Planet Piksel

LiVES 1.6.1 released !

2012-02-04T12:00:00+00:00

LiVES 1.6.1 has been released.

Greetings from the technical limits border ||| personal note

2012-02-03T18:27:14+00:00

tagr.tv started a few years ago with a simple idea: let’s use these – at that moment upcoming – new digital photo cameras and do a real fast media enhanced blog. After some time we realized that it actually saves time to use proper cameras because the workflow is just _better.

Last week I got my 1.2ghz dual core phone and thought: now the time – Let’s cover the transmediale just with that phone!

Well, nice idea. At the moment I’m watching the rendering progress bar moving slower then the battery going down… is history repeating itself?
We’ll see.

Posted from a cell phone.

FREE CITY (VABA LINN) 26.-27. April 2012 in Tallinn

2012-02-03T13:06:25+00:00

FREE CITY is an interdisciplinary series of events for young people, students and professionals targeted at highlighting specific urban space problems and finding solutions to them using freeware instruments and the underlying thought paradigm. FREE CITY showcases freeware instruments (in the field of IT and in other fields), the paradigm that links them and the arising possibilities for own-initiative projects for the audience, representative of various fields.

The format of the events is both theoretical and practical. The participants are involved in active investigation and intervention and thereby take part in influencing the urban space of Tallinn or any other city. The objective of the activities is to find, collect and process information (from the different layers represented in cities: culture, art, communication, safety, economy, mobility etc.) and to express and use the information in order to raise issues or as source material for providing solutions. The paradigm of freeware is not limited to the field of IT, but searches for its meaning in the more general and wider context of the urban environment. The discussion will dwell upon keywords such as public and common space, freedom and responsibility, public creation of knowledge, ethics and politics.

Agenda

The primary question of FREE CITY is how to analyse the layers of the urban environment in an interdisciplinary way and how to influence urban space developments and solve topical problems with the help of modern freeware (IT) instruments and experimenting with related thought models.

The secondary task of the series of events is to introduce and develop unconventional urban space strategies with young people, students and professionals. Parallel to wide- spread institutional planning, we would like to discuss the bottlenecks in urban space and experiment with solutions with the target groups to whom it is an integral part of innovative thinking and the development of sustainable initiative.

Organisers

The concept of FREE CITY is being implemented by the Cultural Cauldron’s Centre of New Media. The objective is to organise events in the spirit of the concept of the FREE CITY for various levels of competence two to four times per year which would create a basis, as a uniform series of events, for the development of a distinct format of events, an online knowledge base and an international network. An important principle is to cooperate with universities, institutions and the best-known enterprises and leaders in the field and to experiment with different formats and venues.

Invitation

The opening event in the FREE CITY series will take place on 26. April (a seminar) and 27. April (workshops). As the opening event of FREE CITY 2012 it will, compared to subsequent events, be more open to the following questions: What can, in fact, be considered and done? Where are the limits? Which discussions will lead to a dead-end and what will take us closer to accurate concepts and effective action? Hence we ask you to submit presentations and carry out workshops which, based on the concept of FREE CITY, discuss and target the following themes in a specific or general manner:

The limits of freedom and responsibility in urban space intervention
The linking of freeware and urban space – possibilities, peculiarities, activities and future outlooks
The creation and application of open (i.e. Non-institutionalised) knowledge in the urban environment
Emerging and ‘unofficial’ processes and mediums in the planning and analysis of urban space
Transition from digital space to ‘physical’ space; the direct influence of digital space on the development of urban space

These are only meant to be landmarks – feel free to suggest themes or focal points not listed. It is essential that the themes or focal points relate to the general concept of FREE CITY.

The talks should last up to 20 minutes and be in the form of a lecture or presentation. A lecture is more theoretical concept-based introspection. A presentation is an introduction of a project, idea, research paper, product etc. related to the concept of FREE CITY.

The workshops will take place on 27. April (presentations, on the 26^th of April) from morning till evening, each workshop involving up to 10 participants. A workshop has a more hands-on, DIY-type format that results in a prototype (which may be prepared beforehand in the form of a project and the participants might be taught how to make, use and develop it further). A working group is a format more targeted at discussion and brainstorming with, nevertheless, a practical outcome (mind-map, map, book, video recording etc.).

IMPORTANT: How to apply?

Please send your portfolio and proposal (max. 300 words) to the following e-mail: marge.paas@tallinn2011.ee

The deadline is: Thursday 09.02.2012. Please note, that in submission headline must include the name: workshop or presentation. (It depends on you, would you like to organise the workshop or make a 20 minutes presentation of your activities).

More info of the Free City: marge.paas@tallinn2011.ee -Let’s come together and make the city free! :)

Organiser: Tallinn2011 Foundation Cultural Cauldron

Contact: Marge Paas Project manager, FREE CITY +372 5286326 marge.paas@tallinn2011.ee

Exploring the maker scene in St. Petersburg

2012-01-31T13:51:21+00:00

I (Jukka Hautamäki) was offered the role to be Pixelache/Pixelversity Ambassador during my artist-residency (11-12/2011) in St. Petersburg. This was an interesting idea, since it also fitted perfectly with my original working plans with the residency at Suomi-Talo in the city, awarded by Ateljeesäätiö. Before going to St. Petersburg, I gained some local contacts with whom to start with, managed to attend several of the November festivals, and visit the local Hacklab. But before any of that, I need to mention the discovery I made in local flea market Udelniy.

I found a really peculiar measuring device. It is for measuring earth temperature differencies. This 50 years old device (image above) even had original documents with it. Russian custom service was also admiring my new treasure :)

November Festivals

I was really lucky to meet VJ Yuri Elik at the very beginning of my residency. Yuri was really helpful in introducing me to other artists. I met Yuri first time, on the occasion of the ‘Orson Welles’ festival in St Petersburg. I went to see the film screening ‘Touch of Evil’. Yuri was making live russian subtitles for it. A memorable experience and a great movie!

A few days later, the annual Cyberfest festival started. The festival, founded in 2007, presents international and Russian new media art, together with lectures, workshops and music performances. Cyberfest headquarters and main exhibition was located in Hermitage Museum. Other exhibitions and events related to the festival also happened at several locations around the city centre.

From Cyberfest festival I got a really great idea of how the cultural bridge between St. Petersburg and New York works. The same impression was strengthened in APosition music festival, which took place very soon after. In my opinion it would be good to consider building a ‘maker bridge’ between New York, St. Petersburg, and Helsinki. The maker scene in New York is really alive and kickin’.

At ‘APosition’ festival I finally stumbled into a local hacker – Vladimir Kabanov, who is making his own electronic instruments. He hinted to me that more local diy makers can be found from Russian ВКонтакте (VKontakte) groups, for example crazy box and circuit_bending. I also heard that just recently there had been MaxMSP workshop in CISR, and it had gained resceptable amount of participants. So something is slowly happening! As part of the Aposition music festival, there was performing the New York -based Dok Gregory, who is using devices build by Russian maker VTOL.. Really nice stuff!

Visiting the local hacklab: HackSpace-SPb

Before going to the residency, I had also found out that there was a hacklab in St. Petersburg. I checked their website and noticed that they had their first major event just before start of my residency. After exchanging a few emails, I managed to arrange a visit to HackSpace’s headquarters, which was in the local university. They arranged an interpreter to make sure that the visit wouldn’t stumble into language problems. HackSpace-SPb is fairly modest in size, but this aspect of quantity was certainly replaced with quality: I have never before seen anyone repairing a laptop in a hacklab session.

Bye bye SPb, see you soon…

So, a lot of people have asked me, how was St Petersburg? Finnish people are quite curious about a city which has the population equivalent to whole population of Finland. In my opinion, the residency time in St. Petersburg was a great experience. The city is really big, and maybe it could be said that the media art scene is little bit fragmented, but people are really pushing things forward. Hopefully collaboration plans with Pixelache/Pixelversity, and local partners could create some new ways of working between both scenes.

GVS1c new features

2012-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

GVS1c

2012-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

GVS1c Improvements in hardware: - Audio input can now also take trigger signals. - Better DIP switch. - Analog filter to make the video look more like a analog video camera.. (antialiasing filter). Improvements in code (backward compatible): - Better response to audio input. - Play back and forth (flip flop). - Record all frames with one button combination press. - Record negative. - Switch between NTSC and PAL without hardware modification.

GVS1c assembling instructions

2012-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

GVS1c assembling instructions

Libre Graphics Research Unit meeting in Brussels

2012-01-30T14:43:42+00:00

Baltan Laboratories is looking forward to participating in the upcoming LGRU Co-position meeting from February 22-25 in Brussels. Angela Plohman will be chairing a roundtable discussion on the last day of the meeting. LGRU is a traveling lab where new ideas for creative tools are developed. It is collaboration between Medialab Prado (Madrid), Worm (Rotterdam), Piksel (Bergen) and Constant (Brussels).

