Opening reception: Wednesday, November 2, at 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Curators Sarah Cook and Anthony Kiendl will be present to give an introduction at 8:00 pm.
A free bus to the opening leaves the Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto, at 7:00 pm returning to Toronto at 9:00 pm.
The term "database: was coined in the 1970s with the rise of automated office procedures. However, it is really only with the rise of computing and widespread access to vast quantities of organized information that the term has come to the fore in the popular imagination. The exhibition Database Imaginary presents twenty-two art projects in a broad variety of old and new media, including newly commissioned works, made by individuals and teams of artists between 1994 and 2004. Responsive to the 21st century, when databases have become ever-present, all the artists in Database Imaginary engage imaginatively with the organization of data through their use of aesthetic, conceptual, social and political strategies.
The exhibition presents works by Cory Arcangel, David Rokeby, Lisa Jevbratt, Edward Poitras, Lev Manovich, Natalie Bookchin, Antonio Muntadas, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Thomson & Craighead, Pablo Helguera, and many others from across Canada and internationally. It is co-curated by Anthony Kiendl, Director of Visual Arts and the Walter Philips Gallery; Sarah Cook, Curator/Researcher at CRUMB; and Steve Dietz, Director of ISEA2006 and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Walter Phillips Gallery, the Banff Centre and The Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina Public Library, with financial support from the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, CRUMB and the Canada Council for the Arts. The Blackwood Gallery acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $17.6 million in the visual arts.
For further information please contact Carmen Victor: 905-828-3789 or cvictor@utm.utoronto.ca
Blackwood Gallery
University of Toronto at Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road North
Mississauga, ON
L5L 1C6 Canada
t: 905-828-3789 f: 905-569-4262 www.utm.utoronto.ca/services/gallery
Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday 11 to 5, Sunday 1 to 5
The gallery is closed on statutory holidays.
Art and Technology Conference Announces Projects for Next Year's Gathering in San Jose
Posted by Steve Dietz on October 28, 2005 11:49 PM
Jack Fischer
San Jose Mercury News (blog)
Art and Technology Conference Announces Projects for Next Year's Gathering in San Jose
October 28, 2005
. . . with projects like these awaiting, ISEA and the related ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, seem poised to take art out of the gallery and maybe have it chase you down the street. http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2005/10/a_change_for_ar.html
Posted by Steve Dietz on October 26, 2005 10:35 PM
Cybermuseuology
Taking the museum to the Net/bringing digital media to the museum
An online project curated by Steve Dietz for the Museo de Monterrey, Mexico
April 28, 1999
Posted by Steve Dietz on October 24, 2005 11:26 PM
A Monologue About Dialogue
Steve Dietz
in Expanding the Center
Walker Art Center and Herzog & de Meuron
Andrew Blauvelt, ed.
October 2005
I received my contributor copies of Expanding the Center: Walker Art Center & Herzog & de Meuron today. With sections titled: Designing, Constructing, Unveiling, Collecting, Staging, Screening, Interacting, Gathering, Patterning, Framing, Signing, and Connecting, the book takes process seriously. In the process, it manages to be both visually lush and polemical. It works as a paen to architectural superstardom that will please the image conscientious, but it also purports to tell to a story that takes seriously the role of that same architecture to enhance and even change the mission, programs, and audience of a museum.
Interestingly - or not - the section with the most texts, Interacting, is the one area where the Walker cut back its programming during the expansion, abolishing the new media curatorial program, which may or may not be further evidence for "the art formerly known as new media" moving out of the ghetto and into the mainstream.
I contributed A Monologue About Dialogue, about the process leading up to the Dialog Table (nee telematic table) by Marek Walczak, Jakub Segen, Peter Kennard, and Michael McAllister, a project that was started on my watch.
There are some famous tables, such as the round table of Arthurian legend, but mostly tables are sites of or for some transaction, whether it is breaking bread at the Last Supper or breaking rules and taking bribes under the table. In parliament, to table a motion is to delay its consideration. In common parlance, to put something on the table is to make it part of a negotiation. Table manners are societal mores, which may or may not be observed while indulging in neighborly table talk. Some tables are functionally specific, like coffee tables and pool tables. Sometimes the table signifies distance in a relationship, like Orson Welles sitting across a gulf of table from Ruth Warrick in Citizen Kane, while at other times there is a forced intimacy as when Sidney Poitier comes to dinner. Judy Chicago痴Dinner Table brought to the table silenced and neglected historical figures for public attention. Even in the symbolic world of the periodic table, conversion tables, and database tables, the table痴 function is explicit, to create a relationship: 1 euro = $1.25, etc.
If the South Bay's civic leaders can resist the temptation to stage manage things to death, or turn the whole affair into a corny "branding" opportunity for "the Capital of Silicon Valley," and really let spontaniety rule once it's underway, the South Bay will have done more to put itself on the map than anything. If we can make the place what Hewlett and Packard would have liked if they had been hipsters, maybe word will get out among new media artists elsewhere that the South Bay really is a place to be.
