A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer’s Arrival in Art New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961–1973

This recent MIT press publication documents a short-lived but intense artistic experiment that took place in Yugoslavia fifty years ago but has been influential far beyond that time and place: the New Tendencies movement, which begun in Zagreb in 1961. Pursuing the idea of “art as visual research"” the New Tendencies movement proceeded along a path that led from Concrete and Constructivist art, Op art, and Kinetic art to computer-generated graphics, film, and sculpture.

With their exhibitions and conferences and the 1968 launch of the multilingual, groundbreaking magazine Bit International, the New Tendencies transformed Zagreb into an international meeting place where artists, engineers, and scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain gathered around the then-new technology. For a brief moment in time, Zagreb was the epicenter of explorations of the aesthetic, scientific, and political potential of the computer.

further links:
http://www02.zkm.de/bit/index.php?lang=en
http://aminima.net/wp/?p=859&language=en
http://dada.compart-bremen.de/public/docUploads/41.2.fritz.pdf
http://darkofritz.net/text/bitomatik_Fritz_eng.pdf
http://darkofritz.net/text/Fritz.NT_oris%2054.pdf
http://darkofritz.net/text/CIP_no.07-08-2006_Fritz_Bonacic.pdf
http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/731

Nick Lambert's thesis: "The Status of Computer Art"

check out the online version of Nick Lambert's thesis "the status of computer art", submitted in 2003. amazing work, both in content and presentation.
see also his proposed timeline / diagram of digital art (its only missing my dearest Xenakis;)

media art and sustainable energy

Energetics and Informatics: the 7th ADA Symposium, Whanganui, December 10-12 2010

The 7th ADA Network Symposium examines the relationship between energy and information in media arts. We ask how sustainable is the technology that supports media art? What new forms of practice are developing at the intersection of energy conservation and production, technology, and art? And how can we balance a global arts practice with the ethical complexities of global air travel, and the social complexities of remote participation?

These issues will be explored through keynote presentations, discussions, artist presentations, workshops, a screening programme and two exhibitions.

The symposium features keynote presentations by internationally renowned sound and media arts theorist Douglas Kahn, and Australian artists Joyce Hinterding and David Haines, and a remote conversation with London-based media artist Graham Harwood, creator of the Coal Fired Computer.

http://symposium10.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/

Arte electrónico: ¿qué preservar y cómo preservarlo?

Conservación del Arte electrónico ¿Qué preservar y cómo preservarlo?
Apuntes [Media art conservation: what aspects should be preserved and how
can we address it?] compiles the proceedings of the homonymous
seminar that took place jointly at the “Espacio Fundación Telefónica” and
the “Centro Cultural de España”, in Buenos Aires.The publication is distributed
under Creative Commons license in Spanish http://taxonomedia.net

technological determinism in media art

Armin Medosch's master thesis on technological determinism in media art is super interesting, dealing with core issues of media art. available here

FILE 2009 - symposium

FILE 2009 symposium, Electronic Language International Festival, 27th - 31st of August, 2009 @ Sesi Paulista's cultural space, Sao Paulo, Brasil

"FILE Symposium intends to create a new point of debate besides the Europe/US axis, with the intent of discussing the electronic digital culture in its international relations, and also to broaden the dialogue on digital culture in its interdisciplinary extension. FILE Symposium is a space for discussing new media that will have round-tables with artists, theoreticians and researchers from Brazil and abroad in the area of art-technology."

url:
http://www.file.org.br/file2009/eng/index.php
http://www.file.org.br/

archive 2020

a conference about archiving and sustainability of born digital content. unfortunately it already took place (today, may 18th, 2009) in amsterdam.

http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/en/#2489


talks by:
Lev Manovich (on cultural analytics)
Olga Goriunova (runme.org)
Eric Kluitenberg (the living archive)
Alessandro Ludovico (neural.it)
Aymeric Mansoux (goto10)
Christiane Paul (the whitney artport)
Esther Weltevrede (archiving web dynamics)
Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss (netzspannung.org)

virtueel platform (nl)

http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/en/

mission statement:

"Virtual Platform defines e-culture as new developments in the cultural sector arising from cross-pollination between technology and society. Virtueel Platform firmly believes that e-culture makes an essential contribution to cultural, social and economic innovation, and works to strengthen and develop Dutch e-culture at home and abroad."

Roy Ascott retrospective, "The Syncretic Sense"

http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/art/future.html
starting: April 4th 2009
end: May 24th 2009
Plymouth


from the Plymouth Arts Center's website:

"The first UK retrospective exhibition of the pioneering cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, curated in collaboration with
i-DAT (Institute for Digital Art and Technology, University of Plymouth).

Long before email and the internet, Roy Ascott started using online computer networks as an art medium and coined the term telematic art. Since the 1960s he has been a pioneer of art, which brought together the science of cybernetics with elements of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Pop Art. Parallel to his artwork, Roy Ascott is a highly acclaimed teacher and theorist of art pedagogy.

