Call for Expressions of Interest _
http://www.intercreate.org/view/eco-sapiens

/
\\\\\\\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ SCANZ 2011: Eco sapiens

Extinction or adaptation? Evolution or Revolution? What are we facing?

The complexity and urgency of the crises of today calls for us to
engage together in new ways. Deep shifts in our consciousness may be
required for long-term cultural changes to occur. This is a call for
expressions of interest from people who are concerned with these issues.

A symposium followed by a residency is to be held late January to
early February 2011 in New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand. Initial
expressions of interest are due 21 November, 2009.

\
//////////////// / Symposium

The SCANZ 2011: Eco sapiens symposium will be an event involving
individuals from a number of different worlds (e.g scientists,
artists, social activists and community change agents, cultural
commentators, educators, tangata whenua). Our primary aim is to
facilitate connections and foster innovative, and practical solutions
to the issues we are facing. Accordingly, a mixture of presentations,
discussions, informal exchanges and workshops are planned. Roger
Malina will be presenting from France on 'Open observatories', and Te
Huirangi Waikerepuru will speak on Maori conceptions of environment.
The symposium will inspire and inform the residency that follows, and
also provide opportunities for people to collaborate on projects
beyond SCANZ.

\
//////////////// / Residency

The SCANZ 2011: Eco sapiens two week residency is designed for those
individuals or groups who would like to work on creative, poetically
pragmatic or provocative projects which raise awareness of the issues
that confront us, generate connections between people, and with their
natural environment, and which grapple with the challenges of
individual and collective evolution.

Interdisciplinary approaches and the involvement of diverse groups is
welcomed. Residency projects can take place in a wirelessly networked
botanic garden, along the coastline and with communities. Networked,
DIY, or otherwise actively and openly distributed concepts are also
encouraged. Project participants are not necessarily required to be in
New Plymouth. Residency projects that are shortlisted will be included
in funding applications.

read more for details or visit http://www.intercreate.org/view/eco-sapiens

continuing on from magic squares - video project? blog post - my summary of urls & excerpts to follow from the YASMIN Cybernetics Serendipity Redux discussion in 2008

:::

Nicolas Schoffer - one of the first artist to talk in public about Cybernetics and art. Nicolas Schoffer wikipedia page (english) -- via jnm - jean noel montagne

:::

from the work of Vladimir Bonacic, shown in Zagreb in 1968 "Vladimir Bonacic - the early works, Zagreb 1968-197" by darko fritz :

SCANZ 2009: Raranga tangata
The Weaving Together of People

Solar Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand (SCANZ) is the interCreate Research Centre's major project, a two week residency for artists, producers, writers, theorists and curators will be held in New Plymouth New Zealand from January 26th to February 8th 2009. Project partners are the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Puke Ariki integrated library and museum.

Raranga tangata refers to the weaving together of people, a phrase used to describe the internet and adopted by Sally Jane Norman and Sylvia Nagl in their work. The aim for SCANZ 2009 is to weave an enduring fabric of people and technology, located in this place: Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand, Pacific Ocean.

Residency
January 26th–February 8th

Symposium
February 7th–8th

I visited the Sticky Institute in Melbourne yesterday and bought a few zines and recorded a video asking the team a few basic questions about zines. The store has a wide selection of zines, and there's a membership / mail list where you can sign up and receive zines in the mail. If you're a zine-writer, you can contact the store and have them stock your zines. Their website also includes an impressive "Zineopedia" of Melbourne based zines which is a great resource for anyone wanting to find out more about zines. Though the best way would be to visit the store if you're in Melbourne, their website if you're not in Melbourne, or a local zine-festival and buy & read some zines. Or even better, start your own!

visit http://www.stickyinstitute.com for more details
store details :
Sticky Institute
Degraves St Subway
Shop 10 Campbell Arcade Melbourne
stickyshop @ gmail.com (remove the spaces)
(if you're not from Melbourne like me, it's opposite the train station on Flinders St, about half way (Flinders between Swanston & Elizabeth) - go downstairs towards the station subway and you'll see it)

