preserve the heritage of the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and its succeeding publications. Although the CATALOG's heyday was during a specific and turbulent period of American history, the ideas found in it and in its related publications continue to engage the brightest minds of the 21st century—and Whole Earth LLC believes that those ideas should be preserved as they were originally disseminated."

Friday, January 9, 2009

Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology - Howard Rheingold (1985)

Howard Rheingold 1985 book Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology is freely available on his website: http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Polaroid Picture, 1972-2008 - Ross Rosenberg (2009.01.06)



"December 2008 marked the passing of an era in photography as Polaroid Corporation ceased manufacturing instant film, meaning that soon the only way you’ll be able to admire their otherworldly ability to rob reality of spacial relationships will be at garage sales and on Flickr. lens culture posted this fantastic infomercial for the SX-70, the quintessential instant camera. Watching this ad, with its detailed animation of the internal voodoo taking place inside the camera’s body and the chemical process of the self-developing film I’m struck by the ingenuity of “vintage” technology. There’s something about these kinds of devices that I find infinitely more interesting than current gadgets.

I think it has mostly to do with the fact that this kind of gadget is much more about miniaturization than anything. While current technology has a preoccupation — one could say obsession — with combining as many disparate facets of modern existence into a single carapace, something like the SX-70 was meant solely to shrink an otherwise bulky endeavor; in this case the entirety of a photo-lab physically crammed into an object that could fit inside a coat pocket. As astounding as the abilities of a Blackberry may be, it pales in comparison to the idea of, say, a tiny, collapsible printing press."

Polaroid SX-70 Ad [YouTube] : lens culture" - Ross Rosenberg (2009.01.06)
http://www.ectomo.com/index.php/2009/01/06/the-poloroid-picture-1972-2008/