InterventTech

Hello everyone. I thought I’d do a quick post to let you know that I’ve been invited along as the official blogger for FutureEverything 2010 (formally Futuresonic) by axis.

Axis is an online resource for information about contemporary art. Their website

FutureArt & FutureEverything blog on Tumbr

features profiles of professional artists and curators, interviews, discussions, art news, debates and showcases the artists to watch.

My blog for the Festival this year is called FutureArt & FutureEverything. You can find it on Tumblr right now, and it will be pulled through to the axis webzine area soon.

Check out FutureArt & FutureEverything

Join in

As you may know, there’s lots and lots going on at FutureEverything this year, across the art programme, the conference and the music strands.

I’ll be reviewing as much as I can and posting updates on FutureArt & FutureEverything and my twitter stream throughout the day. But I’d really like to hear from you too, whether you’re physically at the festival in Manchester this year, or following events that take place from afar.

‘Your FutureEverything’

At the top of the FutureArt & FutureEverything blog on Tumblr, there’s a button called ‘Your FutureEverything’. You can use this button to share your questions, reviews and photo’s of the 2010 Festival. You can also add comments to the blog via the axis webzine. We’re really keen to hear what you think and stimulate discussion – so please do use it and get involved.

Twitter-reviews

If you’re on twitter you can join in the conversation by following FutureEverything, axis and myself (@claire_w). We’ll all be posting updates throughout the day, and I’ll be listening out for your twitter reviews of Festival conference sessions, exhibitions and events too.

If you do post any reviews of the Festival via twitter this year, you can make them easy for me to find by adding #futr to your tweets and #review if you have the space. Combined, these hash tags will help to highlight your tweets to me. I’ll publish a collection of your twitter reviews on this blog each day.

- claire_w -

Posted in Uncategorized

CRUMB (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss) have collaborated with Charlie Gere at Lancaster University to present a one-day conference exploring the issues around curating time-based art. Speakers include experts in the field such as Kelli Dipple, Intermedia Curator from Tate Modern; Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, MOMA, New York; and Franz Thalmair, co-founder of CONT3XT collaborative curatorial group, Vienna.

From the AND Festival website: Showing time-based art is very different to exhibiting art objects, so how can art which uses the Internet, interactivity, social systems, or real-time computing different from video, live art, or performance?

This one-day conference aims to share the knowledge of those involved in exhibition practices beyond the object of art, and asks, should we abandon ‘normal’ curating practices, or adapt these modes to integrate ‘the new’? This event draws experts and researchers from the fields of art practice, curating, history and criticism to confront the slippery question of time — including the timelines of production, of showing, and of participation.

The conference takes place on 24 September during the debut edition of the North West’s Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival at Liverpool John Moores University. Other highlights from the Festival include performance events with Rules & Regs, the family-friendly Portable Pixel Playground and masterclasses with filmmakers Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Syndromes and a Century), Jamie King (Steal this Film) and Duane Hopkins (Better Things).

Tickets for the one-day symposium are £18.50/£15.50 from the FACT shop. For more information about the AND Festival programme check out the Festival’s website.

Posted in What's On UK
Tags: event/conference, FACT, new media

Guerrilla Girls poster, 1989

The Pompidou Centre in Paris has launched elles@centrepompidou, a new exhibition that features the work of over 200 international female artists from its permanent collection, in a move to bring female artists who have been historically excluded back into the spotlight. Over the last four years the curators have been trying to readdress the imbalance by actively collecting art made by women.

The show includes seminal works by many renowned female artists: Cindy Sherman, Roni Horn, Gina Pane, Sophie Calle, Annette Messager and Louise Bourgeois, to name but a few. Also, the show features the work of French canal art/performance artists Orlan, who can be seen here being interviewed about her practice on The Guardian site and the Guerrilla Girls, an activist art collective, who for the last 24 years have been highlighting the sexism and racism within the art world and the film industry. And from the UK, the Pompidou is showing works by sculptor Rachel Whiteread and filmmaker Tacita Dean.

Here’s more from Syma Tariq about the show, in an article highlighting how under-represented women are still within major art collections.

The exhibition runs until 24 May 2010.

Posted in 07. Jul09, Art, Inter.national, What's On UK
Tags: paris, performance art, Politics, Visual Art

The Pixel Pitch is Power to the Pixel’s ground-breaking new pitching forum for up to ten of the best UK and international cross-media film projects. They are looking for stories that can span film, TV, online, mobile and gaming to be presented to a select group of financiers, commissioners, tech companies, online portals and media companies in front of an audience of PTTP participants.

The selected project teams will compete for the BABELGUM PIXEL PITCH PRIZE of £6,000.

