I've just got back from Ars Electronica after an enjoyable weekend meeting many artists and others interested in the whole field of digital art. A total of six Golden Nicas were awarded out of a total 3,177 entries from 71 countries. I will be reporting on some of the projects I saw at Ars Electronica but in the mean time here are the winners of the Golden Nicas.

'458nm ' by Ilija Brunck, Tom Weber and Jan Bitzer from the Film Academy of Baden Württemberg were the winners of the Computer Animation / Visual Effects category.

'It’s midnight. A smattering of moonlight falls upon the forest floor. Two mechanical snails move slowly through the darkness. They confront one another and briefly take the measure each other’s powers before uniting in love play. With mounting ecstasy, their transparent bodies begin to glow,but just before climax a dark shadow looms over them'

The Digital Music category was awarded to sound pioneer Eliane Radigue for a contemplative piece entitled '“L’îIe re-sonante.'

According to Eliane Radigue, “L’îIe re-sonante” (The Resonating Isle) was inspired by a moment in which the musician saw an island in a lake while the water reflected her face. Such an image is twoelements in one— a “real” picture and an optical illusion. The depth of the water is reflected by thedeeper tones; the higher tones float above them like the island jutting out of the water.

Eliane Radigue composes electro-acoustic music. In the early ‘50s, she was one of the pioneers of this genre (together with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry). The same consistency and economy with which she works exclusively with an ARP synthesizer has characterized her musical mode of expression for decades. Lately, she has been discovered as a model by a younger generation of musicians.

Interactive Art winner was Paul DeMarinis for his installation '“The Messenger'

E-mails from all over the world are received by a computer and distributed to three systems of bizarre output devices that enable installation visitors to experience the messages sensorially. First, to 26 washbasins arrayed in a large oval; the number of basins is identical to the number of letters in the alphabet, and a different voice is assigned to each one. Built-in loudspeakers serially in tone the individual letters of the incoming e-mail.

Second, there’s a chorus line of 26 dancing skeletons;each skeleton wears a small poncho prominently displaying one of the letters of the alphabet. The individual letters of the message activate the corresponding skeleton and the chorus line’s dance reproduces the text of the e-mail.

And third, there’s a series of 26 electrolytic jars with metalelectrodes in the form of the letters A to Z that oscillate and bubble when electricity is passed through them and let the letters of the e-mail glow in color.

The system stores no information and has no data processing capabilities. If the signals are not observed, written down and interpreted, then the installation is the end of the line for messages that had traveled around the world to meet their demise here. The installation thus becomes an allegory for messages whose final destination is a total void —a phenomenon that has become a standard component of everyday life in the modern world. According to DeMarinis, “The Messenger” is based on early ideas about telegraphy and especially those of Catalan physician and naturalist Francesc Salva. He designed an “output device” for his telegraph equipment that involved an array of 26 servants who, following “stimulation” in the form of an electrical shock, would each call out a particular letter of the transmitted message, which could then be understood by a listener. The installation takes this as the point of departure for a consideration of the interrelationships between electricity and democracy, and how electronic communications technologies have led to loneliness and isolation just as they have contributed to the enrichment of our lives and experiences.  

“The Road Movie” by the Japanese artists group exonemo takes the Golden Nica in the Net Vision category.

“The Road Movie” is what might be called a mobile installation that originated in conjunction with a live project entitled “MobLab” in which young Japanese and German artists undertook encounters with art and communication during a journey by bus through Japan. While the group was traveling through a wide variety of landscapes, the webcam mounted on the bus produced five images of the surroundings every five minutes. The image files were uploaded to the Internet in the form of a piece of origami art.

canal*ACCESSIBLE was winner in the Digital Communities category

As its name suggests, canal*ACCESSIBLE addresses the accessibility or inaccessibility inherent in the topographical surroundings of people who have difficulty walking. The city of Barcelona is taken as an example. 40 handicapped individuals document the problems they encounter on their waythrough the city by using images and, in a few cases, sound recordings. This material is posted to the website, and the places at which each one was created are specified on a city map. These locations can then be accessed using a built-in “find” function. The result is a map of Barcelona’s inaccessibility for those confined to wheelchairs, a cartographic representation of the parts of town that are closed to people with handicaps. In this way, 3,336 architectural barriers and stumbling blocks have been documented on canal*ACCESSIBLE since December 2005 —thus, empowerment of disadvantaged segments of the population as something other than empty phrases for once.

