ecopolis

The artist Natalie Jeremijenko, well know for her extraordinary capacity to combine tecnological innovation with social and environmental causes, invited us at the Lift2009 conference in Geneva to reflect on tecnology resources from a new perspective, based on energy efficiency, recycling and the battle against pollution.

Xing presenta Netmage 09
international live-media festival – 9a edizione
22>24 gennaio 2009
Bologna – Palazzo Re Enzo

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PROGRAMMA
Giovedi 22 Gennaio
h 20.00 Mesmerizing Show (Performing Arts)
Bock & Vincenzi (UK) The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown
h 21.00 + h 23.00 Megascope
Virgilio Villoresi/Dominique Vaccaro/Angstarbeiter (I) Eclissi
h 22.30 Mangrovia
Camilla Candida Donzella (I)
Pete Swanson/John Wiese/Liz Harris (USA)
Emeralds (USA)
Keiji Haino (JP)

Venerdi 23 Gennaio
h 20.00 Mesmerizing Show (Performing Arts)
Bock & Vincenzi (UK) The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown
h 21.00 + h 23.00 Megascope
Virgilio Villoresi/Dominique Vaccaro/Angstarbeiter (I) Eclissi
h 22.30 pm Live Media Floor
Pierre Bastien (F) Kinetic Syncopators
The Skaters (USA) play Le Vampire de la Cinémathèque by Roland Lethem (B)
Growing (USA)
ATAK NIGHT: Keiichiro Shibuya (JP), Evala (JP)
h 24.00 Mangrovia – Village Oblivia
Invernomuto (I) with Sunburned Hand of the Man (USA)
Sabato 24 Gennaio
h 21.00 Mesmerizing Show (Performing Arts)
Bock & Vincenzi (UK) The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown
h 21.00 + h 23.00 Megascope
Virgilio Villoresi/Dominique Vaccaro/Angstarbeiter (I) Eclissi
h 22.00 Live Media Floor
Németh (A) plays I.E., Domino by Lotte Schreiber (A)
Andrea Dojmi/Flushing Device (I) The Distance to the Sun
Mudboy (USA)
Black Dice (USA)
h 24.00 Mangrovia
Camilla Candida Donzella (I)
Pascal Battus/Kamel Maad (F) Eyear
Mattin/” ” [sic] Goldie (Basque Country/UK) Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra
Thomas Ankersmit/Valerio Tricoli (NL/I)
AAVV jam session (Mangrovia/Live Media Floor all guests plug-in)

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Netmage 09
sede: Palazzo Re Enzo – Piazza Nettuno Bologna
www.netmage.it
www.xing.it

OTOLAB@CINESTHESY 1.0 (EXTRACT) from PIXELS Transversaux on Vimeo.

If Rhythm Science was about the flow of things, Sound Unbound is about the remix– how music, art, and literature have blurred the lines between what an artist can do and what a composer can create. In Sound Unbound, Rhythm Science author Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid asks artists to describe their work and compositional strategies in their own words. These are reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society. The topics are as diverse as the contributors: composer Steve Reich offers a memoir of his life with technology, from tape loops to video opera; Miller himself considers sampling and civilization; novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about appropriation and plagiarism; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks at dead media; Ron Eglash examines racial signifiers in electrical engineering; media activist Naeem Mohaiemen explores the influence of Islam on hip hop; rapper Chuck D contributes “Three Pieces”; musician Brian Eno explores the sound and history of bells; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview composer- conductor Pierre Boulez; and much more. “Press ‘play,’” Miller writes, “and this anthology says ‘here goes.’” The groundbreaking mix CD that accompanies the book features Nam Jun Paik, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Allen Ginsberg, Iggy Pop, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Gertrude Stein, Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, and many other examples of avant-garde music. Most of the CD’s content comes from the archives of Sub Rosa, a legendary record label that has been the benchmark for archival sounds since the beginnings of electronic music.

Interesting lecture by Jaromil at MAC BERLIJN about the difficulties of spreading the voice of open-source. This is one of the main reason why the cyberpunk is still alive today: information still wants to be free.
Here you can download the whole presentation.