Posted by Steve Dietz on October 19, 2005 11:44 AM
from S A N D B O X M A G A Z I N E
Brooklyn, NY
Dear Friends,
For the last 25 years ABC No Rio has been actively nurturing
alternative art and community organizations in the face of the
gentrification of the Lower East Side. As the founding editor of
Sandbox Magazine I can sincerely say that we could not have explored New York's radical underground scenes without ABC No Rio's energy and
support.
Today, ABC No Rio is asking for everyone's support to renovate its
facilities and expand its programs. Deitch Projects will be holding a gala benefit and silent auction at its Soho gallery on Thursday October
20th featuring an unusual mix of artists, including Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, Fly, Ebon Fisher and Circus Amok.
A great range of prints, installations and one-of-a-kind works will be
for sale, including a customized video portrait offered by one of
Sandbox's most unusual contributors, Ebon Fisher.
I hope that many of you will be able to attend this event and support
this wonderful organisation. You can also make a direct donation
through ABC No Rio痴 website:
http://www.abcnorio.org/support/support.html
Posted by Steve Dietz on October 15, 2005 11:36 PM
Builders Association, SuperVision
Walker Art Center
October 14, 2005
Saw SuperVision by Builders Association at the Walker Art Center last night. It will be presented at ZeroOne San Jose August 10-12, 2006 as part of the ISEA2006 Symposium.
SuperVision, produced in collaboration with dbox is far and away the best integration of video/media into a performance - or vice versa - that I have seen. And compared to Builders Association's previous Alladeen, the storyline of SuperVision - three different stories, actually - while quite simple and direct, is much more compelling, perhaps because they brought in Constance De Jong to work on the script.
Posted by Steve Dietz on October 12, 2005 12:44 AM
Ashok Sukumaran is an artist in residence at Sun Microsystems Labs for ISEA2006. It was announced yesterday that he had won the UNESCO Digital Arts Award.
The main prize of the UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005 - City and Creative Media goes to Indian artist Ashok Sukumaran. His poetic yet pragmatic project SWITCH has been selected out of 242 project proposals by the International Jury Committee of the Award through an online selection process.
The six jury members appointed by UNESCO with a balance of geo-cultural representation placed the highest value on this project in recognition of its innovative, artistic reflections on current urban environment, and its critical perspectives on the layering of old technology electricity and new media within city infrastructures.
On this occasion, the grand prize winner will receive 5000 US dollars and is invited to present his prize-winning project at the International Workshop on Urban Play and Locative Media (18-20 October 2005, Seoul, Republic of Korea), organized by Art Center Nabi, the co-organizers of this years edition of the Award.
The project redrawing lines by Tripta Chandola (India) has been bestowed the 2nd prize of 3000 US dollars while the 3rd prize position has been jointly awarded to two projects: Yellow Chair Stories, by Anab Jain and Zhong Shuo, a collaborative project by Iain Mott (Australia) and Ding Jie (China). Both projects will receive a prize of 1000 US dollars. In addition, the NABI special honourable mention is given to the project Light Attack by Daniel Sauter (Germany).
Members of the International Jury committee who have taken active part in the selection of prize winners are the following: Mr Eugenio Tisselli Vélez (Mexico), researcher/developer in physical interface design and multimedia software development; Mr Roger Malina (USA), executive editor of the Journal Leonardo and Board chairman of the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology; Mr Marcus Neustetter (South Africa), media artist and joint director of The Trinity Session; Mr Drew Hemment (UK), Director of the Futuresonic International Festival of Electronic Music and Media Arts; Ms Sohyeong Roh (Republic of Korea), Director of Art Centre Nabi from Korea, and lastly Ms Yukiko Shikata (Japan), independent media art curator and critic, who acted as President of the Jury Committee. The designated seventh jury member Ms Samia A. Halaby (Palestine), visual artist working with electronic media, could not participate in the jury process owing to inevitable circumstances.
Opening remarks for public launch of
ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge
Creativy Matters Summit
Thursday, October 6, 2005 N.B. This is a fictional account. Some parts will be true.--sd
I get asked two questions all the time: What is digital art? What will the actual experience of ZeroOne San Jose be like? These are not unreasonable questions, of course. Tomorrow, during Creativity Matters, I will talk about digital art, but right now, I'd like to take about 9 minutes to imagine one scenario for San Jose August 7-13, 2006.
I'm going to pretend that I am a 40-something male, who is pretty eclectic in his interests but by no means a techie or someone who only wears black. Most importantly, however, I live in San Francisco. You know. The kind of person who might drive south of the airport for a business meeting but has seldom or never been out to eat or to see a play or to visit a museum in San Jose. We'll call our fictional character . . . Gavin.
Well it just so happens that some of Gavin's best friends live in Silicon Valley, and they have been talking to him about some fair or something called ZeroOne San Jose, but he he's not sure what it's all about. What do zeros and ones have to do with champ cars?