The winning project in the u19– freestyle computing competition for young people was “Abenteuer Arbeitsweg,” an animated film by Alexander Niederklapfer, David & Magdalena Wurm and Ehrentraud Hager, Linz youngsters age 13 to 15. The project also featured a highly polished website including a trailer and a news service. 

images are copyright of ars electonica

Originally from artificialeyes.tv reblog by Ruairi reBlogged on Sep 5, 2006, 1:48AM

PICK

Williamsburg / Greenpoint

Christopher Reiger

Mongrel Truth consists of Reiger's latest series of paintings accompanied by a collection of 20 small drawings.

Reiger's work is principally concerned with contemporary man's mutable conception of Nature and his relationship to his animal armature. Growing up on the rural Delmarva Peninsula, his youthful days of hunting, fishing, or simply playing were similar to those of Lewis Carol's "Alice in Wonderland". Those childhood adventures let him built his interest in Nature and its relationship to human being. Evolving into a fascination with biology and behavioral science, he realized amazingly increasing numbers of facts about Nature, in the meantime, became aware of how human being is ignorant of these facts.

In this exhibition, Mongrel Truth, Reiger introduces an extreme beauty of ambivalent nature in imaginary landscapes. Animals are displaced, transplanted into hallucinatory landscapes, suggesting the possible scenarios of our contemporary cultural and political climate. He states that the global populace is increasingly uncertain and insecure. We embrace hybrid cosmologies, mixing our traditional stories and religions with science, consumerism and imported narratives. His latest series of paintings depicts our anxiety of this world-view hysterical transcendentalism.

Image from AG Gallery.

These paintings don't reproduce well. It is important to know that these paintings are done on stretched paper - they are incredibly luminous in person. - PJ

Chelsea

Installation view of Security by Christina Kubisch at the South London Gallery, London, November 2005, Produced by Electra. Photo: Marcus Leith

Invisible Geographies: New Sound Art from Germany is an exhibition that includes installations by four German sound artists who trace the topography of the audible world to produce alternative maps of the space that surrounds us. The artists are Jens Brand, Christina Kubisch, Stefan Rummel, and Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag. Invisible Geographies is curated by Christoph Cox.

Since its emergence in the 1970s, sound art has flourished in Germany. The artists in this exhibition represent an intergenerational cross-section of sound art methods, from explorations of the basic physics and phenomenology of sound to interventions into the world of consumer audio. Despite their differences, each of these artists makes use of sound as a topographical and cartographical medium. At The Kitchen, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag generates long sound waves that transform the gallery into a palpable landscape of peaks and valleys. Using modified consumer electronics, Jens Brand causes satellites to play the earth's surface the way a stylus plays a vinyl record. Stefan Rummel produces imaginary communities whose inhabitants are vibrating loudspeakers and murmuring sounds. And Christina Kubisch leads visitors on a walk through the audible electromagnetic network of Chelsea.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Berlin-based sound artist Carsten Nicolai presents Xerrox, a new work that conjoins live electronic music and video. The solo performance will take place on Saturday, September 23 at 8pm.

Image from The Kitchen.

Sep. 4, 2006. 11:03 AM

NEW YORK—Broadcasters say hesitancy by some CBS network affiliates to air a Sept. 11 documentary next week proves there has been a chilling effect on free speech rights since federal regulators cracked down after Janet Jackson's breast was exposed on TV in 2004.

Actor Robert De Niro hosts the award-winning documentary that began as a quest to follow a rookie firefighter on an ordinary day but resulted in the only known video of the first plane striking the World Trade Center. It includes profanity and some horrific scenes.

Several dozen CBS affiliates have decided to either replace the documentary or delay its broadcast until after 10 p.m., when the Federal Communications Commission loosens restrictions — even though the film has already aired twice with little controversy.

"This is example No. 1" of the chilling effect over concerns about profanity, said Martin Franks, executive vice-president of CBS Corp.

"We don't think it's appropriate to sanitize the reality of the hell of Sept. 11," Franks said. "It shows the incredible stress that these heroes were under. To sanitize it in some way robs it of the horror they faced."

The announcements to postpone or replace the documentary come as the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association readies its three million members to flood the FCC and CBS with complaints after the documentary airs, an effort that may trigger a close examination of the program by the FCC.

FCC spokeswoman Tamara Lipper said the commission routinely takes context into account in any decency analysis. "Context is always important," she said. "We don't police the airwaves. We respond to viewer complaints. We haven't seen the broadcast in question."

