BoingBoing reader Alex Steffen points us to a new exhibition opening in January at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Jan 17–Apr 4, 2004:

In conjunction with the Stanford Humanities Laboratory and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, the Center presents an exhibition that addresses the pervasive influence of video game culture. The program explores a variety of subject areas, from the evolution of the game and its roots in military training applications to its contemporary features and cross-fertilization with artistic endeavors. Among the anticipated projects included in the exhibition are: an interactive lemon tree-powered hand held games by acclaimed artist and graphic designer, Amy Franceschini; renderings of historic events in the isometric perspective of video games by John Haddock; and a curated show in a virtual Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in The Sims Online created by Katherine Isbister/Rainey Straus. Also on display is an interactive video game created by the youth from YBCA's education program, Young Artists at Work. An exhibition plug-in by KOP, Game Commons, will accompany the exhibition.

sn - 0 notes - software programs for social network analysis

So, what exactly does one call a cash prize for weblogs? Bling-blog? Digital arttfest Ars Electronica recently announced that the 2004 competition will include the new category "Digital Communities," awarding cash prizes to projects of great sociopolitical relevance. Howard Rheingold posts more details here, including a snip from instructions on how to apply. Thanks to all who have suggested BoingBoing as an entrant, but since co-editor Cory is a judge this will not be possible.

Prix Ars Electronica, the foremost international prize for computer-based art, offers an open platform for the encounter with leading-edge trends in art, technology, and society. Over the last 17 years, more than 24,800 works from 87 countries have been submitted for Prix Ars Electronica consideration. With a total prize money of 130,000 Euro this year, and no participation fee, it is the highest endowed and most reknown competition in this field worldwide.

The new category "Digital Communities" - to be awarded for the first time in 2004 - encompasses the wide-ranging social consequences of the Internet as well as the latest developments in the domain of mobile communications and wireless networks. "Digital Communities" will spotlight bold and inspired innovations impacting human coexistence, bridging the digital divide regarding gender as well as geography, or creating outstanding social software and enhancing accessibility of technological-social infrastructure.

gis - 0 notes - distorting maps to show election results

The University of Maine's Joline Blais and John Ippolito have created a project called the Pool which is, according to the article:

a collaborative online environment for creating and sharing images, music, videos, programming code and texts

I saw John Ippolito, Joline Blais and Lawrence Lessig speak at Eyebeam a few weeks back about their respective projects. Lessig is, of course, behind Creative Commons; Blais presented the Pool; and Ippolito presented his own project for encouraging artists to go one step farther and open source their project's source or "mother" files.

I like Ippolito's ideas about sharing these more valuable "working" files as I call them. It would mean making your .FLA, Final Cut source files, .PSDs, .AIs and so on available freely to the public. There is a problem however when it comes to bandwidth and storage for what could be massive working files (especially for any project which uses video).

So, one piece of the puzzle is to have *free* storage space on public servers for artists to store their working files along with a searchable database of all the stuff and where it is. I've been toying with the idea of taking up the cause...

Douglas Rushkoff (yes, the writer, Douglas Rushkoff) is a member of Psychic TV (now called PTV3).

Anyone who attended art school anywhere in the late 80s/early 90s will know who Psychic TV is/was. Genesis P-Orridge was somewhat unique in those days in realizing the value of networks and set-up a little club around PTV called.. what was it called? All my roommates in college were members.. Psychic Friends Network? No. OH YEAH! The Temple of Psychic Youth or as Google points out, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. But maybe I or my college roommates are/were confused and there is no connection between PTV and TOPY.

Whatever.

-----------

ArtLeaf.net is a new web site on art and the art world. Looks to be pretty well put together with forums dedicated to big museum shows in NYC and Boston (not much action yet), a couple of articles and a section about artists in their studios.

-----------

Scott Rosenberg has an interesting article in Salon regarding RSS (free registration required if not a subscriber).

He compares RSS in 2003 to HTML in 1994 suggesting that it is just as important. It seems to me that a tech writer would have jumped on RSS longer ago. Though it's an article for newbies (as he points out in his blog) he makes some interesting points.