More information online : http://lgru.net

In the meantime, check out this lecture by LGRU’s Femke Snelting, which she gave in Eindhoven as part of the first in the Tools Series of Baltan Sessions that took place in the Studio of the Van Abbemuseum in October 2011.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

2012-01-28T18:46:16+00:00

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had a nice story in last Sunday's paper, triggered by my talk there for the installation of their second acquisition of my work. My favorite part is the description of the work itself as "made of rose,...

circuit bending workshop 1/31 5-9pm Georgia Southern University

2012-01-28T01:59:58+00:00

Open Map Workshop at Invisible City WDC2012

2012-01-27T19:09:09+00:00

You‘ve been involved in Pixelache Helsinki activities/festival past and/or present? Join us in our open map workshop charting out the connections among the Pixelache -related scene(s), as a contribution to Invisible City WDC2012 event (facebook event).

Our plan is to map and visualize the history and connections between different activities, organisations and people in the digital culture scene of Helsinki / Finland. We are joined by Minna Henrikkson, who has worked previously on social-mapping projects. This occasion we will make our relational map on paper, and use DOT language to make a digital version we release afterwards.

We have a table among the open data people in Kulmasali, Korjaamo, on Saturday 4th February from 14:00-20:00. Come and add your entries and/or remind us of what we have forgotten!

Argentinian Pavilion – Curator Rodrigo Alonso on Adrián Villar Rojas work

2012-01-27T13:39:50+00:00

We’ve been with the curator for the Argentinian Pavilion, Rodrigo Alonso, commenting on this monumental site-specific work from artist Adrián Villar Rojas for “La Biennale” 2011.

Camera: Ulli Armbrüster

Interview: Karina Fernández

Edition: Karina Fernandez

Suomenlinna Sound / Duration Map by Geoff Robinson

2012-01-27T11:39:00+00:00

Geoff Robinson is presenting 2 projects and a sound performance next week 3-5 February on Suomenlinna. His work is based on research and documentation of Suomenlinna during his HIAP residency November 2011 -February 2012.

Below is information on the projects, feel free to email or phone me if you have any questions or need further directions for finding the works on the island. Attached are the location details and a map. I recommend for the Friday night sound performance at Gallery Augusta catching the 6pm Suomenlinna ferry from Market Square.

Suomenlinna Sound/Duration Map
by Geoff Robinson

3-5 February 2012, Suomenlinna, Helsinki.

Location 1- Rantavarustus (the shore work), Kustaanmiekka, Suomenlinna. Outdoor installation viewing during daylight hours, 3-5 February 2012.

Location 2 – Gallery Augusta, Suomenlinna. Installation viewing 1-4 pm, 3-5 February. Sound performance Friday 3 February 6.30 pm.

HIAP Suomenlinna artist-in-residence, Geoff Robinson (b. 1973) from Australia, will present two mapping installation works on Suomenlinna based on sound and sunlight documentation on the island.

Robinson has documented the movement of the sun at Rantavarustus (the shore work) between November 2011 and February 2012. The movement of the sunlight, cast through a fortress window on to the landscape, will be marked and a spatial diagram will be constructed on site.

During the residency Robinson has collected sounds on the island, at Gallery Augusta he will create a mapped diagram of the sound recording locations and perform the recorded sounds on Friday 3 February 6.30 pm.

For further information contact:

E-mail: geoff.robinson73@gmail.com
Mobile: 0403 238 390

Analog HD

2012-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Analog Hard Disc is a synth a i made for the PP77 exhibition.

1st Stop on Virtuality Grand Tour

2012-01-25T23:38:31+00:00

The Pixelversity cluster theme ‘Virtuality, Social Identity & Augmented Reality’ begins its activity on Thursday 26.1. (today!) with the first stop on the Virtuality Grand Tour. A ‘grand tour’ was, in the tradition of classical learning, a travel around cultural landmarks. In this theme we revive the practice online.

Each stop on the Virtuality Grand Tour (VGT) explores different online platform(s) and tools, and is hosted by a particular persons. Pixelversity facilitator Andrew Paterson starts with exploring some online organisational tools, including Twitvisio (Twitter video-hangout), Doodle (event/poll scheduler) and Etherpad (collaborative writing). The event begins at 18.00 EEST / +2 GMT by signing in with a Twitter account to Twitvisio #pixelversity channel.

>> More info

‘Space is the Place’ exhibition & lecture nights

2012-01-25T08:39:37+00:00

How do you experience space? Kaiku-gallery at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts turns into a process-space during the final weeks of January. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to modify and change the space according to their own tastes with materials available at the gallery. The process does not have a defined objective, neither does the outcome need to be called a work of art. The aim is to investigate organic spontaneous ways of expression and different ways to approach space. Signification, meaning and sense will be constructed as the space transforms. This will be achieved through presence in the space, via participation and as a result of how we think about the space.

The space and the process is open for all visitors. Over a period of ten days the process of the space will be documented with a time-lapse video, which will be viewable as a collage of the process at Kaiku-gallery during 28.-29.1.2012.

Workshops as part of Space is the Place will be organized for students of the Fine Art Academy in the process-space. A series of public lectures will be held in the auditorium 25.-26.1. The lectures will, among other themes, address various aspects in connection to spatial experience.

The lecture programme:

Wednesday 25/01, 17:15–17:45 – Kaiku Galleria

Pre-lecture artist presentation about “How ta tawk & dans rite” by Rhys Turner, Anna Rouhu & Guadalupe López

Wednesday 25/01, 18–21 – Auditorium – discussion facilitator Sari Kivinen

Introduction to lectures by XL team Toni Ledentsa, Ilari Laamanen, Christine Langinauer - “Exhibition making, spatiality and curatorial motives”, 18:00–18:45 (in English)

Andrew Gryf Paterson (Pixelache Helsinki) – “Pixelversity 2011-2012: Towards a eco-geographic cultural space”, 18:45-19:30 (in English)

Eero Yli-Vakkuri & Oksasenkatu11 representatives – “Presenting views about artists as organisers, a few perspectives specific to Helsinki and Tampere”, 19:45–20:45 (in English)

Thursday 26/01, 18–21 – Auditorium – discussion facilitator Christine Langinauer

Christine Langinauer – “Taiteen uudet tilat”/”New spaces of art”, 18:00–18:40 (in Finnish)

Harri Hämäläinen (Helsinki Hacklab) – “Yhteisölliset työpajat”/”Communal workshops”, 18:40–19:20 (in Finnish)

Anna Pakarinen & Liisa Jokinen (Riemu) – “Riemu-projekti & taidebloggaus”/“Riemu project & art blogging”, 19:40–20:20 (in Finnish)

Toni Ledentsa & John W. Fail – “Strengthening autonomous culture”, 20:20–21:00 (in English)

Open lecture series in art-design-technology-science: HUMAN DESIGN or EVOLUTION?

2012-01-17T09:16:42+00:00

4 lecture evenings, 9 international speakers discussing the future of the human! Mondays 5-7pm at Aalto Media factory, Arabia. Starting on the 23rd of January and continuing on the subsequent 3 mondays.

Body enhancement, body modification, prosthetics, wearable and embedded technologies, mind uploading, memory-upgrades, biotechnologies and other nano-scale technologies are keywords in contemporary societys answers to the demands projected onto the human body. What is the future human like?

It is evident that our perception and attitudes toward the body are changing. This is visible in the general acceptance of ever more radical modifications and enhancements in the functions and appearance of the body, many of which are evidenced e.g. in media, in art & design, and in theoretical articulations concerning the future of the human species. Design for a future human has become an emerging area (in the art & design), which is tightly related to advancements in science and technology. This area is not only researching future potentialities of humans, including the development and design of a human body; it also addresses important ethical issues concerning such development. The lecture series asks what is, or could be, the role of an artist and a designer in this field?

There is no better way to use the winter monday evenings than discussing the future of the human. The 4 lecture-evenings offer 9 unique perspectives in investigating the human and the biological body as the material and subject of art, design, science and technology.