Associated Press Via The Toronto Star

A Book Event with Joline Blais, Alex Galloway, and Jon Ippolito

at the New Museum Store
556 West 22nd Street, New York City

Friday, September 8, 2006 -- 6:30-8:30pm

A brief dialogue between the authors will touch on such questions as the
place of art in larger society, the history of community design as an
artistic practice, and the role of games in digital culture. The
conversation will be followed by refreshments and a reception for the
authors.

featuring:

"Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture"
by Alexander R. Galloway
University of Minnesota Press, 2006
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/G/galloway_gaming.html

"At the Edge of Art"
by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito
Thames & Hudson, 2006
http://www.thamesandhudson.com/en/1/9780500238226.mxs

via Rhizome:

Rhizome and the New Museum are pleased to present "Art, Play, and
Community," which will celebrate the release of Joline Blais and Jon
Ippolito's "At the Edge of Art" and Alex Galloway's "Gaming." Both
ground-breaking books explore new media art as an expanded field, that
interacts and enliven disciples from design to art to video games to
science.

According to "At the Edge of Art" by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito,
art's recent eruption in fields as diverse as artificial life, computer games,
and community activism reveals a seismic shift in the role it plays in
society. No longer content to sit on a pedestal or auction block, these
works infiltrate stock markets, sway court cases, and network bedrooms.
Alex Galloway's "Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture" takes an in-
depth look at one of these 'edges' to probe the cultural history and activity
of videogames, laying the foundation for critique that recognizes their
distinct mechanisms and politics.

Pop culture's current obsessions with 'reality' television and fictional 're-enactment' coincides interestingly with debates currently transpiring in the new media community regarding the nature of simulation. Some argue that many digital media both reference real events and surpass them by presenting images or experiences that never really happened. This confluence of ideals has triggered a number of special publications, listserv discussions, and exhibits on re-enactment. Most recently, the show, 'Playback_Simulated Realities,' open through November 5 at Oldenburg's Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst, seeks to investigate 'the influence and impact re-enactments and simulations have on society,' raising 'questions about the function of... substitute worlds developed in computer games' and discussing 'the yearnings for authentic experience which are also addressed in reconstructions of past eras.' The show includes a number of artists who are, themselves, quite legendary, including Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco, Christoph Draeger, Omer Fast, Lynn Hershman, and Eddo Stern, among others. Each selection carefully constructs a symbiotic relationship between the simulated scenario and the media employed in these (re)constructions. The organizers argue that 'the works shown in the exhibition examine... how experiences and memories are at once individually experienced and culturally construed,' thus reminding each of us of our binding role in these mediated charades. - James Petrie

http://www.edith-russ-haus.de/

I should add to my del.icio.us comment, that what is awesome about this project is that no customers complained that they received a doctored CD - PJ

This video was put together in June, but worth watching if you haven't already seen it. In particular look for the "All Things Bright and Beautiful" segment which profiles such products as the world's smallest torch, "The Daddle", Sony's new gadget vending machine, and of course, the Geek Shield featured above. -PJ"

The Internet once again proves itself to be the vast resource we knew it to be. -PJ

Skeletons and anatomy drawings of cartoons! Thanks 53os! -PJ

Michelle S posted the work of Hong Kong Artist Tsnak Kin-wah to .org and he has some amazing work on his site. It reminds me of the way Hirschfield would hide his name and words in his ink drawings, only theses are far more obvious - but there's something so appealing about using text to create imagery. He was the winner of the 2005 Sovereign Art Prize, the most prestigious art award in Asia, and the Prize of Excellence at the 2001 Hong Kong Art Biennial.

Upper East Side

Jessica Ciocci

Telling Tales is a subjective look at the last four decades of comics drawn by women.

Long a boys club, comics have, since the rise of the late 1960s underground, opened up to women as a medium like any other. Unfortunately, most current historical surveys are notable not only for the absence of women artists but also the absence of women as protagonists or even subjects in the medium itself. And while a gender-based exhibition might marginalize women even further, Telling Tales seems necessary as a slight corrective to the usual historical narrative.

