:: Saturday, August 16, 2003 ::

Another Addition to our New Media Fix:

Artcogitans.com is a new media resource based in France. It focuses on building a concise database of new media practitioners.

Kindly recommended by Isabel Saij.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here are the latest additions to the New Media Fix:

Amsterdam Editions is an artist collective located in Amsterdam.

Special Airplane is a website offering updates and documentation on new media projects happening in Vancouver, Canada.

The fix of this week is the well known, and always worth visiting, Furtherfield.org
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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The ISEA 2004 deadline for entries has been extended until 20, September:
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We are encouraging: Socially, critically and ecologically engaging work; Projects that bring the creative media to the streets; Projects that are worn on or inside people; Context sensitive work in the museums; Projects that float, dock or sail; Screen based media as it appears in 2004
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For more information on how to submit work, visit the ISEA 2004 website.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Turbulence.org currently spotlights August Highland's Alpha Numeric Labs. Here is part of the press release:

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August Highland has set about the task of changing everything conventional about the publishing industry. To give a literary work the same intrinsic material value as a painting, Highland conceived of the "Massive Production" publishing model. Instead of producing one book and selling thousands of copies of that book to readers, each one of whom own a re-printed, disposable object, Highland produces thousands of one-of-a-kind books and sells only the original copy of that book to one person who then owns a work of art with the same intrinsic value of a painting or sculpture.
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:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Arte Digital Rosario 2003 recently released its website featuring an extensive roster of new media artists. The Argentinian media festival, which emphasizes film language as a form of departure, had its off-line exhibition/opening on August 9. The festival's guest of honor was non-other than Orlan, the French artist most famous for creating performance art out of reading philosophical texts while having plastic surgery performed on her body.

Arte Digital Rosario 2003 is an ambitious project organized by Gabriel Otero with the support of Centro de Expreciones Contemporaneas and noneart.com.

This particular exhibition seems to have a good balance of on-line and off-line features. Arte Digital Rosario 2003 brings together new media artists, many which are by now well known, under a nostalgic umbrella based around photographs of a past that may not have been too glamorous, clearly emphasizing film language. In a way, this makes sense as the web is in an early stage similar to the time the photo-stills used throughout the website point to.

The extensive list of off-line artists also makes it obvious how the net can only go so far as an exhibiting space. This obviously ties to my recent realization that there is and always will be a need to gather in a place to experience art -- even new media works that may be available on-line. And from this point of view the fact that documentation for the offline material is not available on the website can be justified; that is, such omission makes people outside of Argentina realize that the exhibit is really happening in a specific place, and that we are simply lucky to learn about it through a well developed website.

The only downside to the website is that it may take the user a long time to download the information. A fast connection is needed. I recommend waiting through the introductory animations, it is worth the time. Besides, all sections are accompanied by early dixieland sounds.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here is a great opportunity for film enthusiasts roaming the net as art, Listen up! A total 11,200 Euros are at stake here:
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TARGET BLANK: 17TH STUTTGART FILMWINTER - FESTIVAL FOR EXPANDED MEDIA
Film Video New Media Installation Performance Lectures

Festival, January 15-18, 2004
Warm Up, January 9-14, 2004

www.filmwinter.de

Target Blank - the 17th edition of the Stuttgart Filmwinter is looking for innovative, critical, and unknown posititions in media art and film culture. After the record of 1300 submissions at the last festival the organizer Wand 5 cordially invites filmmakers, media producers, and artists to submit their work. Productions in the field of film, video, CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, installation, and performance are very welcome.

Submission
Internet-projects may be submitted online on the festival's website www.filmwinter.de. Entry forms and regulations for submissions in the field of film, video, CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, installation, and performance can be downloaded as PDF-file.

Deadline for submission: September 15, 2003

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For more detailed information make sure to visit the www.filmwinter.de website
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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"Reporters sans frontières" recently published a report on the "Internet under Surveillance" covering a selection of countries and institutions (European institutions) policies or laws concerning the internet. For anyone doing research into government policies and post september 11th surveillance of the electronic frontier, this is a must read. Below are some interesting policies implemented or imposed...

In Europe...
"Until late summer 2001, the official policy of the 15 member-countries of the European Union (EU) about regulation of cyberspace dismissed any idea of systematic retention of Internet connection records and monitoring Internet activity. The 11 September attacks changed that. In mid-October, US President George W. Bush urged Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who was EU president at the time, to get a proposed amendment to the Directive on Protection of Telecommunications Data and Information altered to require 'preventive retention' of data on Internet activity (traffic logs) as a means to fight terrorism."

England...
"In June 2002, home secretary David Blunkett proposed amending a controversial law passed in June 2000, the 'RIP Act' (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act), that allowed monitoring of all Internet activity by the secret services as a means to fight cybercrime. Blunkett now proposed to allow local authorities (tax and social security offices and municipal services, for example) to access details of people's Internet activity, including e-mail they sent and received. This caused such uproar in the media and among civil liberties groups that the government dropped the measure two weeks later."