23.1.2012 Andy Miah, Laura Beloff, commentator: Sam Inkinen
30.1.2012 Natasha Vita-More, J. Auger & J. Loizeau, commentator: TBA
6.2.2012 Fiona Raby, Sissel Tolaas, commentator: TBA
13.2.2012 Riitta Hari, Stelarc, commentator: Marita Liulia
Moderated by Laura Beloff and the visiting commentators.

http://humandesign.mlog.taik.fi/

Please register your attendance; there is a limited amount of places: http://www.doodle.com/izbx38h3af4ex8n9

The lecture series is curated, organized and produced by Laura Beloff. It is a collaboration between Department of Design / Textile, Department of Art and Aalto Media Factory. Contact: laura.beloff[x]aalto.fi

Resonant Frequencies opening 1/17/12

2012-01-15T23:56:56+00:00

I’m showing a new piece Bit Shifter and a reworking and scaled down version of Kosmos at the Contemporary Gallery at the Center for Art & Theatre at Georgia Southern University. The show also features the work of Roger Chamieh and Nathan Ethier. Runs from January 17th through February 26th. Reception and talks by Roger [...]

LiVES 1.6.0 released !

2012-01-14T12:00:00+00:00

LiVES 1.6.0 has been released.

Camp Pixelache 2012 Open Call

2012-01-13T13:41:15+00:00

This spring, 11-12 May, we make a more compact edition of Pixelache Helsinki Festival called ‘Camp Pixelache’, at Arbis adult education centre, with the the theme of “Do It With Others” (D.I.W.O.). How can artists, makers, cultural producers, researchers and activists work collaboratively with each other and audiences, to create new co-production models for artefacts/events with sustainability as the core goal? Other sub-themes are ’Creative Neighbourhood Skills’, ’The Art of Gathering Environmental Data’ also ‘Virtuality/Social Identity’. We are CALLING OUT proposals for presentations as well as demos for Open Design, Crafts & Manufacturing.

>>> READ MORE

Trashlab begins on 14.1. (ongoing monthly events during 2012)!

2012-01-04T21:05:04+00:00

Trashlab monthly events during 2012 will explore experimental art-design-technology practice between hacker and maker cultures, in the context of re/up-cycling and the increased availability of new fabrication tools. Trashlab’s objective is to build up a community of people (artists, designers, hackers, makers, re/up-cyclers, activists) who are concerned with material and electronic waste in contemporary society, and tackle this problem with creative and tangential approaches.

>>> MORE INFO about Trashlab programme, the different events and actions so far defined

The first workshop takes place at Aalto Media Factory on Saturday 14.1. from 13.00-19.00, with the second one on Saturday 18.2. from 13.00-19.00. They will continue each month, but in some different locations also.

Welcome to take part, take apart, remake, and attend all year long! Note: January & February’s Trashlab events will be ‘light’ maker activity – So, Bring Your Own Gear (BYOG) & bring some Potluck / Nyyttikeskit Trash for the table!

In addition, Aalto Media Factory are funding a monthly lecture series called ‘Talking Trash(lab)’ organised by Pixelache Helsinki & Aalto University School of Art & Design researchers: Inaugural lecture event by Antti Ahonen (Koelse) on Friday 17.2. from 17.30-19.00 (the day before the second Trashlab workshop).

Image credit: Jenni Kemppainen, Roskalava HKI facebook group.

International Teletext Art Festival: Open Call

2012-01-04T09:06:44+00:00

TAF is organised by FixC cooperative (http;//www.fixc.fi) in collaboration with YLE, the national broadcast corporation of Finland. The works will be shown on YLE Teletext pages 8.3.2012 -8.4.2012 and presented in the one evening TELETEXT event 8.3. Artists are welcome to participate with 24 -page animations (1 page + 24 sub -pages) or single image works (much easier). Send your works by 25th Jan 2012 to: itaf [-at-] fixc.fi

Rules:

1. We have a 0 € budget so by participating you give us a permission to show your work for one month on the ITAF teletext pages and the TELETEXT event free of charge (the copyright remains with the artist)

2. No porn, ads or copyright infringements (Rules given to us by YLE)

3. Deadline for submitted works is 25th Jan 2012

4. All works must meet the teletext standard

All participating artists names will be published on FixC web site on 1.2.2012, If there are more submissions than we can present we will invite a non-FixC member to do the selection

A excellent technical guide and a free Teletext editor by Microtel a project curated by ambientTV.net in 2006:
http://projects.lektrolab.com/microtel/

Teletext info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

And then...

2012-01-04T04:16:27+00:00

#!/usr/bin/perl
while(next){anything and everything you want}

Ninendo glitch synthesizer

2011-12-24T07:25:47+00:00

I’m working on a new installation for a show at Georgia Southern University. There’s a lot of layers to this piece that I’m pretty excited about. I’m using a simple modular synth (The MFOS sound lab ultimate with added ring mod) as a complex feedback pattern generator. I could talk about this part for a [...]

MEDIA FACADES 2012 – CALL FOR PROJECTS AND COLLABORATIONS

2011-12-21T11:11:07+00:00

This call is to invite projects and collaborations for the Media Facades 2012 festival, to be organized in Helsinki 20.8-2.9.2012 as part of the Helsinki Festival programme. Deadline for proposals is 20.01.2012 – download the call and proposal form here.

Media Facades is a festival to present media and electronic art projects in public space. The first edition of the festival was organized in 2010, and it presented over 30 media art projects within a network of 7 European cities. See documentation at www.mediafacades.eu

Media Facades focuses on artistic interventions which open up the spatial and social experience of the city, by an innovative use of the visual, interactive and participatory potentials of media and architecture. The objective is to present new insights into the urban environment and to encourage a debate about the uses of public / media space. To this end we also invite not only proposals for art projects, but also other types of collaborations – workshops, demos, live events etc – which share similar interests.

For the second edition of Media Facades, we especially highlight the following themes:

Locality – projects that are grounded in local sites, contexts and communities
Mobile – projects that use mobile devices for urban interaction, or that tour across sites
Participation - projects that engage audiences in social or technical interaction

The selected artists will receive a fee and technical production support for presenting their projects. They will also receive international visibility and further touring possibilities within the festival’s partner network.

Timeline

The deadline for proposals is January 20, 2012 – followed by a pre-selection of projects, feasibility study, and project contracts. The period from March to August is reserved for final project development and testing.

The festival’s exhibitions take place between August 20 and September 2. The main events in public space, from August 23 to 26 kick off with the Night of the Arts and a special tour of the Culture Tram. An international seminar will be co-organized with the City Sets project by Crucible Studio / Aalto University.

Organizers

Media Facades 2012 is organized by m-cult in collaboration with Helsinki Festival, Lasipalatsi Media Centre, Crucible Studio / Aalto University, Sinne, Korjaamo and other partners.

The festival is realized in the context of European Urban Media Network – an initiative of 11 European cities to create a shared infrastructure for circulating cultural and social projects in urban/public space.

Contact & More information

Minna Tarkka, director, Media Facades 2012
m-cult centre for new media culture www.m-cult.org
minna.tarkka ( at ) m-cult.org
+358-50-5203167

MEDIA FACADES 2012 – PROJEKTI- JA YHTEISTYÖKUTSU

(DL 20.01.2012 – lataa kutsu ja ehdotuslomake täältä!)

Kutsumme sinut ehdottamaan teos- ja yhteistyöprojekteja Media Facades 2012 -festivaaliin, joka järjestetään Helsingissä 20.8-2.9.2012 osana Helsingin juhlaviikkojen ohjelmaa.

Media Facades esittää media- ja elektronisen taiteen projekteja julkisessa tilassa. Festivaalin ensimmäinen editio järjestettiin 2010, ja sen ohjelmaan kuului yli 30 mediateosta jotka esitettiin 7 eurooppalaisen kaupungin verkostossa. Dokumentaatio löytyy osoitteesta www.mediafacades.eu

Media Facadesin pääkohteena ovat taiteelliset interventiot, jotka avaavat kaupungin tilallista ja sosiaalista kokemusta hyödyntämällä median ja arkkitehtuurin visuaalisia ja vuorovaikutteisia ulottuvuuksia. Tavoitteena on luoda uusia näkökulmia kaupunkiympäristöön ja avata keskustelua julkisen mediatilan käytöstä. Yksittäisten mediateosten lisäksi kutsumme mukaan myös muita yhteistyö-projekteja – demoja, työpajoja, live-tapahtumia jne – festivaalin teemoihin liittyen.

Media Facades -festivaalin toinen editio keskittyy erityisesti seuraaviin teemoihin:

Paikallisuus – projektit jotka kiinnittyvät paikkoihin, konteksteihin ja yhteisöihin
Mobiili – projektit, jotka rakentavat vuorovaikutusta kaupunkitilaan mobiililaitteilla tai liikkumalla kohteesta toiseen
Osallistuminen – projektit joihin yleisö voi osallistua sosiaalisen tai teknisen vuorovaikutuksen keinoin

Valituista projekteista maksetaan esityspalkkio ja niille tarjotaan esitystekninen tuotantotuki. Festivaalin kumppaniverkoston kautta projektit saavat myös kansainvälistä näkyvyyttä ja kiertuemahdollisuuksia.

