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Artist-driven Curating and How it Could Help Galvanize a Screendance Movement

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse on July 24, 2008 at 12:14am

At the Screendance conference at ADF two weeks ago, I presented a paper that put forth an argument for the value of "artist-driven" curating in developing and galvanizing an art form. I wanted to propose a way of raising awareness about screendance among dance communities that would help dancers to feel like they can enter this art form that is new to them with a set of useable skills and knowledge already in place.Click here to read the full article on Move the Frame.

boDig08: call for installations

Posted by aylin kalem on July 23, 2008 at 7:23pm

Call for InstallationsboDig 08 – “ara-yüz(süz)”Istanbul, 15-25 September 2008Multidisciplinary artistic creation platform boDig is organizing a series of events called “boDig 08” on “bodies & technologies” within the frame of the International Project “Absent Interfaces Lab”. The partners include L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà/Girona) www.lanimal.org and Centre for Drama Art (Zagreb) www.cdu.hrboDig 08 includes stage performances, installations, artists’ labs, workshops, public meetings and club events around live arts and new media technologies. boDig focuses on innovative and experimental works without restricting the medium, and this year encourages the applying artists to approach the theme of “absent interfaces” in their installation works. The deadline for artists to apply with their installation works is August 15th. The selection committee will give priority to artworks that use an intellectual and critical approach to the embodiment of current technologies. For more info and application form: http://www.bodig.org/bodig08/bodig_08_eng/application.htmlSelection CommitteeDr. Bernhard Serexhe (Head Curator, ZKM- Media Museum)Philippe Baudelot (Multimedia Consultant)Defne Ayas (Curator, PERFORMA)Derya Demir (Art On Stage)Aylin Kalem (boDig)About boDigboDig is an Istanbul based contemporary arts association founded in 2007, focusing mainly on the issues of the body in contemporary arts and digital culture. Its artistic understanding has a multidisciplinary scope, bringing a variety of fields together, like dance, performance, visual arts, design, architecture, new media, engineering and medicine, in order to bring forth a reflection and artistic creation around the issues of the body in its contemporary and technological context.www.bodig.org

TRENCH

Posted by CreationEditor on July 21, 2008 at 2:40pm

Hello,my video TRENCH is currently in the final round of the Virgin Media Shorts...you maybe received this post before but please watch, vote for my video again and forward it!http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/film/1612819705SHORT ABOUT THE VIDEO:Trench – war made on a £30 budgetEdinburgh-based filmmaker Sabine Klaus shows how to get a cinematic look on a zero budget. In April 2008 she teamed up with dance duo Company Chameleon to produce the promo ‘Trench’ for their upcoming show ‘Rites’.The slightly abstract story is performed by Anthony Missen and Kevin Turner who portray two young soldiers going to war in an unknown land. Suddenly they are confronted with the real terror of bombs and living in a daily angst of getting shot. Those extreme emotional situations bring them closer together as friends. Until one of them realises the senselessness in the suffering while the other one seeks the moment of glory.After studio rehearsals, storyboarding and a rekkie, the trailer-style video was filmed outside Penicuik at night and the budget was spent on torches, petrol and energy bars. Director of Photography and Editor Klaus shoot the entire project on a Canon HV20 and then finalised it in Final Cut Pro with special effects added in from After Effects.Shooting at night-time generated an accentuated look while the hand-held torches enhanced the performers’ movements. The overlaid footage creates confusing parallel scenarios as well as reflecting the protagonists lost sense of space and emotional disorientation. The sound produced by Al Lorraine mirrors the actions; one soldier is building a human rifle out of his comrade whilst a gun being put together is audible.Meanwhile the 4-minute video premiered at the IAM-Digital Event and a short version of Trench is currently broadcasted on Virgin Media Shorts .More information can be found on Sabine Klaus’ website www.creationeditor.co.uk .Thank you very much for votingSabine Klauswww.creationeditor.co.ukinfo@creationeditor.co.uk

Full Body (milk) Scanning @ Eyebeam, NY

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on July 19, 2008 at 10:30pm

inkscanner @ eyebeam Mixer from Friedrich Kirschner on Vimeo. The technique in Your Tube:

Friedrich Kirschner's page

Report on Screendance:State of the Art 2 at ADF

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse on July 18, 2008 at 1:55pm