Teams will benefit from significant international publicity and be introduced to new international business and partnership opportunities as well as one-to-one consultancies.

Last year’s Launch saw four cross-media projects presented to international companies including Babelgum, Sony Computer Entertainment, BBC, YouTube, MySpace, Amazon, Channel 4, UK Film Council, Arts Council of England, Tribeca Film Institute.

Download the Pixel Pitch application form here.

They’re looking from applications from producer-led teams whose projects are taking advantage of the growth of new tools, platforms, services and devices to develop innovative ways of telling stories and extend the opportunities to reach and interact with core and wider audiences. Projects can be in development or a work-in-progress. Part of the distribution strategy for the project should take place in a cinema or include a live event. Teams must have a strong track record within the film and other relevant creative industries. NB: Applications from teams that include students will not be eligible.

You can follow developments via twitter tag #pttp09. For more information visit Power to the Pixel.

Posted in 07. Jul09, 5. Visual|Media art, Calls & Commissions, Calls Archive 09
Tags: cross-media, Film, mobile, Online

Converging Pathways to New Knowledge is a LabforCulture initiative considering the future of knowledge building and knowledge sharing within a new digital paradigm.

The project comprises of three interconnected stages:

1. a series of three online debates, involving invited experts and the LabforCulture community discussing and commenting on knowledge production, sharing and regulation.
2. a one-day roundtable in Göteborg on July 28 will bring together foundations, governments and cultural organisations and will coincide with the conference of the Swedish presidency, Promoting a Creative Generation.
3. a reflection document, produced in collaboration with Kennisland which will contain the outcomes of the online debates, the roundtable reflection and recommendations to policy makers and it will be launched at the Cultural Forum in Brussels at the end of September.

We are all invited to participate in the three online debates starting on the 7th July 16:00-17:30, 8th July 16:00-17:30 and 13th July 11:00-12:30 CET.

Some of  the questions that will be asked are; where do cultural operators fit in to the new “digital picture”, what does it mean for artists and what are the burning issues that should be addressed by policy makers to support this cultural shift?

www.labforculture.org/newknowledge

Get more information, case studies and send your questions for the online debates via the link or using @labforculture on Twitter. To get notifications and updates via email on the upcoming events, follow this link: cpnk-register@office.labforculture.org

Posted in 07. Jul09, What's On UK
Tags: policy

Stowe Boyd has launched a new interview series examining the future of money. He’s planning to talk with all sorts of people including artists (like Christian Nold), futurists (like Jamais Cascio), writers (like Bruce Sterling and Steven Berlin Johnson), economists, philanthropists, and all sorts of other people interested in where this is headed.

Here’s the second interview in this series with Christian Nold. Christian talks with Stowe about a recent project called The Bijlmer Euro, based in the Bijlmer District in South East Amsterdam. Commissioned by Imagine IC, The Bijlmer Euro examines how cash transfer and trust networks function in the Bijlmer area. The aim of the project is to develop a prototype system for an alternative local currency that could support local development and work in conjunction with the Euro.

I couldn't embed for some reason - click here to view Stowe's interview with Christian on blip.tv

In terms of how it works, Christian reprograms RFID tags stripped from local transport tickets and sticks them on to legitimate Euro currency in circulation within the Bijlmer District. As well as being able to track where and how money is spent across the Bijlmar, local shop keepers can also use the the Bijlmar Euro to offer discounts (and possible other added value local services) to people spending with ‘this currency.’  The idea is to encourage the local community to support their economy and spend locally.

From a research perspective and being a ‘fan of the local,’ Christian is also using this project to examine the cultural, social and economic viability of an alternative currency for the Bijlmer area. I’ve listed some of the more specific research questions below, but if you’re interested you can find out more about Christians broader aims, methods and ambitions for the project here:

• How would a local currency affect the relationship between the local residents and the different types of local economies?
• What relationships could be formed between the residents, local manufacturing, local shops, international chains and the black market?
• How reproducable is this model for other targeted communities in other contexts?

After listening to the interview in full, as well as getting a closer feel for the project itself it sounds like there’s some interesting stuff starting to happen around the sustainability of the Bijlmer Euro as a longer term project. This includes growing support from national arts and culture institutions in Holland (including the museum of money) and a follow up project in Surinam, a country in South America closely connected to the Buljmer District community and the districts migrant history.

I can recommend listening to this interview as you potter round the house on a Sunday – I found it enlightening but needed time for stuff to sink in. For those of you that are short of time, the lovely Stowe Boyd has also posted a quick summary of the interview here.

-claire_w-

Posted in Art, C|N|AI art, UK
Tags: Christian Nold, commercial, Economies, local, money, network, paracitical

Hi all…this is a test post to see if I can update interventtech from my new swish phone . . .