Aikataulu

Ehdotusten deadline on 20.1.2012 – ja sitä seuraavat esivalinnat, tuotantotekninen kartoitus ja esityssopimukset. Jakso maaliskuusta elokuuhun on varattu projektien kehittämiselle ja testaukselle.

Festivaalin näyttelyt ovat auki 20.8.-2.9. Kaupunkitilan päätapahtumat 23-26.8. käynnistyvät Taiteiden yön ja Kulttuuriratikan MFF-teemareitin myötä. Lisäksi järjestetään Aalto-yliopiston City Sets -projektin kanssa kansainvälinen seminaari ja muuta oheisohjelmistoa.

Järjestäjät

Media Facades 2012 -festivaalin järjestäjänä on m-cult, yhteistyökumppaneinaan Helsingin juhlaviikot, Lasipalatsin Mediakeskus, Crucible Studio/Aalto-yliopisto, Sinne, Korjaamo sekä muut yhteistyötahot.

Festivaalin kansainvälinen yhteistyö liittyy 11 kaupungin European Urban Media Network –verkostoon, jonka tavoite on luoda ympäristö taide- ja kulttuuriprojektien yhteistuotannolle ja esittämiselle kaupunkitilassa.

Yhteydet ja lisätietoja

Minna Tarkka, taiteellinen johtaja, Media Facades 2012
m-cult www.m-cult.org
minna.tarkka ( at ) m-cult.org
+358-50-5203167

(DL 20.01.2012 – download the call and proposal form here !)

HACK THE CITY OPEN CALL

2011-12-19T17:50:22+00:00

Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland is seeking proposals for an upcoming major exhibition and festival HACK THE CITY

Call Opens: Monday 5 December
Call Closes: Friday 20 January
Exhibition duration: 22.6. 2012 – 7.9. 2012
Festival dates: 11-15 July 2012

Calling all hackers, makers, doers, data nerds, hobbyists, artists, citizen scientists, tech geeks, activists, edgy engineers and DIY urban planners…

Science Gallery is seeking proposals for its 2012 flagship exhibition HACK THE CITY launching in June 2012. HACK THE CITY is curated by Teresa Dillon – Lead Curator/Researcher & artist, Linda Doyle – Director of CTVR, Josh Klein – TED Speaker and author of Hacking Work, Martin Kelly – IBM Venture Capital Group and Michael John Gorman – Director of Science Gallery.

Currently more than half of the world’s population lives in towns and cities. This trend is expected to continue. Between 2025-2030 of the approximate 8 billion people who will live in the world 5 billion will live in cities. Yet the majority of our city infrastructures are based on inherited historical layouts and systems.

Science Gallery’s 2012 flagship exhibition and festival HACK THE CITY will rethink our cities from the ground up through the spirit and philosophy of the hacker ethos – to bend, mash-up, tweak and cannibalise our city systems, to create possibilities, illustrate visionary thinking and demonstrate real-world examples for sustainable urban futures. It will capitalize on Dublin city’s history, legacy, population and infrastructure, transforming the city itself into a nimble “playground” and live urban hack lab.

The exhibition and events will explore hacking for good – the repurposing of useful resources, the innovators who customise existing tools for new uses and who purposefully challenge existing hierarchies. What creative ways can we release untapped resources, harnessing what maybe considered as by-products or waste, to create alternative systems for public good?

HACK THE CITY is Science Gallery’s major international exhibition and festival for 2012 and a flagship programme of Dublin City of Science. We are interested in receiving proposals for experiments, exhibits and events, which go beyond Science Gallery in to the city of Dublin and even connect multiple cities globally. Potential venue partnerships include The Ark, Temple Bar, Dublin and international partnerships with ZER01 in San Jose, California.

Working with our international partners and local councils we will be creating city zones, which will test potential new technologies, creating situations for energy visualization, play, social networking and communications.

As a centrepiece in Dublin’s tenure as European City of Science 2012, we are especially interested in submissions which utilise Dublin’s position, geography and demographic – as the capital of a small island, on the periphery of Europe, struggling to recover from a post-economic boom and the European home for a number of key multinational tech companies (IBM, Google, Facebook), innovators and entrepreneurs. Drawing on this vibrant community we encourage novel approaches to social and commercial ideas, which can be piloted and prototyped during HACK THE CITY.

The exhibition will include existing and proposed works, innovations and inventions around the theme of HACK THE CITY. The exhibition will extend beyond the gallery through workshops, labs, events and off-site projects with Science Gallery becoming a hub connecting difference city zones to mobile and online worlds.

Alongside artworks, designed objects and documentary artefacts, HACK THE CITY will encourage thinking differently about how we set up new business products and services, which address our urban demands, plus include special live performances, innovative installations, unique physical and mental experiences, high-profile talks, discussions and debates, web-focused interactions, games and collaborative experiences.

We are seeking proposals for:

Installations
Mass-participation experiments
Events
Performances
New products/services/start-ups
Workshops
Apps
Visualizations, maps and mashups

Through our association with The Ark we are also interested in proposals which cater directly to a younger audience. You can find out more about The Ark’s call, which is on the theme of biodiversity here http://ark.ie/downloads/The_Ark_Awakening_Curiosity_Submission_Callout_November_2011.pdf

Suggested areas of focus include:

Augmenting the City – submissions that repurpose the physical city environs to allow a significant unique interaction with the surrounding city landscape, including AR apps
City based projects, objects and experiences in the areas of public art / street art / community / new media, technology and design.
Particular attention will be paid to projects that rethink and recycle the slack spaces in the city, uncover subcultures, subvert and reveal the architectural blueprint of the city itself.
Projects which allow the city dweller to interact with and interject into the city, both in terms of its systems and infrastructure as well as it’s physical form.
Particular attention will be paid to robust projects that have a significant visual impact or presence in the city itself and are designed to be economic with the available resources and tools. These projects should also contain a significant element that can be integrated into the Science Gallery exhibition space.
We are particularly interested in receiving submissions, which are Dublin specific as well as projects, which refer to the global urban environment or connect different cities
We are interested in projects that may have an element of longevity that can exist beyond the time span of the exhibition itself.
Urban experiments – submissions which utilize the infrastructure, data and citizens of the city to carry out experiments
Future of the City – submissions, which think broadly and diversely about how we live in cities, support subversion and play and allow our audience to experience live mappings of the dynamic city (flow of energy, transport, capital and people) and gain new insights into our future cities
Playing with data – submissions for works, which connect data forms and physically embody data streams, bridging ‘on’ and ‘off’ line worlds.
New business products and services – ideas which have commercial viability and provide sustainable solutions for our urban needs, including the use of open data, data mash ups and remixes

Please feel free to forward this e-mail and link to other forums and

individuals and do please contact us at

teresa.dillon@sciencegallery.com if you would like to suggest projects or people for the exhibition.

Funding

We welcome projects that come with external funding. The maximum amount of budgetary support available for each approved application is €5,000. Each project must be delivered within this maximum production budget, which should include all fees, materials, shipping and travel costs as well as any other cost that may arise from participation in Hack the City. Please note that the production budget available for event-based proposals is significantly less and support will be given on a case-by-case basis.

Submitting your Proposal

Thanks for your interest in submitting a proposal for HACK THE CITY. Please see some details below on how to submit your proposal. If you have any problems or questions with this process please email help@sciencegallery.com
If you are already registered with Science Gallery: Please sign in on our home page at www.sciencegallery.com (if you have forgotten your password, you can reset your password here as well). Once logged in you can submit your proposal on a web form at at http://www.sciencegallery.com/node/add/open-call-submission. You can save the form at any stage and return to complete your draft before the closing date on January 20th 2012.
If you are not already registered with Science Gallery We need you to register on Science Gallery’s site at https://www.sciencegallery.com/user/register. You will receive an email confirmation and can set up a username and password. Log into Science Gallery and once logged in you can submit your proposal on a web form at http://www.sciencegallery.com/node/add/open-call-submission. You can save the form at any stage and return to complete your draft before the closing date on January 20th 2012.

Click Here to start your application

Science Gallery Supporters

Science Gallery is an initiative of Trinity College Dublin supported through a unique partnership between the university, private sponsors and government. Key funders are Wellcome Trust, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Dell, Google, ICON, PACCAR and the European Commission.