Linda Sabo (back of her head), Vicky Bloor, and Steph Wright at the Screendance conference.photo: American Dance Festival 2008/Sara D. DavisI'm finally home after several weeks on the road, crossing the country and then heading south for the second Screendance: State of the Art conference at the American Dance Festival. The topic for this year's conference was CURATING THE PRACTICE/CURATING AS PRACTICE. There were about 20 registered participants, coming from all over the US and Europe, and we were a good mix of artist/makers, teacher/scholars, and curators. While some of the old topics came up (like what is the definition of screendance?) the presence of the over-arching theme of curating helped guide many of the discussions into new territory, and keep us on topic.Douglas Rosenberg, a filmmaker, scholar, and organizer of the conference started off the proceedings with a lecture about the history of curating as it arose out of the visual arts field and how this practice has gradually slipped by the wayside with the rise of the festival model in screendance. He spoke about the original premise of curating in the art world as a means of creating meaning by grouping different works of art together. This combination of art works creates a meta-narrative between the pieces and can serve to support a thesis about the art put forth by the curator. In this way curating can help shape new ideas in art.I appreciated learning about how curating differs from "programming", which is generally how dance film festivals work. For a long time I've felt dissatisfied by the programs at festivals, particularly the shorts programs, because they can be such a grab bag of films that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Usually these programs are billed as the "best" new dance films of the year, with the dubious value judgment of "best" being the only unifying theme. With no other underlying meaning to connect the films together, I as a viewer often find myself feeling disappointed when the films fall short of my expectations of what "the best" dance film should be. I leave most screenings feeling like the vast majority of screendance is boring and uninspired, when in reality, I just didn't have enough context to view them under.Helping to illustrate this difference between curating and programming, there were several curated screenings during the conference as well as screenings that were part of the "Dancing for the Camera" festival. One of these curated programs was put together by Claudia Kappenberg, an artist and scholar from the University of Brighton and was entitled "Paradoxical Bodies." In her program notes Kappenberg described "Paradoxical Bodies" as seeking "to address the peculiar premise of real bodies on screen, in itself a paradoxical proposition, which mixes and purposefully confounds mental states and actual physical existence." With this introduction we watched seven experimental films that were often oblique and seemed to float in the timeless space of ritual. The program included ELEMENT (1973) by Amy Greenfield, HWRGAN (BY THE LATE HOUR) (2006) by Simon Whitehead, K (1989) by Jayne Parker, THE NIGHTINGALE (2003) by Grace Ndiritu, SAND LITTLE SAND (2006) by Becky Edmunds, IT IS ACHING LIKE BIRDS by Lucy Baldwin, and SPRUE (2004) by The 5 Andrews. Most of these films have never been shown in dance film festivals before, either because they are not generally considered "dance", or they are not the typical show pieces that would past muster with a festival's judging panel. Despite their challenging and experimental nature, I was captivated by this program. After Kappenberg's introductory statements I was prepared to grapple with the paradoxes, ambivalence, and alternative notions of the body put forth in these films, and I was freed from having to compare them to my usual standards of what's "good" and "bad". Instead, I appreciated them for what they each said to me within the framework of the program's topic.In contrast to Kappenberg's curated program, Sini Haapalinna, a freelance artist from Finland, presented a program of shorts from her first curation for the Finnish dance film festival "Beyond the Lens" which sought to show a snapshot of "the state of the art" of Finnish screendance. This was a good example of the usual festival model of programming, which culls work from an open call for entries, and then seeks to show the best ones of the group. While it was probably meaningful for Finnish audiences to see what work is being made in their own country, for an international group of screendance experts gathered in North Carolina, the program seemed jumbled and out of context. The works were all over the map in terms of style, production value, content, and intention. The result was a muddy program that had some nice isolated moments, but was somehow lesser than the sum of its parts. While Haapalinna probably didn't get the reaction she was hoping for from the conference attendants, it was actually really useful and informative for us to see this kind of program in light of the curation model Rosenberg had just presented. Finally we were able to critically respond to the festival model of programming, and articulate about why it isn't as effective as it could be at promoting and advancing screendance to the public.In my next couple of posts, I'll talk about my presentation on "artist-driven" curating, and summarize some of the other discussions that went on at the conference including a theory for mapping screendance by Kappenberg, how a curator's role is always political by Gita Wigro, and a modified Venn diagram for curators of screendance proposed by Martha Curtis.To be continued!

Open Source Dances: How this new Cultural Economy will affect dance industries?