PO Box 310 Flinders Lane Vic Australia 8009

One of the zines I bought was the "Anyone can.. " zine (anyone can make a zine) which launched the same day by the City Library Street Press. The City Library Street Press are quite active, having a few projects on the go and regular meetings at the library for zinesters and writers to get involved with. The "Anyone can.." zine also includes a MAP of Melbourne city showing writers & zinester spots of interest eg libraries, stores, artist spaces.

I also bought Anna Poletti's book "Intimate Ephemera : Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture" whilst at Sticky. I've been to some of her panel sessions at the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle & Critical Animals as part of This is Not Art (TiNA) over the years, so was glad to find her PhD book in the store too. The book is also available as an e-book (pdf) or d-book (pod / print on demand) from Melbourne University Publishing e-store

I haven't finished the book yet, but here's one passage about what a zine is [pg 11-12] :

"Personal zines do not share many of the characteristics of he texts that make up the bulk of sources studied in literary or cultural studies and, more specifically, scholarship on auto/biography. Of central importance to these non-traditional texts is the fact that sines are not mass-produced; they are not published by a professional publishing house, and thus not 'sanctioned as significant by [their] status as a mass produced commodity' (Huff 510). Moreover, zines are not easily available, do not participate in standardised modes of presentation and distribution, and are not well recognised within literary communities or among the reading (most commonly constituted as 'book-buying') public. Zines are homemade, ephermeral and amateur. They circulate among communities of readers through the mail, in out-of-the-way spaces, and are passed around hand-to-hand among social groups. They are also non-traditional because of the modes of emplotment that characterise them; in the case of personal zines, we find a unique mixture of established modes of life writing, such as the diary, alongside zine-specific narratives such as cut'n'paste collage. These material and textual idiosyncranasies challenge the literary critic to practise 'connected reading', which Gillian Whitlock describes as a practice which 'pulls at the loose threads of autobiography, and uses them to make sutures between, across and among autobiographical narratives' (Intimate Empire 204)".

I also like this definition by Richard A Stoddart and Teresa Kiser in Poletti's book [pg 27]
"Zines are a written product of the human need for self-expression. Beyond that, zines are hard to define."

on page 7-8, Poletti gives Duncombe's list for a 'zine taxonomy'. I thought this was very similar to the original definitions of video blogs when they'd first started (video blogs came after zines of course!) - my attempt was this video blog mind map before I realised it was crazy to try and define all the combinations - a simple all encompassing definition of 'video on a blog' was more appropriate, and did it matter anyway.. every now and then the videoblogging list starts up a new 'what is a video blog' thread - I suppose it is the same for all sub-communities that are less commonly known / new. the response below also reminds me of the videoblogging list arguments towards a simpler definition (or no definition), and at least a step away from a taxonomy.

"genres of zines: fanzines (broken down into subcategories by subject, that is music and sports), political zines, personal zines, scene zines (covering local and community events in the zinester's area), network zines (which review zine publications), fringe culture zines (covering UFOs, conspiracy theories and so on), religious zines, vocational zines (detailing 'life on the job'), health zines, sex zines, travel zines, comix, literary zines, art zines and 'the rest'"

... "the collapse of Duncombe's taxonomy into 'the rest - a large category' underscores the futility of attempting to solidify or organise a definition of zines based on their content. As Kirsty Leishman argues: 'Duncombe's work reveals that zines are ill contained and thus it is useful because it relieves subsequent researchers from pursuing such an arduous, yet futile, endeavour'(7)."

