ecopolis

In diretta su internet
giovedì 9 aprile ore 21,30
http://www.oistros.it/lunapiena

Ignazio Licata è un fisico teorico, professore presso l’Institute for Basic Research di Palm Harbor, Florida, Usa ed attualmente direttore scientifico dell’ISEM, Institute for Scientific Methodology a Bagheria, Palermo. Ha iniziato lavorando nel campo delle particelle e della cosmologia quantistica. Ha discusso le sue ricerche con teorici del calibro di David Bohm e J. P.Vigier.
Oltre ai numerosi contributi specialistici (www.i-sem.net) ha pubblicato: Osservando la Sfinge. La realtà virtuale della fisica quantistica, Di Renzo, Roma, 2006 e La Logica Aperta della Mente, Codice Edizioni, Torino, 2008 che hanno incontrato un notevole successo di pubblico.
A settembre dell’anno scorso ha ricevuto il Premio “Veneri di Parabita” per l’arte e la scienza che gli ha permesso di aprire un proficuo rapporto col Salento ed in particolare con le ricerche condotte dal gruppo Oistros sul tema del tarantismo.
Un Incontro nella luna piena del 9 aprile specialissimo, dunque, che prenderà le mosse da una domanda: Se tanti percorsi di conoscenza si sono risolti in circoli viziosi, possiamo continuare a pensare entro le gabbie delle discipline come ci hanno insegnato a fare, o è possibile trovare percorsi virtuosi?

From 24 to 26 September 2008, thousands of creative minds from all over the world will come together in Amsterdam for the third PICNIC.

In Madrid, from the 5th to the 14th of May, 2008

In 2007, the Rencontres Internationales, which initially took place in Paris and Berlin, opened up to a third city: Madrid. This event now constitutes a unique artistic and cultural platform in Europe for artists, professional networks and different audiences.

The Rencontres Internationales reflects the specificities and convergences of art practices between new cinema and contemporary art, explores emerging art practices and their critical purposes and allows this necessary time when points of view meet and are exchanged.

The event wish to contribute to a reflection on our contemporary culture of image via a demanding program open to everyone.

Download Programme 2008

On Friday the 14th of March 2008 ten ’street radio’ nodes went live in Southampton narrowcasting.
Hidden Histories – stories from Southamptons Oral History Archive selected and arranged to correspond with the location of the 10 nodes.
Participants started to meet at around 11 am at the gallery cafe in Southampton’s Civic Centre. There they received maps of the Hidden Histories trail and those who needed them could borrow little FM radio receivers.

The underlying technology has been developed by Hivenetworks over the past 3, 4 years. The technologically creative mastermind behind the project is Alexei Blinov. For many years he has supported artists by finding technical solutions for their ideas. This time it was the other way round, as the basic concept behind Hive Networks is based on ideas and research carried out by Blinov, supported by a network of collaborators and friends. Blinov conceived the idea of a network that is not just a carrier of information but one that sees hears, smells, and which automatically adds new nodes and drops them if necessary, a hive of little devices which interact with each other and the public. While similar ideas have been emanating from computer science labs such as the MIT for the past 20 years, only now, through the drop in hardware prices and the collaborative efforts of free, libre and open source software developers, it has become possible for garage inventor outfits such as Blinov’s Raylabs to experiments hands on with a DIY approach to ubiquituous computing. The concept of Hivenetworks was created by the artist-engineer Alexei Blinov with the proposition that it should enable media artists to create complex public art works without having to get into the deep end of technological development.
This is where Armin Medosch comes in.
The street radio set up deployed by Hivenetworks uses technology which people already carry in their pocket. Most of the newer mobile phones have bluetooth and FM reception. Having headphones, even small ones, really improve the experience. But that’s it, oiff you go and listen to stories from Southampton’s maritime past while taking a walk through the city, smelling the air, seeing radio masts of ships in the distance, being ‘disturbed’ by some live seagulls.

Extracted from The Next Layer.

Is it the end of the privacy?

Open call for proposals by VOCENTO in collaboration with ARCO, prize 15.000 euros.

VOCENTO and ARCO announce an Open Call for Proposals addressing the potential of Web 2.0 for art galleries. The competition invites proposals for web solutions that respond to the needs and enhance the presence of art galleries online.

VOCENTO and ARCO invite proposals for innovative and experimental online platforms and effective tools to foster and stimulate the presence, exhibition, communication and management of art on the Internet. Selected proposal will be awarded with 15.000 euros (taxes included) of a production budget to realise the project.

The competition wishes to encourage research in the field of social technologies and artistic practice, and more specifically to identify current needs and provide suitable solutions for art galleries in the context of the Internet. The solutions will notably benefit communication between art and society.

The proposal, a complete web concept, or environment, or tool will be an applicable service to be implemented by art galleries.

The winning proposal will be selected by an international Jury, made up of two experts in the field of art and technology: (Joasia Krysa of KURATOR/UoP, UK and Santiago Ortiz, artist, moebio.com), a representative of VOCENTO; LaAgencia will act as coordinator of the award and jury secretary.

· Production of the award-winning proposal has to be completed in a maximum period of six months. Once produced, a complete web concept, or environment, or tool, will be freely distributed for implementation by the participant galleries at ARCO´s 2008 edition and the galleries participating at ARCO´s 2009 edition.