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on July 16, 2008 at 7:00pm

Ars Electronica announced the festival for next september with a very interesting and provocative formulation: A New Cultural Economy: The Limits of Intellectual Property. The age of copyright and intellectual property has reached its expiration date. A development that already manifested itself in the technical fundamentals of the Internet has reared its head in the actual practices of a young generation of users and is bringing forth a new economy of sharing and open access. With this provocative formulation, Ars Electronica is placing one of the core issues of modern knowledge-based society at the focal point of this year's festival program. What’s at stake: the value of intellectual property, freedom of information and copyright protection, big profit-making opportunities and the vision of an open knowledge-based society that seeks to build its new economy on the basis of creativity and innovation. The crux of the matter is that we still lack practical, workable rules and regulations governing this new reality and—of no small importance—that the task of coming up with them ought not to be left up to lawyers and MBAs alone. After all, regardless of the perspective from which one approaches this issue—that of the Internet pirates, the inventors of a new information commons, the pioneers of a sharing economy or the apologists of the creative industries—one thing remains true: if knowledge and content actually are to be the new capital of postindustrial society, then they have to circulate and be accessible by all.

Michael Una performing at SYNC Fest 08

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on July 16, 2008 at 6:00pm

Michael Una performing at SYNC Fest 08 from Michael Una on Vimeo. From his Vimeo account: Michael Una (http://www.una-love.com/muna) of Chicago investigates how vibrating waves of energy and human consciousness interact. He utilizes traditional musical instruments, handbuilt analog electronics, video processes, digital synthesis, and repurposed objects to build harmonic wave patterns. These patterns are projected into physical space, creating a unique and temporary audiophysical experience.

Rythmn & Feel Performance

Posted by Andrea "budafly" Rodriguez on July 15, 2008 at 5:00pm

Greetings!I am performing in NEW YORK CITY. If you are in the area please come and check out the show. I recently participated in a two-week intensive workshop on ISADORA with TROIKA RANCH.I will be showing a new workx that was conceived at TROIKA RANCH in which I attach the Wiimote to my body and use sound and music to initiate agency as a dancer controlling my own rhythm.Hope you can come. besos, budafly

Radiohead released data for music video with Creative Commons License!

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on July 15, 2008 at 6:00am

Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows". No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes. Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data. See details in Google Code: http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

Dance Party in a Box: Hilarious and effective!

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on July 14, 2008 at 11:00pm

International Dance Party! The full length video of this crazy and funny party machine! from Niklas Roy on Vimeo. About the artists: Adad Hannah and Niklas Roy Montreal based video artist Adad Hannah and Berlin based machine artist Niklas Roy met each other for the first time in Wroclaw, Poland in 2005, where they decided over a beer to build this machine together. After quite a time of planning and discussing the project's details, Roy prepared the hardware parts and the machine's software in his workshop in Berlin, while Hannah organized the funding for the project. In October 2007, both met again in Hannah's studio in Montreal to assemble the device within one month. David Cheong aka Baddd Spellah joined them both in late 2007 to produce the generative music which booms out of the IDP. About the machine The interactive machine International Dance Party is a complete plug 'n' play party in a box. The machine comes as a large, non-suspicious looking flightcase. Internally, it is equipped with cutting edge radar sensing technology, an ear blasting state of the art 600W sound system, tons of psychedelic light and laser effects, and even a professional grade fog machine. Read the whole post here: http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=76964_0_23_0_C

Research 2008

Posted by CreationEditor on July 11, 2008 at 12:35pm

- For nearly ten years my work and research has increasingly revolved and dealt with the meaning of movement through video art, installations and live performance. I am working on my personal research project called ‘Performance Practice X’ which investigates into the effects of visual stimuli through vision onto body and then through the body onto an emotional level. My interest particularly focuses on how to increase participation and experience of the audience. ‘Performance Practice X’ is split into five key subject that concentrate on:1. metakinesis (muscular empathy): interactive video installation (e.g. art work ‘Projector Dancers’ using the software G-Vision to create interaction between video and viewer, 2007)2. kinesphere (body in space): enclosed video installations (e.g. art work ‘FEEL’ re-created womb-like scenario in a cushioned box with built-in loud-speakers and video, 2005)3. hypnotical movements: future research focus (2009/2010)4. composition (SHAPE): psychological effects of body geometry (current research focus, 2008)5. live: direct physical interaction through performance art (e.g. The State of Play performances physically incorporate the audience, 2007)My research and work constantly inspire each other, professionally and artistically. Each of the five themes of Performance Practice X is re-used in my working practice and blended together. The goal is to create a concise and accessible concept of all five that can be of benefit to the presentation of art and commercial video editing because it supports the understanding and incorporation of the viewer.more on www.creationeditor.co.uk

Are SecondLife Avatars, 3D Animations and Motion Capture Ready for Dancers?