Hack The City at Science Gallery is part of a larger 3-year international project, Studiolab, funded under the European Commission Framework 7 programme, with partners including Le Laboratoire, Paris; the Royal College of Art, London; Ars Electronica, Linz; MediaLab Prado, Madrid; Optofonica, Amsterdam; ERG, Brussels; Leonardo, France; CIANT, Prauge; RIX-C, Riga; Medical Museion, Copenhagen; Bloomfield, Jerusalem.

Ars electronica 2011 – origin

2011-12-19T11:25:53+00:00

As a summary, just to get a short overview, I elected together with an eight-year-old boy his ten favourites, also to focus on what´s most interesting for the younger generation and how they interact with media art.

“Otamatone”- Novmichi Tosa, Maylsa Denki: musical-note-shaped electric instrument

“Gear Box”- Ulrich Brandstätter & Oliver Buchtala: kind of musical loop-sequencer

“Paro”- Aist : Therapeutic Robot with 5 kinds of sensors: tactile, light, audition, temperature and posture sensors. It can learn to behave in a way that the user prefers and simulates interaction between patients and caregivers.

“TalkTorque-2″- Hideaki Kuzuoka, Hiroshi Kasai, Ikkaku Kawaguchi, Toshimasa Yamanaka: guide robot that utilizes human skills

“Is there a horizon in the deep water?” -HEHE: Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen: Installation, Performance which works through the ecological tragedy, the explosion of the oil platform Deep Horizon in 2010, by reconstructing the event minutely.

“Six-Fourty by Fourty-Eghty”- Jamie Ziegelbaum, Marcelo Coelo: Installation, handy magnetic pixels as an interpretation of the touchscreen principle, by touching they change the color or copy it onto another

“Shadows”- Jyun-ya Kataoka: Installation, device, consisting of a turntable, found at a garage dump, and strobes from instant cameras attached to a circle, by rotating the turntable you manipulate the shadows

“Paricles”- Daito Manabe, Motoi Ishibashi: On a construction that resembles a rollercoaster, lightballs can be orchestrated via control-screen to whiz about in all directions and grouped into moving patterns.

“Running through the fog” at the roof of the O.K.-house: just a part of the “Hoehenrausch”

“CCD-me-not-Umbrella”- Mark Shepard: of sentient city survival kit: An umbrella studded with infrared Leds visible only to CCD surveillance cameras, designed to frustrate object-detection-algorithms used in computer vision surveillance systems

HSS3g extra mode

2011-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

take a look at the bright sight… …with the ARTVERTISER !

2011-12-16T09:57:06+00:00

Glänzend schöne Versprechen von einer heilen Welt… zumindest für die, die auf die richtigen Produkte setzen, so das Credo der Werbung. Hinsehen, verstehen, kaufen!
Die Mantras der Werbung begegen uns überall, sind Teil des öffentlichen Raumes – denn sie wollen nicht nur gesehen werden, sie müssen gesehen werden.

Streetart ist eine Art sich diesem kommerziellen Zwang zu widersetzen, öffentlich zu hinterfragen. Eine digitale Streetart-Version entwickelten Julian Oliver und Damian Stewart. Der Artvertiser, ein Gerät und eine Software, womit sich Plakate neu definieren lassen. Das Credo hier: Kunst statt Kommerz!

Damian Stewart präsentierte den Artvertiser am Coded Cultures Festival 2011:

und hier noch das eigene Video, das im Rahmen der Transmediale 2010 entstand:

Augmented Billboards 2: The Artvertiser @ Transmediale 2010 from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

FABLAB CITY HELSINKI 14.12.

2011-12-12T09:21:24+00:00

Alternative Design Capital (ADC) arranges a meeting to bring together various emerging ‘fab lab’ initiatives and other related projects. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to the meeting!

Fab labs offer tools such as laser cutters and 3D printers which designers can use to produce prototypes or small sets of unique objects. Fab labs usually also have an educational purpose and are open for amateurs as well. In addition to fab labs, there are plans to establish some open workshop spaces with focus on do-it-yourself crafts. There are also aspirations to initiate a new festival to celebrate various forms of do-it-yourself crafts and culture.

Date & time: Wednesday 14 December 2011, 6-8 pm
Venue: Valvomo / Oranssi, Suvilahti, Kaasutehtaankatu 1, Helsinki
(call +358 40 570 96 17 / Juha or +358 44 5335868 / Otso if you cannot find the location)

There is a computer + screen available, if you wish to show some visual material to others.

If you cannot join the meeting this time, then please join the first ADC Gathering on Saturday 28 January 2012 afternoon (more information about this will appear soon in www.adc2012.org).

Welcome!

PBS Documentary on Generative Art

2011-12-10T15:51:44+00:00

PBS Arts' "Off Book" series covered generative art by interviewing Will Wright, Luke Dubois, and me. The sunglasses shot makes me blush....

A day of post-digital tool building

2011-12-09T16:06:12+00:00

Some tools from our post-digital toolbox made during the workshop ‘After the Bit Rush: Post-digital design tools’ at MU on December 8th. Thanks to Lucas Maassen, Dries Verbruggen, MU and all the fantastic workshop participants! More images here.

Paint bucket tool.

History tool.

Gradient tool.

LiVES 1.4.9 released !

2011-12-08T12:00:00+00:00

LiVES 1.4.9 has been released.

New improved step sequencer schematic

2011-12-08T00:27:40+00:00

Here is a schematic I made for an 8 step 4 channel programmable step sequencer for a Make magazine tutorial. I’ve been waiting till the article is done to post the schematic but it’s taking longer than expected soooooo….. here it is now.

Moral Magistrate

2011-12-07T05:32:11+00:00

New page added.

industrial synth

2011-12-07T03:47:22+00:00

Experimenting with the CD4089 binary rate multiplier chip (thats what is sequencing the drum beat). Thanks to Eric Archer for the suggestions/inspiration/schematics

Das Skateboard, das Nintendo spielte… ?

2011-12-05T15:17:56+00:00

§P¡NdLe .. so der Titel, vielsagend und doch ein wenig kryptisch, genau das richtige für die, die ein wenig tüfteln wollen, was dieses Skateboard mit eingebautem Nitendo kann, möchte, wie das denn alles funktioniert, was genau überhaupt funktionieren soll, und wie beziehungsweise was das alles eigentlich ist.
Und diese Verwunderung ist vielleicht auch die Fragestellung des Kunstwerks an seine Betrachter… Kunst als Idee, als Anregung, als Phantasie… über Partituren, die der Boden schreibt….

Hinter der §P¡NdLe oder dem §P¡NdLe stehen die Künstler Gordan Savicic und Philipp Lammer.

Im Gespräch mit eSel.at – Philipp Lammer:

Baltan Session: The Tools Series #3

2011-12-04T12:43:40+00:00

December 8, 2011 10:00 am

The Tools Series is a new series of Baltan Sessions that examines the complex and changing relationships artists and designers have with the technologies and tools they develop, modify or use to create, with an aim to explore social awareness around the tool choices they make as well as the (aesthetic) influences of these choices on the work they create. We also examine the role of the lab in supporting the creation of, access to and sharing of knowledge about these tools.

The third session in the Tools Series takes place in the context of the exhibition After the Bit Rush. Design in a Post Digital Age at MU in Eindhoven from 22 October – 23 December 2011.

TOOLS SERIES #3: AFTER THE BIT RUSH
POST DIGITAL DESIGN TOOLS
In collaboration with MU, Eindhoven

8 December 2011
Workshop (for 10-15 participants max): 10:00 – 18:00
Workshop fee: 10 Euro (lunch, drinks and material will be provided)
Public presentation (as part of MU & Meer, open to everyone): 20:00
Location: MU, Emmasingel 20, Eindhoven, NL

Digital tools are often based their analog counterparts. But in their digital context they are used to perform very different tasks. Many times they evolve into new independent digital design tools. Is it possible to do the same thing in the reverse? Can we create analog tools based on their digital counterparts? During the workshop, participants will explore these possible transformations with designers Lucas Maassen and Unfold. In the evening, we will present the results of the day-long workshop during which participants explore this challenge.

In the workshop, participants will specifically be asked to:

1. Translate an existing digital design tool into an analog counterpart.
- Find a tool in a digital design application like Photoshop, Illustrator, Rhino. Try to stick to tools that rely on (apparently) basic principles or actions like copy-paste, blur, scale, undo, crop, mirror, paintbrush, sharpen edges…
- Thoroughly analyse the behaviour of the tool in the original digital context, observe what the tool actually does as modification to the pixels or vectors. For example a scale-down function will remove pixels, a scale up will copy pixels and add them to the existing pixels. What if you do this multiple times? What if you push the tool beyond its intended use?
- Translate and appropriate the behaviour into an analog counterpart. How can you make a physical tool that has the same effect on real world objects? Don’t stick with one possible solution but explore various alternatives.

