Tag: art

Categories
Art & Culture

Reporting live from the Poeme Numerique Masterclass

I am delighted to be the official reporter/blogger for Baltan Laboratories’ Poeme Numerique masterclass, a week-long investigation into audio-visual content, interaction design and generative principles by a group of Netherlands-based media artists, designers and architects, led by 3 international masters: Golan Levin (US), Philippe Rahm (CH/FR) and David Rokeby (CA). The Masterclass kicked off today, and I’ll be posting my daily observations at the Baltan Laboratories website, so get it into your RSS reader! The first post is now up and available to read.

Now, some visual goodies from the three masterclass leaders:


Categories
Art & Culture My Lectures

Forked Identities, Mentioned-and-not-mentioned, Authority, and more

This year I was delighted to present at PICNIC, as part of a panel on the future of cultural criticism. The panelists engaged with the topic of journalism in the cultural realm and how it is changing in the face of “everyone’s a critic” in our digital age. The main points that I addressed were the binary of mentioned and not-mentioned in contemporary art criticism (concept courtesy of Boris Groys), how authority is built online, and what I call “forked identities”.

I think my points on mentioned/not-mentioned and building authority are pretty clear from my presentation (embedded below), but to elaborate on “forked identities” a bit: I have about 5 Twitter accounts, 9 friend groups with varying access to my profile on Facebook, and 2 public blogs plus many other websites that I contribute to now and again. In each of these situations I am presenting a slightly different facet of myself. This is just how it is in our contemporary communications environment. I want the ability to communicate my most colourful opinions to a close circle of 7 friends on Twitter, while highlighting only my professional achievements on my fully public Twitter feed with over 500 followers, or this blog. My identity has been forked into several sub-identities, which is (of course) not unlike how I conduct myself in varying social situations in real life.

Here is my Prezi (I added a few slides to it after the fact, to assist in comprehending it, as I thought it a bit opaque as a stand-alone without these modifications):

All the news that’s fit to … on Prezi

Categories
Art & Culture Technology

A Report from Repair

Meet ASIMO in Deep Space Rhizome has just published my report from the most recent Ars Electronica festival, with the theme of “Repair”, in Linz, Austria. There was one point I couldn’t find an elegant way of making in the article itself, but I’ll make it here: the conference programme was quite lacking in diversity, which is difficult to pardon in this day and age (2010, ferchrissake). Anyway, check out the diversity-rant-free piece on Rhizome.

Pictured: ASIMO the robot, who I didn’t get to meet in the end. Photo courtesy Ars Electronica.

Categories
Art & Culture

My FutureEverything “Don’t Miss” List

I find myself in the same situation time and again when I arrive at a major international festival: too many events happening at once! Spoilt for choice! Unable to decide if I should go to one talk or another, which are of course happening at the very same time in different locations!

The programme for this year’s FutureEverything festival is so overflowing with juicy content, that perhaps you too will suffer this dilemma. In the face of such a cornucopia of content, there is something for everyone, but maybe you want to peek over my shoulder and see what I’ve circled in red on my FutureEverything diary? (Oh and hey, I wouldn’t mind you sharing your picks with me too!)

Music:
Ryoji Ikeda – test pattern [live set] / Mika Vainio [live]: “complex audio-visual terrain” … “analogue warmth and metallic harshness”
Konono No.1 [live] / Bass Clef [live] / Jon K: “a thundering sonic attack of 21st Century African music that sounds like nothing ever heard before”
Moldover [live] / Atau & Adam [live]: “a performer who combines the charisma of a rock star with the mad genius of a basement inventor”

Conference:
GloNet: “an experimental format happening simultaneously in five cities around the globe: Manchester, Sendai, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, and Vancouver”
Shaping the City panel discussion: how are cities shaped by climate, culture, and citizen participation?
Keynote: Ben Cerveny: “taking us from 1960s Situationist ideas to current collaborative interaction in public spaces”
Keynote: Keri Facer: “Learning to live in uncertain times”
New Creativity panel discussion: “How do we play, collaborate, and create in a way that makes a real impact on the world?”
McLuhan in Europe 2011 – inaugural lecture with Darren Wershler: “describing the fascinating connections between McLuhan’s predictions and declarations”

Art:
The Feast of Trimalchio: Stunningly beautiful, UK premiere
Eyewriter: a pair of low-cost glasses & custom software that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes
Cu Exhibition: “diverse and experimental contemporary art from both national and international artists”

Get tickets!