Posted by Doug Fox on July 8, 2008 at 12:23pm

Here's a post I wrote this morning in my Kinetic Interface blog. I look forward to comments, especially from those who have worked with motion capture and 3D animation.Summary: There are a number of efforts underway to make the 3D animated human form more lifelike. These developments are taking place both in virtual worlds such as SecondLife and with 3D animations initiated through motion capture systems. The end result will be the creation of personally-identifiable animations that move and act as their real-world counterparts.These advances in 3D animation coupled with improved and less expensive capture technologies and animation software will, I believe, lead to large numbers of dancers experimenting with virtual worlds and different approaches to creating more realistic animations. Quality dance animations offer new avenues for creativity, marketing, studying choreography, revenue generation and the re-staging historical dance works. But the question remains how long it will take before the tools and software will be realistically ready for the dance community.In this post, I cover:* The Avatar Puppeteering project from Second Life* Hands Free 3D's movement-based approach for controlling avatars* The Laban Motion Capture Project at NYU* The PhaseSpace active marker optical motional capture system* Facial capture from Mova[Read post...]

Better than Reality continues…

Posted by V2_ on July 7, 2008 at 5:27pm

Better than Reality is a project in which artistic use of augmented reality is explored, the project consists of a series of residencies this summer and workshops and presentations in the fall/winter of 2008. The three artists in residence explore various sub topics: Marnix de Nijs (NL) will continue his Exercise in Immersion 4 project, Boris Debackere (BE) researches spatial sound and Jonas Hielscher (DE) will work on 3D and visual aspects of augmented reality. In the fall of 2008 a series of workshops will be given, open to (art) students, artists and other professionals who are interested in artistic use of augmented reality. A large public presentation will conclude the project in the winter of 2008.

Augmented Reality is an umbrella term for various techniques that make it possible to add virtual elements to the physical world, for example overlayed visuals or spatialized sounds. The technologies needed to create such environments are however still very experimental and therefore often inaccessible to artists. To enable more artists to create augmented reality artworks, V2_Lab has developed a software/hardware platform called VGE (V2_ Game Engine), based on Ogre3D, OpenAL, Blender, ultrasound positioning and SIOS (Sensor Input/Output System developed at V2_Lab). The user wears a set of stereo video displays that show a mix of 3D visuals and real world video, from a head mounted stereo camera. The position in space and orientation of the head are tracked, and the geometry of the real space is modelled in the virtual space. This makes it possible to fix the virtual world relative to the real world, e.g. a virtual object can disappear behind a real wall. Our aim is to extend VGE into an accessible authoring environment for augmented reality environments.for more information about the Better than Reality project, please contact Jan Misker at jan@v2.nlBetter than Reality is supported by the Mondriaan Foundation and MultimediaN

Gideon Obarzanek got the Cinedans 2008 Jury's award and the public award!

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on July 6, 2008 at 4:00pm

Chunky Move, got the two awards at the Cinedans 2008 festival in Amsterdam. His piece called "Dance Like Your Old Man" is remarkably clever, full of heart and disarming in its simplicity and conceptual strength. He collapsed documentary, feature and dance film in the scenes in which six women imitate their dads' dancing and make them present in our imagination. These unseen men come to life through the dances and reflections of their children.

Congratulations Chunky Movers!