This exhibition explores the influences and rhetoric of Roy Ascott’s work, mapping the impact, history and development of technology and looking to the future of Web2 and Second life. Roy Ascott sees telematic art as the transformation of the viewer into an active participant in creating the artwork, which remains in process throughout its duration. Significantly, the content of his projects were often spiritual: staging the first planetary casting of the I Ching with an early form of network in 1982; whilst his major installation at the Ars Electronica centre in 1989 explored Gaia theory.

The exhibition also looks back at the impact of Roy Ascott’s experimental years of art education. In the 1960s Roy Ascott was the head of Groundcourse at Ealing College of Art and developed one of the most influential and unorthodox approaches to teaching foundation studies in art. The basis of the course was developed around cybernetic theories of systems of communication: the flow of information, interactive exchange, feedback, participation and systemic relationship.

Roy Ascott studied under Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton at King’s College, Newcastle, University of Durham. His exhibitions include Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica Linz and Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil. He was President 
of the Ontario College of Art and Dean of San Francisco Art Institute. He is President of the Planetary Collegium, an international research network based in the University of Plymouth www.planetary-collegium.net

Press enquiries: Contact Hannah Prothero
Marketing & Communications Manager
Phone: 01752 276993
Email: hannah at plymouthartscentre dot org"

"

"ARTFORUM goes CRITICALARTWARE" - jonCates (2009)

ARTFORUM March 2009

i've written a short response to the Media Art Histories approach that the current ARTFORUM takes in relation to their cover feature: "IN CONVERSATION: DARA BIRNBAUM AND CORY ARCANGEL" (an interview/discussion between (Video) artist Dara Birnbaum and (New Media) artist Cory Arcangel). the response is on my blog:

http://joncates.blogspot.com/2009/03/artforum-goes-criticalartware.html

Marisa Plumb reviews COPY-IT-RIGHT Furtherfield

Marisa Plumb reviews COPY-IT-RIGHT: The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive on Furtherfield.org:

http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=335

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

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.

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/

Art Torrent

http://arttorrents.blogspot.com/

This great blog shows descriptions and stills of artists' films, which are hosted on karagarga.net. Because of copyright-restrictions, karagarga is only accessible for registred users. Some of the videos can also be seen on ubuweb.
If you google for karagarga, you will see this note on the bottom of the page:

"Infolge einer Beschwerde, die hinsichtlich des US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (amerikanisches Datenschutzgesetz) bei uns eingegangen ist, haben wir 1 Ergebnis(se) aus dieser Seite entfernt. Sie können die DMCA-Beschwerde, die dieser Entfernung zugrunde liegt, unter ChillingEffects.org lesen."

On the blog you will find an email-tab and you can write to the authors and ask for a karagarga-invitation. In a forum (http://freakyflicks.proboards54.com/index.cgi?board=chat&action=display&thread=1591&page=3), it says you should answer the following questions:
a. How did you hear about karagarga? Be as specific as possible.
b. What are your favourite movies? List some specific ones. How about books, albums and artists?
c. What do you have to offer for our community?
d. What kind of material are you looking for?
e. Do you know how ratio-based trackers work?
f. Are you connectable?
g. Which other private trackers are you on?
h. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Karagarga has its own forum: http://forum.karagarga.net
You have to register to contribute

Archiving the Avant-Garde

participants include:
Kevin kelly, Stewart Brand, Jane Metcalfe, Richard Rinehart, Jon Ippolito, Bruce Sterling, Marisa Olsen, Michael Katchen, Alexander Rose, Kurt Bollacker, Jeff Rothenberg

The conference took place at Berkley in January 2007.

The whole symposium can be watched online at http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/newmedia

Form the website:
The conference is "a public symposium to discuss strategies for peserving digital art at a time when digital technologies are evolving and becoming obsolete at an astonishingly rapid pace. While focussing on digital art, the symposium will also address larger concerns about the long-term conservation of our increasingly digital culture, including how we decide what digital content - from Web sites to video games - are worth saving."

Media, Memory and the Archive

Conference on Media Art Archiving, organized by Argos (January 2007)
http://www.argosarts.org/articles.do?id=374

From the website:
"How will generations after us look back on artistic production of the 20th and 21st centuries? Media formats, operating systems, software and hardware, browsers and the internet as we know it today will have evolved beyond recognition, both in shape and in use. What strategies might be used to transpose technology-based works, variable, hybrid and ephemeral by nature, to an unknown and unpredictable future? How can intent, context and experience be recorded and permanently interpreted? The archiving process does not merely represent an attempt to preserve some notions, it also implicates that others will be forgotten. What is relevant for preservation? What is the impact of used models, technical structures and tools on the construction of cultural memory? How does information travel through time, now that the world is being (re)presented and organised more and more as a database, dynamic and networked? How will museums and other memory institutions cope with these new paradigms and what is the role media artists and we ourselves might have in the structuring of public memory?"

participants include Charlie Gere, Josephine Bosma, Oliver Grau, Wolfgang Ernst, Jean-Francois Blanchette, Richard Rinehart and Steve Dietz

The conference took place at Argos in January 2007.
Unfortuantely, there are no audio- or videofiles available on the net.

media/art/archive

http://www.swr.de/medienkunstpreis/archiv/archiv.php?language=e&version=light&autoyear=&autonr=&winners=

ZKM and the boradcast station SWR host an event called the international media art prize every year and now put the material online.