His blog is good and I recommend it.

The three best games of 2003 are either updates of classics or simple in concept, argues the BBC's Neil McGreevey.

Microsoft researchers have come up with a way to slow down spammers and make them 'pay' for e-mails.

An appeals court clears a Norwegian man of DVD piracy charges brought against him by the US movie industry.

Supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark launch an initiative to create open-source campaign-management software. With primary elections fast approaching, backers say they need better tools for their efforts. By Chris Ulbrich.

Recently opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: "nano," a cool art/science exhibit for geeks of all ages:

nano [is] an exhibition that merges the arts and the atom by
presenting the world of nanoscience through a participatory aesthetic
experience. The
exhibition, a collaboration between LACMALab and a UCLA team of nanoscience,
media arts, and humanities experts, is free to the public and runs through
September 6, 2004 in LACMA's Boone Children's Gallery.

This groundbreaking project provides a greater understanding of how art,
science, culture, and technology influence each other. The exhibition
addresses sophisticated subject matter that is especially relevant for the
next generation. Modular, experiential spaces using embedded computing
technologies engage all of the senses to provoke a broader understanding of
nanoscience and its cultural ramifications. The various components of nano
are designed to immerse the visitor in the radical shifts of scale and
sensory modes that characterize nanoscience, which works on the scale of a
billionth of a meter. Participants can feel what it is like to manipulate
atoms one by one and experience nano-scale structures by engaging in
art-making activities.

Caspa.tv blog founder Antonio Delgado, who gave me a personal guided tour of all things geeky in Barcelona not long ago, sends word of a new addition to Spain's growing blogosphere:

Mainly composed of weblogs, Filmica project was born to become an open platform devoted to the present and future of the film and TV industries, collaborating the dialogue and extracting the knowledge from the information that is flowing on many spaces.

Each weblog is a personal site where authors freely write and comment about topics of their interest. Directors, producers, script-writers, journalists, proffessionals and fans will have their weblog installed and ready for them to write, freely. No computer skills required. At this moment, Filmica.com is at beta stage, finishing some adjustments and designs. The official opening is expected at the begining of 2004. People interested to open a weblog in Filmica should send an e-mail to weblogs@filmica.com, describing who the author is and what the subject of the weblog will be. The proposals will be reviewed.

On a recent trip to Spain, I caught up with Blast Theory cofounder Matt Adams for a chat about the wireless games his company develops -- high-adrenaline, multiplayer roleplaying experiences like "Can You See Me Now" and "Uncle Roy is All Around You." Here's a snip from Adams' explanation of these games, which take place simultaneously in virtual space and real space:

"It's a chase played simultaneously online (by the public) and in the streets (by assigned participants). You're dropped into a virtual city, you use avatars to navigate, and there's a chat interface so that real-world and online participants can text one another.

"You're chased in the real city and the virtual city, at the same time. Three runners on the street are equipped with PDAs, GPS devices and walkie-talkies. To "get" you, they have to come within five meters of your position. The game is physical and visceral, and we were amazed at just how clearly a sense of presence in time and space was communicated. Players in Seattle, Tokyo and Germany communicating with players on the ground in the U.K. could hear weather conditions, traffic, where the busy roads were -- "Hey, this road's jammed, why don't you zigzag back and forth here?" They learned where hills and valleys were along the game terrain -- "This one's too steep, go there instead."

When virtual players heard a runner say, "OK, she's really close now -- let's run up and get her," they told us the hair stood up on the back of their necks with an adrenaline rush -- "Shit! They're coming for me now" -- it was one of those things we thought would be interesting ahead of time, but had no idea there would be such a strong emotional and physical reaction in an online environment.

You can buy collectible old subway parts from the MTA

go to http://www.mta.info/nyct/materiel/collectsales/memsales_new1.htm

I want the rolling route indicator.

gis - 0 notes - geo::sketch

Roland Piquepaille says: "This is the end of the year and so it is time to give awards for 2003. And Utne Magazine just picked Smart Mobs, the collective blog led by Howard Rheingold for this year's Utne Independent Press Award for best online cultural coverage. This overview tells you why this award is deserved, what are smart mobs, and why you should become a smartmobber in 2004. It also includes a little-known picture of Howard *working* in his *office*.