C a l l f o r A r t i s t s - Exploring Your Invisible Paradise! 30-10 till 02-11-2008

DEADLINE EXTENDED - Submit your work until 9th of June 2008

Take this opportunity to participate in the 2nd edition of Image Radio – a young festival for new ideas in digital culture, taking place in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

The festival is also an experiment, critical reflection, and preview of how new media in public space impact our cultural, social and physical surroundings. The increase of display devices, data clouds, sensor networks, particularly in urban centers, provides a new medium. Public space becomes a playground in which dynamic and manipulative data influence our perception. Potential applications are shown in experimental installations. Theory, discussion and exchange on these topics are facilitated in the seminar program and symposium.

Netaudio, the Offline Festival for Online Music comes back to London after a great festival in Berlin in 2007

Netaudio'08 will take place from 22nd to 25th October 2008 at Shunt, a extensive labyrinth of tunnels underneath London Bridge Station.

Over four nights we will celebrate the creative output of networked musicians and online communities with talks, workshops, showcases and performances. Parts of Netaudio'08 will be programmed through an open call for entries. With this call we would like to give you the chance to put our attention to your creative activities related to the festival theme.

Call for entries runs in 3 strands: performance, installation and conference. For more information and to download the entry forms please visit: http://www.netaudiolondon.cc/blog/137/call-for-entries

I've just been reading articles on the human network blog by Mark Pesce. all have been interesting, particularly the Unevenly Distributed : Production Models for the 21st Century where he talks about the death of television and film industries in their current distribution method. also mentioned were the examples of Ronda Byrne's online / streaming version of The Secret and the success it has brought her. as well as the "League of Peers" movie Steal this Film - Part 1 which is a documentary about file sharing and the troubles faced by Sweden's leading BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay.

another article I read last month (when I couldn't post to the site), was the Kevin Kelley article "1,000 True Fans" from his Technium blog.

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

...

To raise your sales out of the flatline of the long tail you need to connect with your True Fans directly. Another way to state this is, you need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It
rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

sounds easy enough doesn't it ;)

---

Kelly also has an interesting article called Humanity's Identity Crises where he asks a couple of questions previously asked by science fiction author Philip K Dick during a 1978 speech.

"The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?"

amazing how everything seems to be looping back to the courses and topics at the Maybe Logic Academy lately (well, actually for a while ...)

what does it mean to be human? is it the personal connections you have with others? the amount of things you learn? our physiology? our minds? our hearts? our consciousness? the human connections and networks (as mentioned on the blogs above)? what we think of? what we do? where we work??

another article :
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business by Chris Anderson

** NEW THURSDAY CLUBS: CHANGES and UPDATES **

Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE
SCHOOL

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor,
right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

** PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DATE FOR ELENA COLOGNI'S CLUB SESSION HAS BEEN
CHANGED FROM THE 28th of FEBRUARY TO THE 6th of MARCH **

--

*28 FEBRUARY with RAYMOND HARMON
:
Painting in Light: Experimental Film and the Advent of Improvisational
Cinema*

The traditional model for cinematic expression is as a controlled
environment moving forward in a linear direction. From its inception the
art of filmmaking has been dominated by a single form of chronological
development. Each film exists as a series of frames that are static at the
start of the film.

Improvisation, a language largely defined within the practice of music, is

ANAT is calling for applications from young and emerging practitioners working with distributed, portable, online, wearable, mobile and emerging platforms to undertake a three-month mentorship with an established practitioner of their choice.

Managed by ANAT, the mentorship is a part of the Australian Government's Young & Emerging Artists Initiative through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

The mentorship provides an opportunity to explore new artistic directions, to expand technical skills and increase knowledge of networks, debates and business practice. Applicants are invited to select a mentor and develop a program of activity spanning a three-month period. The mentorship may be largely a program of skills, development however applicants are encouraged to explore programs which incorporates critical investigation and dialogue, business skills development as well as marketing and exhibition opportunities. Utilising emerging technologies the mentor may be accessed locally, nationally or internationally. Additionally the successful applicant will maintain a blog for the duration of the mentorship hosted on the ANAT server.

read more or visit the ANAT emerging technologies mentorship website

Watch the video

a chat with Richie, from Melbourne band / crew WD40, who builds sound toys and instruments for outdoor parties and festivals - for both kids and adults. he discusses his thoughts on the importance of play. midway through some people walk past and one starts playing a piano down the other end of the room so there was a nice chat about instruments and the piano Richie has at home.

