:: Saturday, June 19, 2004 ::

Disciplines such as Architecture and Urban Planning are increasingly pervasive in digital media and net art: we constantly read terms associated with these fields in calls for papers, graduate studies programs, and research articles. The reasons may be ontological - after all it all comes down to dealing with "spaces" - but there may also be some "global" reasons... as reactions to globalization tend to focus on the city as more than a space but rather a "place" with a cultural identity.

Several institutes around the world have taken the city as the stage for their design/performance actions. The Van Allen Institute is such a case: based in NY, its purpose is to "improve the design of the public realm" as quoted in their web site
If you work with installations for public spaces (or want to...), the Institute has a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) that may interest you. The aim of this RFEI is to produce a "multi-disciplinary design for a prototypical Interactive Public Installation for Civic Exchange". The site is located in lower Manhattan - Battery Park City is the first location, while there may be additional sites.

Responses are due by 5 pm, on July 1st, 2004 (not a postmark date). Check their site for more information.

In Germany, a Cultural Foundation with similar objective is the Kulturstiftung Des Bundes. It is worth a closer look This Foundation promotes the "Art and the City" programme, which "deals with the role of the city as the central motif and preferred transmission site of contemporary art".



:: ana boa-ventura [+] ::
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If "the medium is message" then the web may be the extension of such message (only because it is an allegorical medium--a medium defined as meta, or simply meta-medium)... Case in point is concrete poetry as part of "new media" practice. Browse through the links below to entertain what I mean:

Consider Concrete poetry as a global phenomenon becoming more accessible through the web at Ubuweb, or consider it with a more or less historical perspective at vispo.com, then entertain the concrete merging with the hyper within the broader term hyper-text poetry, and then reconsider its new life as a hybrid online practice at webartery. But when you are ready to call it something new, consider the term "new media poetry;" when labels become meaningless, however, simply visit more links: New Media Poetry, e-poetry, analog & new media, electronic book review, and a more traditional resource is always essential: Links to Modern and Contemporary Poetry Resources
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Net Art Review would like to welcome three new contributing writers, they are Daniele Balit, writing from Italy; Nicholas Economos, writing from upstate New York; and Ana Valdés, writing from Sweden. Welcome! Visit the netKru page to learn more about them and other contributing writers.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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It has been two days since the Steve Kurtz hearings took place. No definite news on the outcome, but there is an update in the CAE Defense Fund website, which is quoted below for convenience:

Update June 17th, 2004:
The results of Tuesday's grand jury hearing are still not officially known. However, the FBI continues to subpoena witnesses for further grand jury hearings continuing at least until June 29th. The ninth person subpoenaed, Julie Perini, is a student of Steve Kurtz at UB.

The protest was a success with over 200 people coming together in support of Steve and everyone who has been subpoenaed. Reporters from The Buffalo News (follow up) and several local television stations covered the event. Articles in New Scientist, The Scientist and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette were published the day of the grand jury hearings.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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A reminder to our readers of the Steve Kurtz case. Today is the day of the Grand Jury hearing. Visit the CAE Defense Fund website for the latest updates.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here are some additions to the New Media Fix:

From our recents posts on gaming, Ludologica and Ludology; for new media news at large the already well-known but essential Wired News; For new media happenings, a new resource in Spanish that seems quite promising Arte Digital en Espanol; and a URL update on the resouce formerly known as Journal now offically called Scale.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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I have found a soundtrack for the games discussion that was going on: it is called depeche mode megamix, a work by Nullsleep, a young artist from the States, who is known to be the best gameboy musician around. Fifteen years after the first appearance of the Gameboy in 1989, electronic musicians and artists are now turning all sorts of 8bit computers into audio/video aesthetical tools. There is much to listen to from the web site of 8bit peoples : a collective co-founded in 1999 by Nullsleep himself: including from the intimate tunes of Self Portrait, by Twighlght Electric Meanings to the “electrochip madness” of Mesu Kasumai...
Above all, you can feel the freshness and enthusiasm of a young experimental community.

Daniele Balit
:: Daniele Balit [+] ::
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Day to day data are making a call for proposals from professional artists working in any medium for an exhibition of artists who collect, list, database and absurdly analyse the data of everyday life. While not specifically a new media exhibition the opportunities here to those working in new mew media should be obvious.

"Selected artists will be required to meet for two day-long workshops in Nottingham on 23 & 24 August 2004 to discuss ideas and suitable works for the exhibition. Artists will receive a fee of £300 (inclusive) for attending these workshops. The exhibition will launch early 2005."

Submissions should include:
- Proposal for new work to be exhibited (max 500 words)
- Brief CV
- Supporting material (DVD, VHS, URL, CD-ROM, Slides)
- SAE for return of materials

Deadline for applications is 2nd July 2004. For more information please see the site.

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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Olia Lialina posted a remarkable interview with Webby Awards People's Voice Winner Dragan Espenschied on the nettime mailinglist. The interview sheds some light on how the organization of this prestigious award works:
"dragan: i never got any congratulation letter from the webby awards. i was also not informed that my work was nominated.
olia: this is not nice. you have to pay 50$ to submit your applications, and they don't even inform or congratulate you.
dragan: i have not applied and have not paid."

click here to read the whole interview

:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Any on or offline project which explores different cultures, languages, and people is sure to almost always win my heart. As an American who has been fortunate to travel, volunteer, and live abroad I often have worked hard to counter the negative stereotype people tend to have of us ‘Yanks either due to our politicians, corporations, a bad movie they saw, or a loud tourist encountered. I’ve often been jealous of people from other countries because I tend to get the impression from my country and others that it’s the USA and EVERYONE ELSE. How wonderful it would be to fit in with EVERYONE ELSE and be a part of the world.

Bzzzpeek by Agatha Jacquillat and Tomi Vollauschek, is an online project that truly is about THE WORLD. In this project we are able to click on an animal or vehicle. We are then presented with up to seventeen representations of our choice, made different by their various flags representing their language or country. So by clicking on a police car for example, we hear that the English one makes a “woo woo,” the German car goes “ta tu tah tah,ta tu tah tah,’ the South Korean car says “bee bo bee bo,” and the Pakistani car goes “nee no nee no.”

This project explores the similarity of children everywhere imitating and mimicking the world around them, and celebrates the differences in which different cultures interpret the audible world. Because most of the sounds have been contributed by 2-7 year-olds, who are native speakers of their respective languages, there is an atmosphere of innocence and multiculturalism. –Globalization in a good way…

This project also takes submissions and offers to add languages not yet represented.
Even though the American police cars are not represented (they go “weeeeeer weeeer” unlike Great Britain’s “woo woo,” ) I will happily just think of myself under the category of “English Speaker” and enjoy this growing and developing project that represents THE WORLD.

:: Kristen Palana [+] ::
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