I’ve been to Picnic 08 in Amsterdam, kindly invited by Planetart, that will have a big show on Friday at the final party of the festival.
The bad news news, although anyone knows about, because on Picnic program there was nearly nothing about Planetart activities, for the Picnic attenders is that on that night there won’t be the Tesla Coils show due to security problems.

The good news is there was the sun for three days.
Anyhow from the photo you see a little of the atmosphear there,fizzy and vibrant, in line with the talks: always brilliant and looking forward, with a lot of assertion and few questions. It’s a festival emotioned by technology.
Really well curated in all the details, a little bit tooo much..

Coming at picnic i thought it would be more focused on creativity, where it’s much more about making business with creativity or sometimes entertain guests.

A lot interesting talkers between them Adam Greenfield, that presented his idea of “Long here and Big Now”, about the explosion the time/place coordinates in or contemporary cities, Michael Tchao, general manager of the Nike Tech Lab, that presented the ideas of Nike to connect physical objects, the shoes, to online services and communities, talking a lot about “motivation within motivation”, so looking at technology as a force of motivation. ( to run and to use your running shoes…).
Today there was the director of Business Developmnent of Goggle Europe: the room was thrilled and also the presetators, that was always perfect, seemed a little bit nervous. My impression was that Google has a strong corporate message and she delivered it precisely. Then she did’nt tell anything really itneresting about Google. What was clear is that Goggle is betting on open platforms, letting the user decide how to use it and that’s good for them i think. I think their operationl keyword now is OPEN, meaning that they want to enter everywhere.

Besides the conferences i saw a lot of people having fun and joking, presenting a playful attitude to technology not so much critical.
The only critical content be found inside the free Books printed by Institute of Network Cultures, distribuited at the bookshop.
Then a part from the main room conference i think more interesting insights can be found in the other locations, where there were interesting and more foucsed speech about the impact of newtechnologies in Africa, about RFID, about digital art.

Talking about the e-art exhbition i found it a little bit too clean, I think it’s Picnic style this neat attitude, but personally it brings everything too much on the side of business and less of creativity.

Yesterday night great performance by Mu-ziq at Atack.
Besides this msuical events i post here a video of the musical installation of Eric Groen.

Some photos of the exhibition at Medialab Enschede with Bill Spinhoven, Stepehn Rothwell, Stelarc, Saxion, Marieke Verbiesen, Der Wexel and Christian Zwanikken.
Personally i really appreciate the pieces of this artists, that reanimate the dead parts of animals trough kinetic machines.
Here some photos of these pieces:

Kees de Groot talking with some local people.

The steampunk coffee bar.

Jaromil explaining with cyberpunk matter today.

LightMobile, a Wolkwagen Beetle covered with 1659 computerized lights

Radio Barkas, a live radio into half a car

the live revival of Verne’s imaginary by the Abacus Theatre

and more photos here

GOGBOT 2008 – Steampunk edition opened yesterday in Enschede.
First of all look at the photos and the videos to see how this media art festival encompass usual cultural events, deliberatevely mashing up every kind of genre, style, language, situating the whole main exhibition in Oude Markt, where the pieces presented create a world between Julius Verne and Alice in Wonderland, but framed in a quiet and central plaza of a classical town in Holland.
Among all this wizardry the ArcAttack Performance, which created the Singing Tesla Coils, a special technology that let them generate a electrifyng audio visual set.

In the same plaza there was the Kubic’s Cube installation of Pablo Ventura, presented also last July in ISEA 2008. This piece is constituted by a long aluminium robot that hangs from a ceiling and dance according to the music and the movement prepared by the artist. It’s interesting to note that due to sensors and randomic organization of the interations and of the movement the piece seems to live a independent life.

Inside the church in the middle of the plaza performed 02L, The Shaidon Effect, a musical wizard techno mash-up that brings motion tracking to the audience.

Taking advantage of the little dimension of the festival reign good time between all the people involved and also the locals seems to be interested by this strange kind of technological circus landed in town.
It’s a real steampunk festival, first of all because as Bruce Sterling wroted on the Steampunk Gogbot essay “steampunks are modern crafts people who are very into spreading the means and methods of  working in archaic technologies“, and now in Enschede it’s full of people the “know their job”.