Link

Cory Doctorow wrote a short piece for Warren Ellis's Statements of 2004 series: The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It's about realizing that all the really hard problems -- free expression, copyright, due process, social networking -- may have technical dimensions, but they aren't technical problems. The next twenty years are about using our technology to affirm, deny and rewrite our social...

Harold von Braunhut, who ingeniously marketed one of the ugliest and most boring aquatic creatures in existence -- the almost-invisible brine shrimp -- as" Sea Monekys," died last month.

"...Mr. von Braunhut's piece de resistance was Sea Monkeys -- which come from dried-up lake bottoms, not the sea, and are not monkeys but brine shrimp. His extravagant claims for the crustaceans -- for example, that they come back from the dead and that they can be trained and hypnotized-- are convincing because they are sort of true. (The shrimp do follow light.)

Billions of shrimp have been sold, not to mention a Sea Monkey aphrodisiac and a wrist watch filled with swimming shrimp. There are Web sites for sea monkey fans; CBS briefly had a Sea Monkeys series on Saturday mornings; 400 million of them went into space with John Glenn in 1998; and, for the lazy, a new Sea Monkey video game allows a player to 'virtually' care for a shrimp colony, lest the animals 'virtually' die."

Link (thanks Rael!)

In the UK Guardian today:

Bollywood movie fans will soon be able to download full-length features with the file-sharing software Kazaa. A deal struck between a partner of Sharman Networks Ltd, the company which owns Kazaa, and IndiaFM.com, a popular entertainment site, will allow Indian film producers to distribute movies, music and other large, rich media files online to an estimated 60 million international Kazaa users. The move follows a pilot scheme in November when Bollywood thriller Supari was offered for sale at US $2.99 and promoted through Kazaa prior to its release in India. The file was designed to self destruct after being watched and could not be copied.

Heavy, man: someone got a fan-tattoo for yet-to-be-nominated-by-the-Democratic-party US presidential candidate Howard Dean. Link (Thanks, boogah!)

Pho list co-founder Jim Griffin moderates a live discussion on copyright, digital entertainment, and the future of online music tomorrow (Tuesday 23 December) at
2.30 p.m. on 89.9 FM Santa Monica, simulcast on KCRW.com.

I'll be moderating, if you can call it that, a panel discussion
involving Matt Oppenheim of the RIAA, Sarah Deutsch of Verizon, Ted
Cohen of EMI and Fred von Lohmann of the EFF. That's a mouthful of
acronyms, to be sure, but one chock full 'o first-hand experience from
the front lines of this year's marquee battle over copyright
enforcement.

Back from the dead: Blogshares.com. (thanks, Jean-Luc)

Busy week in New York new media art, this is what's happening:

December 11, 2003



Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Eunjung Hwang and Reynold Reynolds speak at Eyebeam
7PM - 8:30PM as part of the exhibition Beta Launch '03: Artists in Residence.



Killer Instinct opening at the New Museum

Reception from 6:30 - 8PM.
From the NuMu website, "Games come off the screen and to life in this exhibition including sculpture, video, painting, and, of course, Ataris and computers. Besides experimental hacks of commercial games, Killer Instinct features artists who use game hardware and software for social commentary as well as in the development of musical and filmic projects."

December 12, 2003



Digital Culture Evening: Killer Instinct

6:30 - 8PM, A panel moderated by Alex Galloway, includes a gaggle of artists from the show.

Mark Napier's "Sacred Code" opening at Bitforms

Reception 6-8PM. Show runs through January 17th.

Radio Party @ The Thing, The Thing's end of the year Party.
Starts at 9PM, could go later than 11:45PM...

+++++++++++

One would have to spread themselves pretty thin to make all that stuff. Good thing there are two of MTAA ;-)