Find more videos like this on dance-tech.net

MAX Month 1 - An Analogue Style Stequencer

Posted by Kenneth Harte on July 3, 2008 at 9:38pm

Hello,I availed of the fantastic DANCE-TECH.NET promotion and got MAX/MSP/JITTER at the student discount rate of €250... (thank you very much Marlon) - One of the conditions is that I write a blog report of my experiences with MAX/MSP/JITTER at least once a month for 6 months.....So far MAX is cool. I have a reasonable knowledge of MIDI and analogue gear. I have a good knowledge of synthesis in general, I have used other modular software environments like Synthedit and I have a small analogue modular synth. So many of the general concepts involved in MAX are not new to me. The names of the modules themselves can be quite new to me. Words like Borax, Funnel, ZLJoin, Coll don't mean much to me. Words like counter, seq, random, velocity 0... these words are OK for me.Right now I am interested in MAX as a control for my analogue gear, as a way to record and process live audio, and as experimenting box for doing live electronic sound. I am not as interested in building synths. I don't want to build the softsynth to rule them all. The softsynth that is sooo powerful and has soooo many options that nobody really knows how to use it. I just want to make little bits of things that I can use in a live and experimental way. I want to use MAX as just another module in my modular synth.MY FIRST BUILDMy first build is an ANALOGUE STYLE SEQUENCER. It's all done with Multisliders which are variable between 2 and 64 steps, the multisliders repeat the fader positions if I jump from 8 to 16 steps, it sends MIDICLOCK OUT. There are 3 sequencers PITCH/GATE ON-OFF/CV1 - this matches my Kenton Pro-Solo MIDI to CV converter. The sequencers can be independently stepped in 1 of 3 ways - Forward/Backward/Random. Also the faders positions of all 3 sequencers can be independently randomized. All 3 sequencers are MIDI Controllable (up to 16 steps) which matches nicely with my Behringer BCR2000. No filters, envelopes or tones... all that is done on the analogue modular.I learned a lot from building it. One of the things I learned is MAX is very particular when it comes to the flow of numbers. T B F messages are new to me. So it's a little tricky trying to work out the exact order millisecond events have to take. Sometimes I just connect multiple objects without using a trigger message and move them around on the screen to see which position gives me the right output. It's strange hearing the sound change as you move the little object boxes around as if you can hear the numbers calculating away in the background.UGLY MATH vs PRETTY EXPRESSIONRight now I'm very much in the ugly math camp. My patches seem to have lots of - + == < > / and plenty of ???? - I look at the expressions used in some of the patches found on the Cycling 74 forum and wonder where they got them. I can solves the expressions easily. The unfortunate thing is I do not need to solve them (max does that) I need to understand how to formulate expressions. I wish there was a big book that told you how to formulate simple expressions. I get a lot of X ? Y. The ? relates to the function that connects X and Y together. I know X and I know Y but how X becomes Y confuses me. I sit there endlessly dividing and subtracting and multiplying and then I go to the MAX forum and find this incredibly simple expression that does exactly what I want. I look at the expression and it is so simple but I still cannot figure out how they formulated the expression. For me I think it might be ugly maths for a while yet.Anyways that's enough of a rant to justify my first months blog. Month 1 and I finished a randomizable MIDI controllable sequencer that I can use to control my external synth. Not bad....Next month - Live Looping????

New Video

Posted by Sicchio on June 30, 2008 at 7:17pm

Finally got around to putting Sightsonic work on the web...

As the sparks fly upwards...

Posted by Susan Elena on June 29, 2008 at 3:30pm

As the sparks fly upwards... is really on it's way now. The piece, which uses Isadora to bring live dancers and film clips together, had it's first showing last Friday with very positive results.Lights are attached to dancers' bodies which are then tracked in the space by a camera and used by Isadora to trigger specific pre-recorded film clips. The movement is the same for the live and filmed dancers but the order is completely different. Sometimes in unison, sometimes in canon, sometimes completely out of sync.Initial feedback includes comparisons to photographic dark rooms watching images develop, appraisals of the dynamic, fluid movement and claims of 'this is the future of screendance'.View the Isadora output...

Or mobile phone footage from the performance...

This Week at Eyebeam: Interactivos? launch | Summer School | Digital Day Camp

Posted by Eyebeam on June 26, 2008 at 2:30pm

Kudu at MIXER, June 14.
Photo: Christine Taylor.

We come in several original summer flavors

It’s the end of June and Eyebeam is about to burst with interactive activity with the launch of Interactivos?@Eyebeam, Summer School and Digital Day Camp.

You can also catch the tail end of the Dewar’s commission for resident artists show Tourists and Travelers, and get a tour with Charlie the robotic duck to Central Park before we kiss our Spring 2008 residents goodbye, and usher in the Summer 2008 residents.

And for the memories, hot MIXER pics are online now. Summer is finally HERE kids!

This Week at Eyebeam:

June 26: Upgrade! launches Interactivos?

June 27: Interactivos? workshop and public skill-share begins

June 28: Camerautomata Charlie walking tour

July 1: Eyebeam Summer School is in session

July 7: Digital Day Camp begins

New from our Labs:

June – August 10: Sarah Cook presents Broadcast Yourself at Cornerhouse

June: TouchKit API version 2.0 to be released

June: Ayah Bdeir’s littleBits in Berlin

July 5: Anti-Advertising Agency’s OFFFice in Chicago

On the road again: The Eyebeam Roadshow call for Fall 2008 hosts

Eyebeam community news:

HeHe’s Pollstream – Nuage Vert wins 2008 Golden Nica

June 26: Upgrade! launches Interactivos?

Upgrade!
Date: Thursday, June 26, 7PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
Cost: Free

Join us on Thursday, June 26 at 7PM for the Upgrade! New York launch of Interactivos?: Better Than the Real Thing. R&D OpenLab fellow Zach Lieberman will set the scene with a presentation about Interactivos? and its beginnings at Medialab-Prado. Discussions of the real, the fake, and spoofing will ensue, with a presentation by The Yes Men. Informal discussion and a reception will follow. Eyebeam projects on display, that evening, will include BoozBot by Eyebeam senior fellow Jeff Crouse and Eyebeam Production Lab fellow David Jimison.

Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Upgrade! New York has been in existence since April 1999 and partnered with Eyebeam in March 2000. Upgrade! meetings present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists.

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June 27: Interactivos? workshop and public skill-share begins

Miseong Lee, Through Time Tunnel

Interactivos?: Better Than the Real Thing
Dates: June 27 – July 12, 12 – 6PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
Cost: Free
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=interactivos
Stay tuned for the official Interactivos? project website launch!

Join us daily between June 27 and July 12, from 12 – 6PM to witness the transformation of Eyebeam’s main space into a lab for the creation of interactive art projects.

From an open-call, Eyebeam selected nine new projects to be realized by artists from around the world, with the collaboration of Eyebeam resident artists and fellows and over two dozen very skilled artists, engineers, musicians, programmers, designers, and hackers (also selected from an open call). The projects investigate interactivity in all of its forms, and usually feature a mix of hardware tinkering, software coding, and conceptual hacking.

During the intensive two-week Interactivos? workshop, the lab will be open and the public are welcome to drop in, see the artists and collaborators at work, and participate in discussions, critiques, and other social activities investigating interactivity in the context of this year’s Interactivos? theme: the blurry line between the real and the fake. A full schedule of events will follow. On July 12 the lab will be transformed into an exhibition, Double Take, which will be on view through August 9.

Interactivos? was initiated two years ago by the Medialab-Prado program and the Madrid City Council. This is the first time it has taken place outside Spain.

The full list of projects can be found here:
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=interactivos
and an additional Interactivos? project website will be launched during the next two weeks.

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June 28: Camerautomata Charlie walking tour

Date: Saturday, June 28, 2:30PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC

As part of the Tourists and Travelers exhibition and in conjunction with Interactivos?: Better than the real thing, come see how a robotic duck can take better tourist photos than you can. Join the guided tour of tourist sites with the magical image-digesting robotic duck Charlie. The tour will start at Eyebeam at 2:30PM (participants are encouraged to check out the exhibition before setting off!) when they’ll join the artist and the duck as they walk and take public transportation to Bethesda Terrace, Central Park, where they will then wander around the park with other tourists. The tour will take about 2 hours. Participants may also meet the group at the Bethesda Terrace at around 4PM.

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July 1: Eyebeam Summer School is in session

Dates: July 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 19, 22, 6PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=workshops

Eyebeam Summer School is an annual adult workshop series designed to encourage the creative use of technologies for personal expression, activism, communication and community involvement. For more information and to register, email: bookstore AT eyebeam DOT org.

Tuesday, June 1: Illegal Billboard Workshop with IllegalSigns.ca and The Anti-Advertising Agency. Presenter: Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert.

Activists estimate that half the billboards in New York City are illegal. Worth millions in profit, outdoor advertising has become a corporate black market that doesn’t stop short of breaking the law to get your attention. On July 1, the Anti-Advertising Agency and Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca will lead a free workshop on how to identify illegal advertising and get it taken down. Canadian activist group IllegalSigns.ca is responsible for the removal of more than over 100 illegal billboards in Toronto. Rami Tabello will reveal how the billboard industry gets away with breaking the law and will offer suggestions on what New Yorkers can do to stop it locally. To sign up, email: workshop AT antiadvertisingagency DOT com

Thursday, July 3: Eyebeam senior fellows Steve Lambert and Jeff Crouse will lead a workshop on A Basic Sentence Markup Language (ABSML)—an artist statement generator—and a new email spam-inspired project to Keep an Army Recruiter Busy.

Tuesday, July 8: New Tools for Collaborative Practice. Presenters: Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert; Mushon Zer Aviv and Dan Pfeiffer; NOR_/D: Eyebeam Production Lab fellow Addie Wagenknecht with Stefan Hechenberger.

Subversion (SVN): a version control system used to maintain current and historical versions of files for source code, web pages, and/or documentation—like a wiki, but for code.
Shiftspace: an open source layer above any website. It seeks to expand the creative possibilities currently provided through the web, allowing for the creation of online contexts built in and on top of websites.
TouchKit: a modular multitouch development kit with the aim to make multitouch readily available in an open source fashion. Learn the basics of how to set up your own multitouch system, the supplies you need and where to get them. We supply the open source API, schematics, source code and demo applications.

Thursday, July 10: What do artists and audiences think of interactivity? Presenter: Beryl Graham.

As part of Interactivos?, and in preparation for the opening of the exhibition Double Take, we present a lecture on how artists and audiences consider interactivity, led by Professor of New Media, Beryl Graham. Examples of high and low-tech projects in gallery and publically-sited contexts will be shown, and a rousing discussion with artists based on their own experiences will follow. This evening is in conjunction with Eyebeam research partner CRUMB, the resource for curators of new media art, based in the UK.