2. Explore/use/exploit one of your colleagues design tools
- Choose one of the tools made by a fellow participant. Start by exploring its functions like you did with the digital tools, look at the various ways the tool can be used and misused. Which action leads to which reaction?
- Select one existing 3D physical object that lends itself as subject to your tool’s action. Appropriate the object with your tool, this can be a single action or multiple iterations of the same process.

To participate in the workshop, please send a short bio and a short motivation about why you would like to join the workshop to info[AT]baltanlaboratories.org by December 5, 2011.

The Wearable Electronics -course presentation 5.12.

2011-12-02T12:06:31+00:00

Electronics and sensors allow artists to create interactive smart garments that produce sound and images in reaction to movement. They sense and communicate with the environment and the user, and may react to them. In some cases the garment is in connection with the Internet and exchanges information based on the data it has measured. As the term ‘wearable’ suggests, these interactive artworks are carried by the user and in bodily connection with him or her.

The Wearable Electronics course has been organised during autumn 2011 in collaboration between Aalto University School of Art and Design, and MUU Artists’ Association. The participants who come from a variety of backgrounds such as new media, costume design, textile design, fine art and performing arts have been encouraged to create their own visions of wearable technology. They have worked in teams to carry out their ideas based on the Arduino development platform. Welcome to experience these six unique projects – to see them in use and even to try some of them on!

Projects:

Laura Haapakangas, Timo Muurinen, Heidi Tikka:
(Dancer: Alpo Aaltokoski)
Performance garment

Matti Niinimäki, Emmi Pouta:
Opodiphthera Incognita

Forrest Oliphant, Liisa Pesonen, Hannele Romppanen:
(Dancers: Minja Mertanen, Helena Romppanen)
Impulse/Control

Carmen Brecheis, Minna Holkkola, Chi-Hsia Lai:
Sound Gloves

Andy Best:
Soft Step Sequencer

Metti Nordin, Valtteri Wikström:
Brainwise

Teachers: Tomi Dufva and Jukka Hautamäki
Visiting teachers: Meg Grant, Marja Uusitalo, Raija Jokinen, Johanna Ilmarinen, Ali Neissi Shooshtari, Markku Nousiainen

Place: MUU Gallery (Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki)
Time: Monday 5.12. at 17-19

Organised by MUU Artists’ Association and Aalto University
The course blog: http://wearable.mlog.taik.fi/

Open lecture by Artist Ursula Damm 9.12.

2011-12-01T12:32:24+00:00

Ursula Damm (DE) is an artist working at the intersection of art, technology and science. She has developed installations on the relationship of nature, science and civilization which have been shown at numerous exhibitions worldwide. Since 2008 she holds the chair of Media Environments (Media Arts&Design) at the Media Faculty of the Bauhaus-University, Weimar. In 2010 together with Roland Eils from the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology of the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg she formed the iGEM Team Weimar-Heideberg Arts to develop Super-Cell, a fictional supermarket offering speculative products based on Synthetic Biology.

(Photo: The ‘Sasha Nourishing Solution’ used with ‘Sasha’, the sensual communication tool for men and women. Extract from Super-Cell)

Lecture abstract:

I am a wild type

Environmental issues have been an integral part of Ursula Damm’s artistic work for a long time. Her artworks are a response to what she perceive as limitations of our high-tech everyday lives. The resulting installations establish their own ethical and aesthetic systems of value. This highlights aspects that the scientific world pays little attention to. Damm’s artworks aim to integrate practices for acquiring knowledge which emphasize the importance of human sensory faculties. Hereby she wishes to integrate intuition in an artistic working and modeling process of raising awareness.

Ursula Damm will participate in the Art&HENVI project, organized by the Finnish Society of Bioart in collaboration with the Helsinki University Centre For Environmental Research (HENVI) in the context of the World Design Capital Helsinki 2012.

Before the lecture of Ursula Damm, Erich Berger will give a short presentation of the Field_Notes project which was taking place at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in September 2011. Field_Notes was a week long field laboratory for theory and practice on art&science work. Five expert working groups developed, tested and evaluated specific artistic approaches based on the interplay of art&science.

The Finnish Society of Bioart cordially invites to an open lecture by Ursula Damm:
Time: Friday 9.12. , 19:00
Place: Kaapelitehdas Tallberginkatu 1 C 23
00180 Helsinki
(Stair C, 4th Floor)

More information and contact:
Erich Berger, Ars Bioarctica coordinator
Finnish Society of Bioart
erich.berger@bioartsociety.fi
http://bioartsociety.fi/

Debtocracy: how much of the Greek national debt is illegitimate?

2011-11-29T12:49:23+00:00

If you are not familiar with the term ‘odious debt’ then I would recommend for you to watch the Debtocracy documentary film. The first part of the film gives a general introduction to the credit-driven global economy and the accumulation of Greek debt. Things get more interesting at approx 33:00 when the concept of odious debt is introduced, followed by examples of how countries like Equador have been able to write down most of their national debt.

The story of why and how the film was made highlights some of the problems we are facing right now in Europe regarding democratic decision-making about financial issues. Some time ago journalists Katerina Kitidi & Aris Chatzistefanou posted a short video on Youtube which explained how Equador was able to eliminate most of its debt since it was based on illegitimate contracts. This short clip gained interest in Greece and it was soon clear that it was essential for Greek people to get a better understanding of this example. The budget for making Debtocracy (approx 16 000 euros) was gathered via online donations and many professional people volunteered to help in making the film. So far the film has been viewed approx 2 million times but it has been completely ignored by the mainstream Greek media. It is clear that democracy cannot properly function in this kind of situation.

The makers of Debtocracy are currently gathering donations for their next documentary Catastroika.

Aris Chatzistefanou and Teppo Eskelinen

Debtocracy screening and discussion (featuring Aris Chatzistefanou and researcher Teppo Eskelinen) was organised by Pixelache, Lens Politica and HIAP.

DEP2a assembling instructions

2011-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

DEP2a assembling instructions

LiVES 1.4.8 released !

2011-11-26T12:00:00+00:00

LiVES 1.4.8 has been released.

Baltan Tracker

2011-11-25T10:14:16+00:00

Geert Mul has used motion tracking in a number of his interactive installations, including This Land is Man-made (2000), Local Squares Global Stars (2005), Horizons (2008), Loading Ready Run (With Maurer United Architects, 2009), and Echolocation (2009). He became increasingly interested in using the human body as an interface in his installations, which keep visitors and visuals in constant interaction without the use of any special devices on the visitor’s’ body.

Mul has explored the use of a thermographic camera instead of a standard or a near-infrared camera – the latter often confuses any object or incoming light for a person. The thermographic camera avoids this kind of misinterpretation because it responds to infrared radiation (heat) rather than light. As part of his research in the context of Baltan Laboratories’ Poeme Numerique research programme, Mul wanted to take the experience he had accumulated in his own practice and create a cross-platform, user-friendly motion-tracking environment that others could use and share – the intention being that the software would be free while the users would provide the required hardware. The resulting Baltan Tracker is a hardware–software combination for motion tracking people in a space using a thermographic camera and Max/MSP. In 2009, Erik Overmeire and Geert Mul installed a test set-up at Baltan Laboratories using a FLIR VSR-6 camera.

The Baltan Tracker and thermographic camera are tools that can be used and further developed by other artists interested in exploring their possibilities. For example, in May and June 2009, artist Liesbeth Koot worked with the thermographic camera at Baltan on her project Matter, the third and closing part of a series of collaborative projects in which the combination of movement and digital media is the central issue. And in October 2010, the tracker was set up at BKKC knowledge centre for art and culture in Tilburg, the Netherlands, as part of its DIGITAAL exhibition. Erik Overmeire also led a motion-tracking workshop for artists at the exhibition in which the tracker and thermographic camera featured as tools.

HELP KEEP BRIDGES SINGING. 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY.

2011-11-23T15:26:13+00:00

Singing Bridges by Jodi Rose is an urban sonic sculpture on a global scale, making music with the sound of bridges. Placing contact microphones directly on the cables, she records and composes with the sound from inside the bridge, listening to the voice of the structure as wind, traffic and tension create vibrations. Listen to more cable-stay and suspension bridge sounds here.

April 2012 is the tenth anniversary of Jodi’s first trip to record stay-cabled bridges worldwide. She’s celebrating with a brand new work giving a sculptural dimension to this incredible archive of bridge recordings. The Singing Bridge Sculpture is the first in a series of bridge designs, interrelated compositions and visual works that transmit and pay tribute to the wonderful and unexpectedly rich world of bridge sounds.

