DIgital Situationism and Urban Intervention

“The Interactive Spectacle.pdf -    http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:XUjvnSC8SH0J:www.idl.dundee.ac.uk/~shaleph/pdfs/The%2520Interactive%2520Spectacle.pdf+digital+Situationists&hl=en&gl=ca&sig=AFQjCNH12Z3_O3×40yKpOwUiEv0cZl20mw

“Department of Ongoing Digital Situations.”  http://www.toysatellite.org/doods

Paul, Christianne. “interventions in Virtual Public Spaces.” http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1616/1531

Daniel Canogar

Read/see more

Web 2.0 on youtube

although generally i don’t encourage too much you-tubery, this is what i showed this week

Excellent reasons to dislike facebook

I really enjoyed this article by Tom Hodgkinson, writing for the Guardian newspaper, as I have had many similar feelings, and seldom post any updates on it.

Instant Images

This excerpt is taken from an essay by Kathrin Peters published on Photo/Byte:
“since the 1980s the majority of theoretical considerations with regard to digital photography concerned image processing, the following will deal with electronic signal storage, i.e., not with the implications of image manipulation with the aid of computer technology, but with a more or less private photographic practice that uses digital cameras and/or stores photographs in digital distribution media. In this field, the notion of photographic authenticity is consistent; even more, due to the instantaneousness with which photographs can be taken and displayed under electronic conditions, it seems to have gained appeal. Disregarding some of the premature decisions with regard to the effects of the «digital revolution,» i.e., that photographic images will largely lose their reference to reality, immediacy and true-to-lifeness also remain central criteria for the image recorded on a chip or circulating in the Internet. ….

David Rokeby “Plots Against Time”

Pari Nadimi Gallery is pleased to announce a major solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist David Rokeby.

Machine for Taking Time (boul. Saint-Laurent) (2007) is the second in an ongoing series of works in which video cameras on motorized mounts survey particular places over time, building up large image databases from which the final work is constructed. The original, commissioned by the Oakville Galleries, Canada, surveyed the Gairloch Gardens. In this new work, 2 high definition cameras observed the city of Montréal to the east and to the west from the top of a 5 story building over the course of one year. The computer now wanders through these databases, stitching together leisurely continuous pans around the city, staying true to the original spatial trajectory but shifting unpredictably through time.

Midforms: NeoGraf – Virtual Graffiti

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NeoGraf – Virtual Graffiti
March 7th & 8th, 2008 – various downtown locations
check www.newformsfestival.com for full details…
in the spirit of NeoGraf Locations will be released one day prior to the performance…

laser tagging, projection throw-ups, photoshopped murals; the next
generation of open-source light-based writing, recoding the city bulb
by bulb.

The NeoGraf project will transform the city with nondestructive laser
graffiti technologies. Through the use of image and light projection,
graffiti artists will `paint’and tag buildings in realtime without
violating the property. In order to present the diversity and
evolution of graffiti, the project will work with different writers
and artists from around Vancouver, and invite the collaboration of
NomIg and Graffiti Research Lab to propagate this open-source technology.

NeoGraf Artists:
Fri, Feb 7th – Laser Tagging – Rhek & Virus
Sat, Feb 8th – Muralling – Neal Nolan

The Rosemary Initiative

 What are the affects of contemporary surveillance technologies on social interaction? How might they be re-circuited to enhance social connectivity and awareness within open societies?

The Rosemary Initiative probes conditions of social networks within panoptic environments. It explores influences of location mapping and analysis technologies on social interaction via a series of staged events ..

To a certain extent, contemporary social networks can be described as an economy through which personal relations propagate, and within which identities form, cultures emerge and establish themselves, and eventually dissolve. Within this context, one’s social identity becomes (in part) a function of relations, defined by strong and weak ties explicitly established by an individual or inferred through a history of transactions.

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Patricia Piccinini – Still life with Stem Cells

This is an image from Piccinini’s latest series of work, Nest.  Her short essay below draws some very thought provoking  relationships between digital and biological ‘data’ …

Still Life With Stem Cells

by Patricia Piccinini (2002)

Last year I saw one of those extraordinary things, which reminds me that what I make is not so strange or far-fetched. As usual it was in a petri dish. This petri dish contained a small layer of cells, a thin skin of biological matter that was pulsating to rapid but steady rhythm. This was the first time that I had really seen stem cells. These ones had been differentiated into heart cells and they were doing what heart cells do; beating – flatly, geometrically, pointlessly.

Stems cells are base cellular matter before it is differentiated into specific kinds of cells like skin, liver, bone or brain. Pure unexpressed potential, they contain the possibility for transformation into anything. They are the basic data format of the organic world. Like digital data, their specificity lies in that, while they are intrinsically nothing, they can become anything. They are biomatter for the digital age.

I am interested in how this changes our idea of the body. Already our understanding of the human genome leads us to imagine that we understand the construction of the body at its most intimate level; the stem cell provides us with a generic, plastic material from which we can construct it. In the last ten years, the body has gone from something that is uniquely produced to something that can be reproduced.

This transformation has already occurred, with very little fuss given its magnitude. The question of whether this is a good or a bad thing is both too simplistic and a little academic. As with so much of this biotechnology, the extraordinary has already become the ordinary. The real question is ‘what are we going to do with it’. Still life with Stem Cells is one possible answer.

Interactive Futures 07: The New Screen

Nov 15-18, 2007, Victoria
Held at Open Space Gallery and The Bedford Hotel, Victoria
Co-curators:
Steve Gibson, Julie Andreyev, Randy Adams
INTERACTIVE FUTURES is a forum for showing recent tendencies in new media as well as a conference for exploring issues related to technology. The theme of this year’s event is The New Screen. IF07 will explore new forms of screen-based media from a diverse body of artists, theorists, writers, filmmakers, developers, and educators. Interactive visual environments, screen-based performances, new forms of narrative experiences, web-based environments, and innovative educational models will be shown at IF07.
information poster: ifposterrgb.pdf
For information, or if you would like to attend contact Julie: jandreye@eciad.ca