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July 7: Digital Day Camp begins

Dates: July 7 – 25, Monday – Thursday, 1 – 5PM in the Education Lab
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=ddc

In July 2008, Eyebeam will produce its ninth annual Digital Day Camp (DDC) program for NYC public high school students. DDC is a paid three-week summer intensive program, this year focused on the theme of Better Than the Real Thing—taking off from the Interactivos? workshop series.

Selected participants will explore the tension in distinguishing “real” from “fake”. Among the questions to be addressed: What is authentic in the real of the digital? Can something be so fake that it becomes real? How can hoaxes, recreations, and illusions be used aesthetically and critically? DDC 2008 will investivage this through the creation of interactive art projects, which will join the projects produced during Interactivos? in the exhibition, Double Take, July 29 – August 9. DDC participants will publicly present their final projects on July 29, 7PM at Eyebeam.

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New from our Labs:

Doug Hall, Chip Lord, Jody Procter, The Amarillo News Tapes, 1980, Photo: copyright the artists

June: Sarah Cook presents Broadcast Yourself at Cornerhouse

Broadcast Yourself
Date: June – August 10
Location: Cornerhouse. 70 Oxford St., Manchester, UK
http://www.broadcastyourself.net

Broadcast Yourself is an international group exhibition of artists’ interventions into television and strategies for self-broadcasting from the 1970s to today, co-curated by Kathy Rae Huffman and Eyebeam curatorial fellow Sarah Cook.

Artists include: Active Ingredient (Rachel Jacobs / Matt Watkins); Shaina Anand; Ian Breakwell; Chris Burden; Stan Douglas; Alistair Gentry; Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Adriene Jenik; Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter; Joanie 4 Jackie (Miranda July et al.); Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup; TV swansong (curated by Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie); Bill Viola; Van Gogh TV; 56KTV Bastard Channel (curated by Reinhard Storz / xcult.org).

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June: TouchKit API version 2.0 to be released

The Opensource Multitouch software development kit TouchKit developed in part by Eyebeam Production Lab fellow Addie Wagenknecht will be released as the API version 2.0 in the coming two weeks. Sign up for the mailing list: http://nortd.com/touchkit/list.html to be the first to know when the newest versions and updates go live, and stay on top of upcoming free workshops around the US!

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June: Ayah Bdeir’s littleBits in Berlin

Eyebeam R&D OpenLab fellow Ayah Bdeir is participating in the Friends of Fritzing Summit in Berlin, where she will present an early prototype of littleBits: a library of discrete electronic components pre-assembled in tiny, magnetic circuit boards. The project is in collaboration with Jeff Hoefs: http://www.jeffhoefs.com, and Smart Design: http://www.smartdesignworldwide.com.

http://www.fritzing.org/events/friends-of-fritzing-summit-08
http://www.ayahbdeir.com/littleBits

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July 5: Anti-Advertising Agency’s OFFFice in Chicago

The Foundation For Freedom (Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert) is thrilled to announce our new temporary world headquarters at 6932 North Glenwood Avenue in Chicago. Starting today, and over the next four weeks, we’ll bring our mission and services to all the brilliant Chicagoland advertisers, marketers, and PR people ready to contribute to society in a meaningful way. The oFFFice will be open weekdays from 9AM to 4PM, through July 15 Brazil time, in solidarity with the visionaries who banned outdoor advertising (11AM to 6PM CST). We’re holding several events in our first week to celebrate! Come by and learn more: http://antiadvertisingagency.com/news/offfice-hours

Steve also has drawings at the Haterdorn Museum in New Jersey: http://visitsteve.com/news/hunterdon-museum-the-house-that-sprawl-built/

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On the road again: The Eyebeam Roadshow call for Fall 2008 hosts

The Eyebeam Roadshow is looking for hosts for its Fall 2008 tour. The Eyebeam Roadshow consists of a vibrant series of mini-lectures and skill-share workshops, from the distinguished roster of artists who have worked within Eyebeam’s Labs.

Lecture topics may include: art and technology; copyright; open-source hardware and software; public space; hacking as an art form; how to write the world’s worst artist statement; creating tools for dissent; and other nascent projects developed at Eyebeam.

If you are interested in hosting The Eyebeam Roadshow, please contact the Eyebeam production manager Stephanie Hunt: stephanie AT eyebeam DOT org with possible dates.