I've been watching the identity 2.0 presentations from 2005 oscon and web 2.0 conferences. I'd been meaning to watch more of the presentations from these conferences but hadn't got round to it yet. I came across this again via another site, presentation zen blog, which was talking about different styles of presentations - Dick Hardt from sxip.com (pronounced skip) was recommended as having good presentation style. He in turn borrowed this style from Lawrence Lessig, the well known copyright lawyer and advocate. They both use many slides with short phrases or single words, with a scattering of images and are displayed with a fast pace. It does make the presentation more interesting! - well compared to the traditional powerpoint style anyway. This topic has been on my mind recently - not presentations per se, but events and conferences - as the iDC mail list has been having interesting discussions about the different styles of presentations at digital arts / music / new media conferences. Mostly the conversations have been regarding providing remote connections and contributions for people to attend the conferences remotely either during the conference or after it. Discussions on presentation style came up - different ideas, particularly wrt academics presenting papers and just reading them to the audience when they may have been available prior to the conference, then running out of time for questions. Anyway, I find it interesting as I'm not able to attend all the conferences I'd like to, though I try to attend as many as feasible, but it's really handy to be able to watch a video or listen to audio of the presentations after the conference. I find most of the larger IT based American conferences have video lectures / presentations available - perhaps this is because they have deals with ISPs and video production / distribution people. I think videoblogging could help with this as there's many more people recording video these days, but I suppose it won't be videoblogging as such, but using videobloggers to apply their skills to provide documentation and video on the web. Really useful for online education also!

read more for links used in this post

Sound Mapping: an assertion of place *
* Proceedings of Interface '97
This paper proposes an argument for the role of sound installation in addressing the physical relationship between music and the general public. The focus of the discussion is on an outdoor interactive music event titled Sound Mapping, which explores the issues raised. Sound Mapping is a site specific algorithmic composition to be staged in the Sullivan's Cove district of Hobart. Sound Mapping uses four mobile sound-sources each carried by a member of the public. These sound sources are played with respect to geographical location and participant interactions using a system of satellite and motion sensing equipment in combination with sound generating equipment and computer control. The project aims to assert a sense of place, physicality and engagement to reaffirm the relationship between art and the everyday activities of life.

Raqs Media Collective - excerpt from Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raqs_Media_Collective

Raqs Media Collective is a group of three media practitioners - Jeebesh Bagchi (New Delhi, 1965), Monica Narula (New Delhi, 1969) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (New Delhi, 1968) - based in New Delhi. Raqs is best known for its contribution to contemporary art, and has presented work at most of the major international shows, from Documenta to the Venice Biennale; but the collective is active in an unusually wide range of domains, and it is perhaps this breadth that gives their work its originality and scope.

| | | | |||| C A M E R A O B S C U R A |||| | | | |
film + video screenings

First monday of every month at Lanfranchi's Memorial Discoteque. Level 2. 144 Cleveland st. Darlington. 7:30 pm. Free. Popcorn.

Monthly screenings with a simple goal of showing interesting and experimental film and video works in an appropriate setting, comfortable seating - 5.1audio - large scale projection - free

D I S O R I E N T A T I O N
live electronic audiovisual performance

Wednesday July 9 : featuring Pimmon + Hinterlandt + Ueda
@ Lanfranchis Memorial Discotheque
Lvl 2, 144 Cleveland St, Chippendale

DISORIENTATION is a monthly series of events, aiming to bring together both well-known and emerging artists working in audio or audiovisual performance.