The seventeen artists included here were chosen for their unique points of view and their idiosyncratic approaches to cartooning. All are free from the usual stylizations of comics, making stories that rely as much on line and mark as narrative and dialogue. Each artist has made an indelible mark on the medium, including Aline Kominsky Crumb, who helped revolutionize comics drawing with her scratchy line and brutal abstractions; Debbie Dreschler brings an unthinkably dense patterning to the medium; while Renée French's lush pencils convey meaning in each stroke. Younger artists, such as Lauren Weinstein and Amy Lockhart, have appropriated old genres, such as confessional and superhero comics, and used them for their own purposes. The larger story of these artists is swiftly evolving and Telling Tales will be just the first chapter of this long artistic narrative.

Image from Adam Baumgold Gallery.

Chelsea

Prosaically titled Elsewhere, Erik Benson's paintings describe, through both narrative and formal means, a psychogeography of placelessness that is as irremediably American as the strip mall, as expressively sober as the paintings of Edward Hopper, and as vertiginously drawn toward the Thanatos below the veneer of American optimism as the latest newspaper headline.

Constructed analogically--that is to say, with a view to formally approaching certain processes of pre-fabrication, modularity and design--Benson's landscapes of flattened exurbia mimic certain hidden, ubiquitous forces of production through a signature method of collage-as-painting. Painstakingly made by first applying acrylic paint to glass, and, once dry, cutting and affixing it to canvas, Benson's paintings accrue visual information in the manner of Lego blocks: the better to point up the gaps between space, architecture and its putative inhabitants, which in Benson's paintings are always missing.

Crafting a genuinely innovative brand of realism whose formal underpinnings connect intimately to a subject matter so ubiquitous it nearly sinks from view, Benson's paintings of corporate office towers, strip-malls and graffiti-scarred highway barriers appear at once as delicately balanced, nearly abstract compositions of geometric color, and also as particularly beautiful condensations of highly poetic loneliness. Liminal, in-between spaces at the threshold of meaning and non-thought, Benson's views of the most ordinary of 21st Century landscapes distill, like most great art, a uniquely important measure of mystery and power from exactly those vistas that remain unexamined.

Image from Roebling Hall.

Chelsea

Seth Price

Seth Price's show appears in three venues: Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). The show considers film and video, and how the moving image is used and circulated today, whether in the art world or in more popular forums. At Friedrich Petzel and Reena Spaulings, Price exhibits two new, related films, each offering a different approach to these questions. At EAI, the artists' video distributor located just upstairs from Friedrich Petzel, Price releases a new video for widespread distribution.

EAI Checklist

Digital Video Effect: "Editions". 2006. 10 min.
At EAI, Price debuts a video that serves as a sampler of his editioned videos to date, all of which have been sold through Reena Spaulings or Friedrich Petzel. Here, fragments of sound and image from the editions have been brought together, yielding a montage that, while bordering on incoherence, provides access to these publicly unavailable artworks. As with all EAI videos, the piece will be a low-priced, unlimited multiple, with screening rights, to be rented and sold to art centers, film festivals, and schools. Price's piece, or any others in the extensive collection, can be seen in EAI's viewing room (by appointment only; call 212-337-0680; preview an online video clip at eai.org). This piece will remain available indefinitely after the rest of the show closes.

Image from Reena Spaulings.

Thanks M.River -PJ

An interview with Seth (Gregory Gallant). On a slightly more personal note, Seth now lives in my home town, Guelph Ontario. -PJ

Filed under: Culture, Action, Adventure, Fighting, Meta

The net's full of debate about the perfect game protagonist (ninjas, pirates, or robots?) but too little real debate about what makes the perfect in-game enemy.

In comments on yesterday's post about upcoming Xbox 360 (Japan) zombie stomper Oneechanbara, Joystiq reader Gimbal posited that risen corpses may well be the ideal enemy: "Zombies, like Nazis, are the perfect enemy for video games." Zatso? What makes a perfect enemy anyway?

The perfect enemy is:

