:: Saturday, December 13, 2003 ::

"After receiving more than 32,000 messages from all over the world", The Helloworld Project ended last night (12/12/03) "with the projection of messages on the UN building in New York".

Allowing anyone with access to the internet or a mobile phone to broadcast messages, statements, personal, political or otherwise in 'real' space. The Helloworld Project is a new type of project entitled a 'real space' interface, named and created by Swiss digital media artist Johannes Gees.

Making reference to the standard testing of programming output in computing, the "hello world" of the title is a call sign from the virtual. Written into code by the programmer yet visualised by the program itself it signifies a desire to be spoken to by unknown voices from unknown places. The combination of messages from beyond and the projection of these onto landscapes combines the places of our imagination, our desired and yearned for places, the virtual, with those of our 'reality', our often indesirable tangible spaces, the 'real'.

"Since the Helloworld Project is taking place in the context of the UN World Summit on the Information Society, Johannes Gees sought locations" to project the work "in the east, west, south and north. The aim was to highlight the digital divide", the divide created by technology in the 'real' facilitating access to the 'virtual'.

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...

Net art gallery Artcart yesterday launched a new work by French artist, theorist, curator Valery Grancher called "Google Pataphisics". The work is about a new way how to use search engines, and with this work it aims at the mother of all searchengines Google. Or to say with part of the press release: "We can perceive that the search engines are not dealing with industry value or financial value but with flux and semantic network. They are defining a new kind of topos ! We may ask ourself what is language when it is a financial value ? How are evolving the words and the constitutive linguistic item? How concept may evolve ? No narration may be born from this process."
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
...

Genomixer, a project by Stanza, presents a set of abstract interfaces based on the artist's DNA. Stanza worked with a medical lab to get his DNA profiled from a sample of his blood; the DNA was then formatted into a set of letters which he used to create raw texts and bitmaps from which the current project was created, presenting images and sound. The user can interact with each section of the web project to "alter the DNA."

The fact that Stanza developed a project based on his own DNA profile follows the art tradition of portraiture; however, such tradition is taken a bit further here, because we have raw material (DNA) quickly becoming politicized through its recontextualization as an online project. Ephemerality becomes a key point as the project encourages the user to create her own version of DNA. This information is then presented as beautiful abstractions which unless one is aware of its contextualization, would simply be pretty material to look at. And so we are reminded of the dichotomy of the beautiful meaning something only when it is understood in a bigger context vs. it attaining meaning according to itself. The smokescreen between the beautiful and the political is then apparent, and makes the viewer consider how even the most formal of practices is dependent on a specific ideology -- one that would point to the source material--the form of presentation itself. In Genomixer, however, we have formalism pointing back at the creative individual as its validating source. The only downside may be that the creative process appears systematic and a bit too abstract at times. Also, unexpectedly, a universalized reinforcement of the artist as "genius" can be read -- a proposition often frowned upon, but here, somehow, it actually slips in-between disapproval and reaffirmation of the cultural forces constantly haunting the artistic drive.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

LA Freewaves 2004 is coming, gear up:
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OPEN CALL
How Can YOU Resist?:

LA Freewaves 9th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts
Accepting applications beginning January 1, 2004.
Postmark Deadline: February 15, 2004.

The month-long showcase will present experimental media art from around the world in culturally distinct downtown Los Angeles venues in November 2004. Media art works include experimental video and film (narrative, documentary, art, animation, etc.), CD-ROMs, DVDs, websites, multimedia performances and installations, video billboards, youth media, community media activities and others. Works from the festival will also appear on public television, cable stations and video-streamed on the Internet. Competitive selection process will be conducted by a group of international and local curators with diverse specialties and backgrounds. Notification of acceptance is in July 2004. Artist payments will be $100-300 for selected works. See www.freewaves.org for more information.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

A great opportunity for new media freaks:
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Extended application deadline until January 2st 2004

ARANEUM
Art, Science and Technology Award
Awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCYT)

www.araneum.es

The Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology announces its 1st Science, Art and Technology Award ARANEUM, a collaboration with the ARCO Foundation.

Applications will be accepted in the following two fields: ³Internet-related artwork² and ³Research project on Internet creativity.² The proposals selected for the ³Internet-related artwork² category will receive 20,000.00 Euros; the selected ³Research project on Internet creativity² will receive 10,000.00 for its development.

The aplication dead line has been extended until January 2st 2004, 05:00 pm.
GMT+1.

The jury, composed of José Luis Brea, Rachel Greene, Olia Lialina will be presided by Mr. Jorge Pérez Mart?nez who is currently the Director General for the Development of the Information Society of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. Among other things, he is also the spokesperson for the Interregional Commission of Cooperation for Development.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

The Computerfinearts net art collection will from now on permanently be hosted by The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. I pasted to whole agreement below so everyone can see on what terms the net art works went into The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art:

Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
Cornell University Library

The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York, hereby agrees to serve as the permanent repository of the collection of internet art owned by computerfinearts under the supervision of Doron Golan.

computerfinearts will deposit in The Rose Goldsen Archive copies of internet artworks contained in its collection for the sake of preservation, evaluation, and exhibition in the Archive.