Now is your chance to support Singing Bridges, own a design prototype or other cool stuff!

more info

Piksel11 report

2011-11-22T18:15:46+00:00

The 9th edition of the Piksel Festival took place on November 17th-20th 2011 in Bergen, Norway. The festival was subtitled this year as “re:public” for rethinking and redefining public space, both as a concrete physical space, and in a larger social and political context. As previously, through the nine-year history of the festival, Piksel is firmly grounded on free/libre and open source.

My primary reason to visit Piksel11 was a scheduled afternoon working session on open hardware and OHANDA with Jürgen Neuman and Alison Powell together with any Piksel-participants we could lure in. This turned out to be intensive three days of brainstorming instead. We started with extending our understanding of the open hardware to include all possible and impossible product categories. This was followed by communication-design-sprint for making the whole thing more understandable for the infamous “larger audience”. Three days of work meant less festival program for me. Hence, my somewhat arbitrary picks below.

Montreal based coder/performer Jason Levine kicked-off the festival opening night at the Landmark with his visualized dance & beatboxing performance “Baudi(o) painting”. Live, abstract graphics from kinect-tracked vocals were projected on top of the white-clad performer resulting to an “animation”, where the body of the performer disappeared into the generated graphics from his voice. Excellent vocal skills combined with lagless graphics made it an immersive experience. Previous recording of similar style can be found here.

MP19 is an analog audio hacker collective (I think) who run a workshop for building their analog sound effect tools, Disruptor (delay-modulator) and Schmutz (octaver). With mostly digital tools we use it is both refreshing and plain important to use & understand analog electronics in the context of human-technoogy relationship. These relatively simple circuit board designs are great platforms to learn how the electrons really travel around the circuit and effect or distort the sound. And it’s seriously fun. My kits still wait to be soldered, but some taste of the tools can be found from here. All free/libre open source hardware as we like them, improve them and preserve them.

MP19 performed also with/within S∆G∆∆N group in their S∆G∆∆N_incoherent scatter show. Live data from satellites and radio frequencies created the soundscape where visuals of analog microcosmos were juxtaposed macrocosmos of live weather satellite charts. This immediacy and intimacy worked very well together and was conceptual enough to stay clear from the potential patronizing undertone of remixing world information data and surveillance theme.

Milkymist is an open hardware video synthesizer. It can do funky things for pixels, live, lagless from included cam, no computer needed. Sébastian Bourdeauducq is one talented hardware designer behind this beauty and If you are not in immediate need of powerful video synthesizer, don’t let the box fool you. You could repurpose it to an electronic brain for pretty much any need you can think of. If you’re ok with low-level FPGA hacking that is, which I’m sure you are. NASA used it’s memory controller bit for their space… you know, things.

“Silicone Bake” -performance ended the saturday evening at USF with a wonderful contrast from the predominant “corporeal volume” of the previous performances with singing, acoustic guitar & live-coded beats & bases. Live coder Alex McLean with his Tidal music improvisation software collaborated with singer/guitarrist (&FLOSS advocate) Jake Harries. The lyrics of the “3.5 minutes pop-songs”, sung beautifully by Jake Harris, were all from spam emails, with themes of love, death and counterfeit watches. Reading the projected Alex’s coding on Tidal was surprisingly effortless and entertaining. The low light & mellow sounds carried us back in time to the intimate small-club-feel of the best MTV Unplugged gigs in mid 90′s, only to be interrupted by frequent and hysterical bursts of laughter from the spam lyrics.

With my designer hat on, I must give my thumbs up also for APO33 of their Piksel11 logo (stream machine). This physical sculpture of computer gear forming the Piksel characters streamed the live audio and web radio from current and previous Piksel events. It was very nice to see and hear this in real life after getting to know it first in the festival communications material. Festival identity with the live festival pulse indeed.

I missed a lot, especially the Zero Dollar Laptop presentation from Jake Harris, The Pixelache Software of the Year 2012 “din is noise” live sessions, Andy Gracies Proxy and other Galleri 3.14 installations, but most of this is nicely described and linked on the Piksel11 website for us.

Thank you Piksel11 for the inspiration and hospitality. Keep it real, keep it free.
And remember kids, don’t copy – replicate.

The First Open Knowledge Finland Meetup 30.11.2011

2011-11-22T15:05:03+00:00

The first Open Knowledge Finland meet-up will take place in Helsinki on 30 November 2011. One of the main aims of the meet-up is to facilitate the foundation of a Finnish Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation. The event is free of charge and open to anyone interested in open knowledge.

more info

Baltan Session: The Tools Series #2

2011-11-22T15:00:29+00:00

December 1, 2011 7:30 pm

The Tools Series is a new series of Baltan Sessions that examines the complex and changing relationships artists and designers have with the technologies and tools they develop, modify or use to create. We aim to explore social awareness around the tool choices they make as well as the (aesthetic) influences of these choices on the work they create. We also examine the role of the lab in supporting the creation of, access to and sharing of knowledge about these tools.

Image made using the Baltan Cutter, a tool by Jonathan Puckey and Eric de Haas.

TOOLS SERIES #2: CREATE OR GENERATE

Thursday, 1 December 2011
Time: 19:30
Location: Edhv, Fuutlaan 12B, 5613 AB Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Admission: 2 Euro (drinks included)

In 2011, Jonathan Puckey and Eric de Haas worked together to develop a tool that could be used to shape the visual identity of Baltan Laboratories. One of the starting points was to create a tool that balances on the thin line between create and generate. During this Baltan Session they will present the outcomes of this collaboration as well as some of their other tool-related work. The dialogue between Eric and Jonathan that took place during the design process can be found here: http://baltanlaboratories.tumblr.com

We have also invited design studio Edhv – the host of this evening’s session – to speak about some of the tools from their toolbox, specifically related to generative design.

Biographies

Jonathan Puckey
Jonathan Puckey is a graphic designer and programmer. He studied graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. He is one of the founding members of Conditional Design together with Luna Maurer, Roel Wouters and Edo Paulus. He is an active contributor to the open source graphics programming environments Scriptographer and Paper.js. He teaches interaction design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and is a visiting lecturer at Yale University. His clients include SMBA, Metropolis M, AOL, NY Times Magazine and Esquire Magazine. Starting in 2012, Jonathan Puckey will be starting a new design studio together with Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters.

Eric de Haas
http://www.thebrokenheadlines.org

Edhv
Edhv is known for its unconventional approach to projects. We can best be described as architects of identity. We work in an interdisciplinary setting so that all aspects of identity can be fully integrated. Composition of project teams that include people with a diverse range of specialties like graphic design, spatial design and new media is essential in this process. To achieve ultimate results, a base of trust and intensive collaboration with the client and his/her organisation is a necessity.
http://www.edhv.nl

super circuit bending with transistors

2011-11-22T00:57:26+00:00

I’ve got more to write about than I have time to write but I’m so excited that I had to draw up the quick sketch above and write a little something about what I’ve been up to. The circuit above is a transistor based loop/retrigger circuit. I’m not excited about what this circuit does as [...]

Surround Sound im Central Garden Coded Cultures 2011

2011-11-19T15:20:53+00:00

Florian Schmeiser installierte einen “vibrate space” im central garden am donaukanal, mit 8 tonkanälen wurden die 400m2 öffentlicher raum zu einem sound-erlebnis.

in dem projekt involviert waren noch fünf weitere elektronik musikerInnen: Nik Hummer, Electric Indigo, Bernhard Gal, Elisabeth Schimana, und Peter Szely. komponiert wurde gemeinsam…

INTERVIEW mit Florian Schmeisser:

USB-Sticks im Gemäuer Wiens… ein Projekt von Aram Bartholl Coded Cultures 2011

2011-11-18T15:39:54+00:00

analog – aber bitte digital. statt aus der internetcloud, überraschungsinformationen aus der hauswand….
aram bartholl sucht nach löchern im gemäuer der stadt… schließt diese wieder und hinterlässt dort einen usb stick zum datenaustausch im öffentlichen raum.

A Blueprint for a Lab of the Future

2011-11-18T09:47:26+00:00

Baltan’s latest publication, A Blueprint for a Lab of the Future is out now! This extensive publication presents the results of and reflections on Baltan’s two-year pilot phase undertaken from 2008 to 2010.

A Blueprint for a Lab of the Future is Baltan’s second publication, following The Future of the Lab, which was launched at ISEA2010 RUHR (International Symposium on Electronic Art) in Dortmund, Germany last year. This new publication is designed by Eric de Haas and Martijn Maas.

Send an email to info[AT]baltanlaboratories.org to order your copy.
Price: 25,00 Euro (excl. shipping costs).
ISBN: 978-90-815830-0-8.
Full colour, paperback, 343 pages.