· Notification of the winner date: 16th of February 2008.

· The Award prize: the winning proposal will receive a total of 15.000 euros budget (taxes included).

Conditions for entry to participate:

· The Call for Proposals ARTE 2.0 VOCENTO is an open call to any individual or a group, of any nationality or legal entity. It is open and international award contest.

· The proposal must be submitted through an application form available on the dedicated ‘Call for Proposals’ website.

· Each individual or a group is allowed to submit only one proposal. In case of submission of more than one proposal, only the first proposal will be considered.

· Proposals sent by e-mail, post or any other way will not be accepted.

· Applications for ARTE 2.0 VOCENTO competition can be submitted in English or Spanish. We highly recommend submitting bilingual versions of the proposal.

· The participating proposals must be for projects realisable for the value of the prize money, i.e. €15,000 (including taxes), within a maximum production period of six months from the date of the Jury’s decision.

· The Jury reserves the right to accept or reject any of the projects, and its decision is final.

· Accepting the prize implies the transfer of property rights of the awarded project to VOCENTO, after the termination of its free distribution among art galleries participating at ARCO 2008 and those taking part in the 2009 edition. VOCENTO agrees not to commercialise nor distribute it in any other form than that described. After two years VOCENTO will make the project available to the public under the license CreativeCommons, Attribution 2.5 Spain.

APPLICATIONS

· Opening date for applications to ARTE 2.0 VOCENTO competition is the 1st January 2008 at 17:00 hours (GMT+1) through the Call for Proposals website.

· Deadline for applications to ARTE 2.0 VOCENTO competition is the 31st January 2008 at 17:00 hours (GMT+1) through the Call of Proposals website.

ARTE 2.0 VOCENTO competition aims not only to enable the development of a powerful tool or web environment serving art, but also to promote the development of a creative, striking and original environment appropriate to its target, ART, which can express the sensibility of both creators and a dynamic public eager for creative environments.

Therefore, this Call for Proposals is not only a search for efficiency but also for creativity, originality and innovation; for collaborative proposals by programmers, software engineers and artists alike reflecting the new social sensibility, and art’s ability to surprise.

You can download the guidelines (provisionally) from here.

On Tuesday Pentagon officials admitted that hackers from China had entered the network of the Pentagon and in June they had to stop the non encrypted email system for three weeks.
But a spokesman of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) denies that was responsible for the hack and he said: “It is often very difficult to pinpoint the true origin of a particular intrusion”.
A report in the Financial Times, citing former US officials, said the PLA was behind the hack, and described the cyber attack as the most successful on Pentagon networks.
The FT cited one source as saying there was a “very high level of confidence … trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was to blame.

Instead Al Jazeera says that China denies Pentagon cyber attack…

Who is tellling the truth? China or U.S.A.? Financial Times or Al Jazeera?

The StreamFest – Salento New Media Festival is finished. I was invited there and i directly saw the less and the wonderful features of this magic land that is Salento.
I can say that the on-stage section of the festival had some problems, because the space was too big and the territory was not ready for a new media festival like this, but it’s important to try if not nobody would brake the digital divide. And when the Salento New Media Festival will be settled in the future years, everyone will remember this crazy and emotional first edition.
And there’ll be a future for the StreamFest beacuse all the people gathered there by Antonio Rollo saw the possibility of a landscape like Salento, that can suggest to media critic and artist a possible different approach and view on technology.

Then everything off-stage was great as you can see

Anyhow there was a really interesting pavillion of installations and a big stage where local, national and international artist performed.

Among the installations i remember the HASCII-Cam of Jaromil, the installation called Virtual Identity Process of the student of the NABA Academy:

Online Videos by ECOPOLIS

Then also Alsos, a wonderful garden where the spectator could change the sound environment playing with a light torch and sensor-powered flowers

created by the french group Scenocosme and the Nitido videoinstallation by Giulia Mainenti.

About the musicians and dj you can see the video of the a short piece of Dj Foresta and Enrico Ascoli, Claudio Sinatti and Pierpaolo Leo, A Spider Called Andromeda, AgroElettronica, Gambo and Titta from Tonimusic, Minimono, then Pulsar and Mk05 and Daddi from Illogik Records and Kiddz, and at the end Esa Rouho aka Lackluster:

Online Videos by ECOPOLIS

It was really important for all the people gathered there to meet eachother and confront in a amazing setting as Salento. Everyone was really kind and every artist was in the best situation to express himself.

Just to show how well organized it was the Festival for the artist, here you can see the Sombrero Party guys, F.X. Randomize and Carsten Schulz, in action

and relaxed

while other musicians, Enrico Ascoli and Marco Foresta where preparing their liveset

There was also on saturday 29th of july a conference at the Masseria Torcito, where Carlo Infante coordinated a discussion about being a new media festival in a border land as Salento, there was also Paolo Atzori, Fabrizio Pecori, the director of the festival Antonio Rollo and all the artists invited there.

I think that also if the Festival wasn’t perfect it can open a new door/vision for the traditional media art festival, that usually are just focused on the technology, while StreamFest can be a festival about people and connection, besides being an important showcase of digital technology for this land that has a lot of sun and not so much technology.

And last but not not least the photo of the best driver you can find in all Salento: Luca.