The Cornell Library will catalog, house, and preserve these materials, and make them available for viewing by Cornell students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other members of the public upon request. Materials will be cataloged in Cornell's online catalog and in other national bibliographic utilities under the name of the artist, as well as under the name of computerfinearts. The Rose Goldsen Archive agrees to accept directly from computerfinearts any updates of the works sent by the artists to computerfinearts.

computerfinearts and the individual artists, per their purchase or contribution agreement, will retain full copyright to these materials, including the right to disseminate, update, and/or publish other copies of these works in other forms and venues.

computerfinearts agrees to permit the Cornell Library to copy these materials for archival, educational, and exhibitional purposes internal to the Goldsen Archive or for the purposes of forwarding Cornell's teaching mission. No exhibition or dissemination of the materials outside the purposes described above shall take place without prior consultation and permission of computerfinearts and the exhibited artists.

If, as a result of unforeseen occurrences, were materials or data housed in the Goldsen Archive to be damaged, lost, and/or corrupted, computerfinearts agrees to absolve Cornell University Library of any liability.

:: Peter Luining [+] ::
...

Turbulence has a new line up of commisioned artists for next year. Here is the list:
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 8, 2003
2004 Turbulence Commissions Schedule
turbulence.org/upnext.html

Turbulence is pleased to announce its 2004 Commissions schedule:

Artists are: Paul Catanese; David Crawford; Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte, and Brooke Singer; Doron Golan; Peter Horvath; iKatun (Jim Bailey, Kanarinka, Pirun, and Yori Sakakura); Shannon Kennedy; Lewis LaCook; Diane Ludin; Victor Liu; M. Takeo Magruder; Jillian Mcdonald; MTAA; Andrea Polli; Harris Skibell; Yoshi Sodeoka; Noah Wardrip-Fruin, with David Durand, Elaine Froehlich and Brion Moss.

These commissions were made possible with funds from The Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs.

ABOUT TURBULENCE'S COMMISSIONING PROCESS

To succeed in our fundraising efforts, we conform to the individual criteria of each foundation to which we apply.

1. Proposals accepted year round: some foundations require that we include pre-selected artist's proposals in the applications we make to them. To be considered for these year round commissions, please see our guidelines @ http://turbulence.org/guidelines.html As proposals are received, they are sent to select members of the net.art community who arrive at a consensus about which projects to support. Strong proposals are kept on file to be included in new applications for funds.

2. Competitions: other commissions are awarded by panels of jurors convened for specific competitions. These competitions are announced to our subscribers and posted to numerous other listserves. We also post the guidelines on the Turbulence web site. To insure that you receive announcements, please go to http://turbulence.org and click on
Subscribe in the table of contents.

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:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

Public Alley 818 is a new series of location based performances by kanarinka of "Boston-based performance-multimedia-installation collective" ikatun.

These events to take place from December 2003 to February 2004, will be defined by net users in virtual places and performed in 'real' space in and around public alley 818 in Boston, MA, USA between Symphony Road and Westland Avenue.

Purposefully choosing a nondescript location that has no name but number. Kanarinka reminds us that the spaces we dictate the content and flux of the series of works from is also describable as a number. Our virtual place has a coordinate not "used to determine the position of a point, line, curve, or plane in a space of a given dimension with respect to a system of lines or other fixed references" but instead to describe locality with regards to content and context while the 'real' performance space's location becomes almost irrelevant, abstracted or virtual.

Asking "what is outside your door? how do you connect the whole entire world to one specific space?", the taking of mundane urban space and allowing virtual place to dictate the events that will occur there transforms and shapes the space to both mythicize and distribute it as a place that has inescapable 'real' location yet virtual significance.

editor's note: see call for participation posted on Thu Dec 04, 04:02:11 AM.

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...

Here are the latest additions to the New Media Fix:

E-Barcelona.org takes off where e-valencia.org left off. Apparently e-valencia was recently shut-down. The valencia URL still presents information, however, so take advantage of both resources while they last.

Recently the 2003 net art links resource seems to be broken. But do not worry, Net Art Review comes to the rescue by providing a new resource with most of the links: Electrokin.com.

Artleaf.net is a full-on dynamic resource offering forums and the latest announcements on new media.

A Story of Net Art is long over due to become part of our New Media Fix. It is finally here, enjoy.

The recommended fix of the week is Artfutura.org
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

Vectorial Elevation is filling the night sky once more, this time at the Place Bellecour in the heart of Lyon, France for the Fête des Lumières, an annual festival, from the 3rd to 10th of December, 2003.

Previously seen in Mexico city, Mexico and Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain, Vectorial Elevation is an online participatory work that "allows you to design huge light sculptures with 18 robotic searchlights located around the square. A web page is made for each participant with photos of their design from four webcams." The installation gives control to anyone, anywhere (telepresence) allowing web users to control 'real' spaces at the click of their mouse. For anyone close to Lyon both Vectorial Elevation and the Fête des Lumières are well worth the venture out this cold December.

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...