All photos: Boudewijn Bollmann

Piksel11 & Pixelache Software of the Year 2012

2011-11-18T09:13:45+00:00

We are pleased to announce that the Pixelache Software of the Year 2012 title is this time given toRead the Rest...

Piksel11 & Pixelache Software of the Year 2012

2011-11-17T17:17:58+00:00

The 9th annual Piksel Festival for Electronic Art and Technological Freedom launches today in Bergen! The festival subtitle re:public connects to various strategies for rethinking and redefining public space, both as a concrete physical space, and in a larger social and political context. More info about the festival programme.

We are pleased to announce that the Pixelache Software of the Year 2012 title is this time given to din – din is noise and will be featured at Piksel through a workshop and presentation.

din is a Free software musical instrument exclusively for the GNU/Linux operating system made by the Indian programmer S. Jagannathan. din – din is noise presents an innovative way of generating live music from a simple visual interface based on Bezier curves, and is a good example of how creative and DIY technologies can foster new approaches and solutions that escapes the leading rules of the software industry.

It forgets history,
To not repeat it.

It doesnt hide analog music hardware,
In digital music software.

You had pulse, sine, triangle and sawtooth,
And went forth and made electronic music.

Now there is just the Bezier curve.

Pixelache Software of the Year is an initiative by Pixelache Network, started in 2008. The chosen software for the first year was Animata, a live animation software by Kitchen Budapest. In 2010 it was divided by the live CD distributions pure:dyne between GOTO10 and APODIO by APO33.

More information:
http://www.piksel.no/p11/presentations11#Jagannathan
din – din is noise

Open call from Hirvitalo theme: ACTION/PARTICIPATION

2011-11-17T16:54:09+00:00

Center of Contemporary Art Pispala is calling for submissions of exhibitions related to the Spring season 2012 theme: ACTION/PARTICIPATION.

Artist can use Center of Contemporary Art Pispala as a workplace during the exhibition period and visitors can participate to the exhibition by meeting the artist and getting to know the artist’s work. The artist is wished to be present as often as possible. The artist must discuss about supervision of the exhibition with Center of Contemporary Art Pispala.

Exhibitions can also include other activities like workshops, cafes or other possibilities of participation with the visitors.

The possible exhibition periods are three 3 week periods between 1.3.-31.5.2012.

The gallery space includes two rooms upstairs and one room downstairs. Other spaces might be used by request.

The layout for gallery space upstairs
The layout for gallery space downstairs can be seen here:

Submit your informal application and CV to the address: Hirvitalo, Hirvikatu 10, 33240 Tampere. You can also submit your application by email to the address: hirvitalo.archive(at)gmail.com

The application must be submitted by January 13th, 2012.

Applications will be reviewed in an open meeting in the end of January 2012.
Center of Contemporary Art Pispala will announce the date later in January.
All applicants will be notified by the end of January 2012.

Center of Contemporary Art Pispala, Hirvitalo
Hirvikatu 10
33240 Tampere

www.hirvikatu10.net

Opening hours Tuesday to Sunday 2 PM to 7 PM

The Firebird showing at Korean Film Festival

2011-11-15T17:26:30+00:00

I originally made The Firebird for fulldome projection at 2400x2400 resolution. It won a couple of awards at the Domefest film festival in 2007 at the LodeStar planetarium in Albuquerque. It has since shown at the Redcat Disney/Calarts Theater, Los...

Social Responsibility & Design: Future Development of Suburbs Lecture Series

2011-11-15T11:54:35+00:00

Social Responsibility & Design research platform, based in University of Helsinki Geosciences and Geography department, begins on Thursday 17.11. from 13-15 a lecture series on the future development of suburbs from both a local and international perspective. Public attendees are encouraged to attend the multi-disciplinary series at the University Main Building (Fabianinkatu) which covers artistic, community, environmental and economic angles. There are several events in December, and next year in January, February and start of March 2012. It is a partnership between the above-mentioned department, British Council Finland, Goethe Institute, Aalto University, Doctoral Programme in the Built Environment, and other partners for the World Design Capital official programme. For more information: http://www.responsibledesign.fi/index.php/suburban

This lecture series has been arranged as part of the Helsinki 2012 World Design Capital and is part of the Social Responsibility & Design project. The lectures will explore the future development of suburbs through combining the knowledge of local experts from different fields and draw out the key local challenges, and reflect upon their successes and failures. In doing so the lectures will stimulate fruitful discussion that will be of benefit to urban planners, designers or constructors of the suburban built environment and those interested in the issue of social and ecological sustainability. It is hoped that the sharing of experiences from the case studies will reveal clearer pathways as to how the challenges that face the future development of suburbs might be better addressed in Finland and beyond.

The series will bring to Finland distinguished speakers from around Europe, each approaching the development and design of suburbs from a different angle. These events bring together local universities, cultural institutions and experts as well experts from other European countries.

Celeste Finalist

2011-11-14T19:55:36+00:00

I was a finalist for the Celeste Prize, one of 50 selected from thousands of entries for a show at the Invisible Dog Art Center and competing for a 6000 euro prize!...

STRP Festival: Presentation by Holst Centre and Baltan Laboratories

2011-11-14T14:34:03+00:00

November 26, 2011 2:15 pm

Image courtesy of Sonia Cillari.

Holst Centre and Baltan Laboratories are working together as part of a research collaboration that connects artists with the latest technology research in the field of wireless sensors and flexible electronics. This collaboration is based on a desire to investigate the ways and potential of collaboration between industrial and art labs in order to support artistic and scientific research. In partnership with STRP Festival, we are also looking at ways to stimulate critical reflection on, and new ways of presentation of, the knowledge and work created through this process.

On November 26th, Koen Snoeckx (communication manager, Holst Centre) and Angela Plohman (director, Baltan Laboratories) will discuss the framework of this collaboration at the STRP Festival. We will also present some results from the first artistic project in the framework of this collaboration by artist Sonia Cillari, which is an investigation into heart rhythm coherency. Sonia and hardware developer Stock have been researching the idea that emotions we experience directly affect our heart rhythm pattern and this, in turn, tells us much about what we are feeling. As part of their research they have been working with ECG necklaces developed at Holst Centre. This is a collaboration with Optofonica Laboratory for Immersive ArtScience in Amsterdam.

Practical info:
Date: November 26, 2011
Time: 14:15-14:45
Location: STRP Expo Cubicle, Klokgebouw, Eindhoven
http://strp.nl/en/programme/2011/holst-centre-and-baltan-laboratories/

HOLST CENTRE
Holst Centre is an independent open-innovation R&D centre that develops generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous Sensor Technologies and Flexible Electronics. A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model with industry and academia based around shared roadmaps and programs. It is this kind of cross-fertilization that enables Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to industrial needs. Holst Centre was set up in 2005 by imec (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands) with support from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Government of Flanders. It is named after Gilles Holst, a Dutch pioneer in Research and Development and first director of Philips Research. Located on High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Holst Centre benefits from the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over 150 employees from around 25 nationalities and a commitment from close to 30 industrial partners.
http://www.holstcentre.com

BALTAN LABORATORIES
Baltan Laboratories initiates, mediates and shares innovative research and development at the intersection of art, design and technological culture. Baltan sees the laboratory as a way of working. It is both a network and a methodology for creating and sharing new concepts, tools and knowledge. Baltan is a flexible, collaborative platform for future thinking that places art and design research at the core of its activities.

SONIA CILLARI
Sonia CIllari is an Italian media artist and architect who lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). Her work involves the creation of sensorial and perceptual mechanisms in immersive and augmented environments. Her artistic investigation examines how patterns of consciousness, perception and identity emerge in such settings. Over the last years she has been specifically interested in a field of research concerning the ‘Body as Interface’. She has been artist in residence at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Netherlands Media Art Institute/NIMK, STEIM: Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, M4gastatelier (Amsterdam, NL), V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, NL), [ars]numerica (Montbeliard, FR) and Claudio Buziol Foundation (Venice, IT). Her interactive installations, which are at the intersection of architecture and performance art, have been exhibited and presented internationally. She received the ‘First Prize’ at VIDA 13.0: Art & Artificial Life International Competition (Madrid, SP 2010), ‘Art Division Excellence Prize’ at 11th Japan Media Arts Festival (Tokyo, JP 2007), ‘Honorary Mention’ at Prix Ars Electronica, Interactive Art (Linz, AT 2011 and 2007) and VIDA 9.0 (Madrid, SP 2006). She is part of the core group of Optofonica Laboratory for Immersive ArtScience (Amsterdam).
http://www.soniacillari.net

test

2011-11-10T10:44:36+00:00

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