More information about the Roadshow visit: http://roadshow.eyebeam.org

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Community news:

HeHe’s Pollstream – Nuage Vert wins 2008 Golden Nica

HeHe (Eyebeam alumni Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) Pollstream – Nuage Vert: http://www.nuagevert.orghttp//www.nuagevert.org transforms clouds into projection surfaces. As such, these indefinable, constantly and chaotically changing products of the condensation of water vapor become media bearing political ideas and messages. Or aestheticized symbols of environmental pollution caused by carbon emissions. Pollstream – Nuage Vert was developed in collaboration with experts in laser technology, computer science, electrical engineering, energy generation and air quality monitoring. Development commenced in 2002 and concluded in February 2008 with a performance in Helsinki that demonstrated how art is capable of encompassing an entire city—its public sphere, its industry and its inhabitants—and unfolding sociopolitical relevance.

Pollstream – Nuage Vert is the recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica 2008 Golden Nica in the Hybrid Art category.

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MICHEL WAISWISZ 1949 - 2008

Posted by Marlon Barrios Solano on June 20, 2008 at 11:30pm

Michel was gentle and always curious about my work when I was an artist in residence at STEIM. He was an inspiration and always willing to have a good conversation. In my last visit to STEIM in March, he was to kind to concede an interview that I have not finished because sound problems. This is the great material that he gave me and I placed it here from Live Electronic Music Festival (LEF) Paying with "The Hands" 11/22/2006 From STEIM message: Michel Waisvisz died peacefully in his home on Wednesday June 18 after fighting the mean cells in his body for the last eight months. He was born on the 8th of July 1949 and lead STEIM as Director for 27 years. He left us on a day when artists and friends from around the world gathered downstairs to perform for a full-house season-closing concert. Michel was a musician, visionary and occasional gardener - touched by sound and forever happy to be surprised. He was the source of an enormous surge of energy that continues to flow through STEIM into the world. We will miss his touch, crackle, inspiration and constant improvisation of the now. You can leave condolences at http://www.steim.org/michel/. MY DEEPEST CONDOLENCES TO MICHEL'S FAMILY AND TO STEIM TEAM

EMPAC announces winners of 2008 DANCE MOViES COMMISSION!

Posted by Hélène Lesterlin on June 20, 2008 at 8:58pm

Dear friends and colleagues,Our second round of DANCE MOViES Commissions are underway!Below is our official announcement email, if you'd like to post the info anywhere or forward it to people...The full press release, which includes the short list, is attached as well. Our website is going to be updated in the next week so don't visit it for more info yet!Best wishes,Hélène LesterlinCurator, EMPAC----THE EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2008 DANCE MOViES COMMISSIONS!EMPAC – the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - announces the four recipients of the 2008 EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission. Chosen from a short list of 28 projects by an international panel of dance-film practitioners, curators and producers, the projects range in format, style and emotional tone: from single-channel video installation to 16mm film, from the spectacular to the surreal.The projects will receive awards ranging from $7,000 to $40,000 and will be premiered in the fall of 2009 at EMPAC.EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission 2008 Recipients(in alphabetical order of titles)"Body/traces" by digital media artist Sophie Kahn and choreographer Lisa Parra (US)A single-channel video installation reanimating 3D laser scans of the body in motion, resulting in a ghostly imperfect trace of the dancer's movement at human-scale."Eyes Nose Mouth" choreographed and conceived by Noémie Lafrance, directed by Patrick Daughters (USA)A dance film in which one take follows a single figure, streaming through fast-changing and surreal environments, ceaselessly swept forward in the flux of urban time."Looking Forward - Man and Woman" directed by Roberta Marques, choreographed and performed by Michael Schumacher and Liat Waysbort (Brazil/Holland)The third film in a trilogy experimenting with the reversing of movement and time in video and dance, creating mind-binding illusions in partnering while on a Sunday walk on the beach."Sunscreen Serenade" directed and choreographed by Kriota Willberg, sound by Carmen Borgia, illustration/animation by R. Sikoryak (US)A global warming-themed Depression-era musical spectacle populated by scantily costumed hand puppets.The selection panel comprised Leonel Brum (Brazil), Lynette Kessler(USA), Christina Molander (Sweden), Laura Taler (Canada), Hélène Lesterlin, dance curator at EMPAC, and Johannes Goebel, the director of EMPAC.The DANCE MOViES Commission is a program launched by EMPAC to support the creation of new works in which dance meets the technologies of the moving image. As the first major commissioning program for dance film established in the US in 2007, it is already having a significant national and international impact. The four film projects commissioned in last year’s round will premier at EMPAC’s upcoming opening celebration in October 2008.The Commission is supported by EMPAC’s Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and the Performing Arts. It is open to artists based in North and South America who are making video, film and installation work.For more information, including the work selected for the short list , please visit www.empac.rpi.edu.

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