• Ugly: the perfect enemy generates involuntary revulsion on the part of the beholder. Examples: Alien, Klingons, Predator, zombies, headcrabs, trolls, orcs, snakes.
• Inherently dangerous: It's in the enemy's nature to damage humans or the human way of life. If the enemy is to live, humans must suffer. Whether driven by pure malice, the need for a warm, wet place to lay eggs, or mere appetite for brainsss, the enemy's existence must be predicated on human destruction.
• Foreign: the perfect enemy cannot share the same values as the protagonist. Whether that means the enemy believes that Democracy is wrong (and Communism right) or the believes that humans are tasty: foreign values allow all sorts of wonderful misunderstanding and conflict. The enemy should not speak our own language.
• Sentient: the perfect enemy is smart enough to maliciously plan your death. The Atlantic ocean, for instance, is inherently dangerous, but tends to be at the mercy of winds and doesn't appear to be plotting against us all.
• Politically appropriate: the perfect enemy is culturally and politically acceptible to hate and destroy. In ages past, the perfect enemy might have been the Visigoths, Muslims (remember the Crusades?), people with different skin color, whatever. Nowadays, it's generally more politically correct for the enemy to be inhuman. Zombies and aliens make great enemies precisely because it's hard for America's religious extremists to object to ostensibly wholesome themes such as "protect the human race from Martian invaders!" or "Defend your homeland from unholy swarms of undead!"
• Difficult but not impossible to eliminate: The perfect enemy needs to be vulnerable (else there's no hope, and no way to win the game), but not so vulnerable that the enemy doesn't pose a credible threat.

Is this definition sufficiently inclusive? Any examples of enemies that fall outside of the requirements?

Additional reading: How To Be An Evil Villian: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans, and More!!! - PJ

Summer as we know it is over.  Oh, maybe not officially - or even weather-wise - but carefree days are giving way to stress-filled ones as we stand at the precipice of the return to school.

With that in mind, this Saturday night's simulcast comes complete with a special, ‘value-added' feature.  We mean besides the Radio Singers.

Besides great new music from Dearly Beloved, Lullaby Baxter, Arcs, and The Rosewood Thieves, Craig and Pedro have put together a ‘radio drama' culled from the 1947 hit "Shy Guy".  Even though this film was produced 60 years ago, its cutting-edge, salient advice is just as topical today.

If you're worried about fitting in at school this year, you cannot miss this show.
Don't say we didn't warn you.

Tune in tonight for a coast-to-coast live simulcast of CBC Radio 3, airing all over North America on Sirius Satellite Radio (channel 94) and across Canada on CBC Radio Two 7:30 PM - 12:00 AM ET / 4:30 PM - 9:00 PM PT.

Also via Wired: Monkey Bites

Karolina Sobecka makes night projections of wild animals from moving cars. The coolest thing about the project is that the movements of the animals are programmed to match the speed of the car that is projecting it.

She writes... "as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also. The framerate of the movie corresponds to the speed of the wheel rotation, picked up by a sensor. If the presence of a moving object (such as another car or pedestrian) is detected with proximity sensors, its animal "avatar" appears in the projection.

Check out the video here.

Find out why social software deserves your time - PJ

PICK

Chelsea

Michael Bell-Smith - La Vaughn Belle - Jason Hackenwerth - Alejandra Villasmil

This mixed media exhibition focuses on four artists who explore the relationships between absence, fantasy, and technology in contemporary culture.

"By subtly manipulating and transforming the familiar iconography of childhood fantasies and adult fictions, the artists in this exhibition demonstrate the boundless potential of imagination. While imagination is the fount of the many forms of entertainment these artists appropriate, from the video game to the soap opera, its purpose is not limited to creating mere escapist flights of fancy; in the right hands these fantastic forms can be used to help us make sense of ourselves and the world." - Murtaza Vali, Guest Writer

Curator: Jaret Vadera

Image from Rush Arts.

PICK

Chelsea

Carolyn Swiszcz, Flowerama, 2006, monotype, ink, acrylic on paper, 19 × 41.5 in.

Shelf Life, is an exhibition by Carolyn Swiszcz, and is coupled with a Project Room show by Mickey Kerr.

For this exhibition entitled Shelf Life, the Minnesota-based painter/printmaker once again demonstrates her provocative take on strip mall stores and store window displays. The humble appeal of these barely surviving Midwest suburban stores inspires the artist to conduct detailed investigations into their materials and the designs of their displays. Swiszcz explained it like this in one of her recent magazine interview:

When I see these window displays my heart swells and I think, 'Oh! They're trying! Somebody tried their best with their time and resources.' They actually made those decisions and ordered those signs and they had dreams about their business.

While being faithful to her observation, Swiszcz also applies hyper-real colors and patterns to the buildings and their surroundings, combining varied techniques of painting, drawing and printmaking. Swiszcz's dollhouse-like painted buildings cynically but affectionately crystallize the dreams and ambitions of middle class Americans for a better life. If the products these stores sell have a shelf life, shouldn't the business itself? Swiszcz seems to know the answer. "Ultimately I'd like things to stay the way they are, and since those places seemed doomed, I can at least preserve them in my work."

Image from M.Y. Art Prospects.