Posted in 06. Jun09

A Theory of Entanglement, Bernie Lubell

Currently at FACT you’ll find a solo exhibition of works by San Francisco based artist Bernie Lubell, who since the early 1980s has been creating interactive wood machines.

The exhibition features a giant new commission A Theory of Entanglement for FACT’s atrium, alongside installations of previous works: Conservation of Intimacy, …and the Synapse Sweetly Singing and Etiology of Innocence.

As Curator, Karen Newman says: “Constructed from soft, sustainable woods the works on show are adamantly low-tech. Bernie uses simple natural materials to highlight the genius of old technologies that lend fresh consideration to contemporary issues. In particular the artist takes inspiration from the work of French physiologist and chronophotographer Étienne-Jules Marey who was obsessed with understanding movement. From horses and birds to human limbs and the heartbeat, Marey’s work was pioneering in cinematography, medical imaging, cardiology and aviation. After suffering cardio problems in 1995 Bernie adapted Marey’s pneumatic sensor technologies to explore the conflicted relationship we have with the machines we have become so dependent on.”

The exhibition runs from 19 June – 6 September. Check out an interview with Bernie Lubell at FACT here on Fact TV, before you head down to road test his inventive machines.

Posted in 06. Jun09, Art, UK, What's On UK
Tags: Bernie Lubell, FACT, interactive, Liverpool, low-tech, machine

The Dolls' Day, Alice Anderson

The sublime fairytales of Alice Anderson are currently on tank.tv, in a solo exhibition featuring a selection of 6 films made in the last six years. Anderson creates eerie, fantastical tales of murderous children and secretive eccentrics. Where the combination of unsettling soundtracks, stylised acting and minimalistic settings create dark, theatrical and magical stories. Anderson’s films are often concerned with representations of families where the relationships are less than happy. Her film Bluebeard is particularly interesting for the subversion of gender roles that is presented and the use of layering and shadow play. Anderson’s films are online till 7 June.

There are also a few new gallery openings in London worth mentioning (and, even better, they’re all free to see):

The Last Days of Jack Sheppard, Anja Kirschner and David Panos

There’s a new film and installation by Anja Kirschner and David Panos at the Chisenhale Gallery till 21 June. The Last Days of Jack Sheppard is a 55-minute film with a fragmented narrative, that plays with notions of historical reconstruction, imagining the liaisons between criminal Jack Sheppard and writer Daniel Defoe at a time of the first British financial crisis,the South Sea Bubble of 1720. The film was shot in the Chisenhale Gallery space and is shown on a screen amongst the sculptural white sets featured in the film.

Anja Kirschner also recently completed a short film for LUX’s Associate Artists Programme, which you can watch on The Politics in the Room website.

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard present a new 3D video installation at the BFI Southbank Gallery until 11 July. Radio Mania: An Abandoned Work is inspired by one of the first 3D films: The Man from M.A.R.S., aka Radio-Mania that was produced to showcase the Teleview stereoscopic projection system in the 1920s. The installation focuses on a rehearsal for the reworked film capturing the actors, musicians and the artists themselves, using the latest 3D technology to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. Forsyth and Pollard create multi-media events that often recreate momentous cultural events, such as File Under Sacred Music, which saw the duo re-enact The Cramps seminal 1978 performance at the Napa Mental Institute.

Pilgrimage from Scattered Points, Luke Fowler

Jarman Award 2008 winner Luke Fowler is at the Serpentine Gallery until 14 June. The exhibition includes new work made for Channel 4′s Three Minute Wonders scheme, alongside previous works that profile unique historical characters, including composer Cornelius Cardew and David Bell, patient of radical psychiatrist RD Laing. The films are shown alongside photographs, paintings, interviews and other archival materials adding to the documentary feel of the work. I particularly liked the work Composition for Flutter Screen, made with Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda, that explores the use of light, sound and projection in a more abstract way than other works. 

Floating Coffins, Zineb Sedira

Zineb Sedira has a solo exhibition at Rivington Place until 25 July. Currents of Time centres on Sedira’s fantastic multi-screen installation Floating Coffins, which looks at the decomposing, abandoned ships along the Mauritan coastline to explore ideas around migration and the human impact on the environment. There are also a selection of light boxes and photographs taken during the filming of Floating Coffins that complement the instllation. Zineb Sedira’s photography and film works often explore ideas of identity and displacement – in Mother Tongue, Sedira shows three generations of women talking to one another in their own language; where the breakdown in communication flags up the divide between generations growing up with different cultural backgrounds.

Posted in Art-Tech Reviews, V|M art
Tags: Alice Anderson, Anja Kirschner, Film, installation, London, Luke Fowler, moving image, video art, Visual Art, Zineb Sedira