France...
"The Internal Security Policy and Planning Law (LOPSI), passed on 31 July 2002, allows police detectives to make remote online searches of ISPs with prior court permission and have 'direct access to data considered necessary to establish the truth.'"

USA...
"Just a few hours after the attacks, FBI agents went to the head offices of the country's main ISPs, including Hotmail, AOL and Earthlink, to get details of possible e-mail messages between the terrorists. The online magazine Wired said FBI agents also tried to install the Carnivore surveillance system (since renamed DCS 1000) on the ISPs. It said they turned up at ISP offices with the software and offered to pay for installation and operation. They reportedly demanded and obtained material from certain e-mail accounts, most of whose names included the word 'Allah.' All major US-based ISPs are thought to have complied fully with the FBI demands."
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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An announcement from Year 01:
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Year Zero One Forum #12
year01.com/forum.htm
Year Zero One announces the launch of Issue #12, the twelth edition of our forum for dialogue about contemporary art practice and digital culture through on-line crital reviews, essays, interviews and news.

Featured in the current issue is:

-> 'The Art of Walking thru Geographic Space' by Von Bark
-> An Interview with the [murmur] collective by Caitlin O'Donovan
-> An overview of the PsyGeoConflux 2003 in NYC by David Mandl,
Christina Ray, and others
-> 'At the Corner of Either & Or' by Daniel Cockburn
-> 'Psychogeographical Account of PING and the PsyGeoConflux 2003' by
Kate Armstrong
-> 'Genius Loci' by Siobhan O'Flynn
-> 'Theatrum Mundi II' by Moritz Gaede
-> Thematic Links Collection by Michelle Kasprzak

Articles commissioned by Michelle Kasprzak
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:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Critical artware releases a double interview feature with Sherry Miller Hocking and Peter Luining (yes, the same artist from Amsterdam who writes for Net Art Review). Here is some info on the artists:
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Sherry Miller Hocking is the Assistant Director of the Experimental Television Center. The Center acheives its' primary mission "to support the creation of work using new electronic media technologies, by providing space and time to artists for personal, self-directed creative investigations" through its' residency program.

Peter Luining builds artware and interactive pieces which engage with art historical traditions and function as playful tools for the performance of live audio-visual media. As the founder of L-Foundation and ctrlaltdel.org, he has distributed his artwares, click environments, soundengines and audio-visual instruments since 1995.
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For more information and to read the interviews, please visit the website.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here is a great opportunity for up and coming new media artists:

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INTERVENTIONS 2003 is a time-based art exhibition which will take place at George Mason University.

It focuses on international, time-based artwork from graduate art students and young upcoming artists, to be shown in non-traditional spaces. In Fall 2003 a number of such works will be selected and shown around the George Mason campus. As part of this event there will also be panel discussions around topics such as alternative curatorial practice and technology in art.

This effort is intended to widen the knowledge and interest of art, as well as to initiate more interaction within the university art community.

Please visit us at beauty.gmu.edu/interventions/
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:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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New at Turbulence: "Au bord du fleuve" by Joseph Lefèvre and Martine Koutnouyan

Press release:
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"Au bord du fleuve" is a poetic portrayal of the St. Lawrence River. The site replicates the river's ambient calmness and serenity. Users embark on a journey that begins with an interface of aquatic images and continues with the exploration and discovery of animated 'mosaics': panoramic views, sailors' songs and seagulls' cries; and animated shorts. "We hope that the images and sounds, imbued with realism as well as with the imaginary, will translate the feeling of freedom that inspired us throughout the creation of this project.

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:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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"The Bot (one infesting the horse)" by Amy Alexander, is one of a series of net.art projects using the idea of internet bots or spiders to crawl through text based files creating a "narrative of the web".

The word "Bot" an abriebiation of "Robot" and also "bot - the larva of a botfly; especially : one infesting the horse" (hence the title of the project), is a combination of search engine technology and due to the interpretative visual and sound elements which search engines usually don't have, a web browser. A search term is entered as a starting point and the bot performs a search for urls containing that search term. Next the bot selects a page and uses some text on the page to display by both scrolling it ether horizontally or vertically across the screen and speaking the text.

The bot is a project which without the database that is the internet and user interaction would not exist because alone it has no content. A project that could only exist on the internet, this is about the journey taken and the text compiled as a result of that journey.

Certainly creating a unique documentation of the path traversed, the bot addresses the question of what is a narrative in a database medium. How do we reconcile the database and narrative, which by definition is "a continuous account of the particulars of an event or transaction; a story" and classically is assumed to progress in an ordered pattern as defined by an human author? Here the author is a machine, a program and the patterns it follows are literal with no capability for the abstract. Yet its programming, its rules, were defined by a human author as an open set of patterns. So the machine author has a human author and then again we have'nt even begun to consider the user who in the instant of clicking search becomes an author!
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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