Even two of Gavin's closest friends - graduate school classmates who now live in Helsinki and Mumbai - are both, for some unfathomable reason, flying into San Jose the week of August 7-13. He decides to check it out.
Heeding our President's call for conservation, Gavin decides to take Cal Train down to San Jose and catch up on some reading.
Over the years, he has learned to block even the most obnoxious cell phone users, but for some reason he can't concentrate today. Some strange noise. He gets up and walks down the aisle and there sitting on one of the window tables is a computer display that appears to be a real time track of the train's progress down the peninsula and coming out the speakers is an aural landscape - something his friends who wear black might say, he realizes - which seems to vary in some barely perceptible way according to the car traffic he can see through the window. It is kind of catchy, like one of those Volkswagon commercials. There is a label that says something ZeroOne San Jose, but he doesn't have time to read it because the train is about to arrive.
At the train station, someone in a biker jacket with flashing LEDs that spell out ZeroOne San Jose directs him across the street to the light rail stop. She must be hot in August, he thinks, but it's a pretty cool jacket. He gets on the light rail - for free - and there is another one of those labels that says ZeroOne San Jose.
This time, it says that an artist named John Klima worked with VTA regulars to record their personal stories about the route he is going on. All he has to do is use his cell phone to hear some homegrown history about San Jose. One woman tells a funny story about the escalators in the old Martin Luther King Jr. Library as the train is passing it, but he is distracted by the new-looking electronic sign in front of the Convention Center.
It looks sort of like decorative news feeds that instead of marching mechanically across the screen are meandering and curling around as if wafted on some kind of hertzian breeze. He can barely make one out: "Sun reports record profits." Something very exciting seems to be going on in Silicon Valley.
Gavin gets off the train outside the Hyatt St. Claire and walks toward the Fairmont, where he has agreed to meet his friends. He sees a bunch of 99 red balloons floating above Cesar Chavez Plaza but doesn't really pay any attention to them. He arrives at the Passeo San Antonio a bit early and looking around he sees an encampment of odd looking structures scattered throughout Cesar Chavez, surround by 9 or 10 standard shipping containers into which hordes of people are wandering in and around. Staring at this scene - it doesn't look anything like the Christmas Village he remembers once seeing - he practically bumps into a white pole with a revolving radar on top - at least that's what it looks like.
What the hell is going on? Finally, Gavin notices on the pole a sign that says call 1 800 ZeroOne and punch 7639# at the prompt. After singing trains, storytelling light rail, decorative news feeds, 99 red balloons, shipping containers that appear to be nowhere near port, and a radar pole in the middle of Passeo San Antonio - not to mention the go car that just zoomed by - Gavin is ready to give it a shot. He calls in.
Welcome to ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge.
The voice is synthetic but plausibly human. It continues.
ZeroOne San Jose is a week long festival of art in the heart of Silicon Valley that is about creative responses to the technologies that are all around us, transforming our cities, our work, and our lives. During the week of ZeroOne San Jose, from August 7-13, over 200 artists will present new work at the intersection of art and technology in 8 exhibitions throughout San Jose. There will be over 50 performances from the bandstand in Cesar Chavez park to the renovated California Theater to the the parking lot behind the Convention Center. The ISEA2006 Symposium, held in conjunction with ZeroOne San Jose, brings 3,000 artists and thinkers from more than 50 countries around the world to present their work and discuss the future.
To find out more about any particular aspect of ZeroOne San Jose, just enter a 4 digit code followed by the pound sign. To subscribe to breaking news about the Festival, SMS *01.
This is cool, Gavin thinks. He looks at the ticket dispensing radar pole in front of him and enters 7639#.
DataNature is a project by British artists Ben Hooker and Shona Kitchen, resulting from a commissioned residency sponsored by ZeroOne San Jose and the City of San Jose department of Public Art at the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport.
DataNature is a multi-site electronic artwork that reveals the strange, secret beauty and interconnectedness of seemingly disparate natural and artificial aspects of the airport and the city at large. The public is invited to push a button on the "DataNature" ticket machine to receive a souvenir ticket. Each ticket will be dynamically and uniquely created with data generated by the Airport's day-to-day workings and data from strategically placed sensor interventions throughout the San Jose to create thought-provoking visual juxtapositions.
Just then there is a tap on Gavin's shoulder, and he turns around to see his friends standing there grinning at his obvious fascination.
"Why didn't you tell me what was going on here?" He demands, half-exasperated half laughing.
"We tried, we tried," they say. Guna and Kelly are both very smart, Gavin knows, but they also do stuff in the art world, which he has never really paid much attention to. This could be cool though.
Come on. Let's go get a program. They wander across the street to Chavez Plaza to an information booth near the bandstand, which is built on a mini-mountain of dirt with a sign reading "Free Soil." There they can buy a program for 5 bucks or a day pass for $25.
On their way, they pass what looks like one of those tube hotels in Japan that you read about. Apparently, it is part of an open-air exhibition called Nomadic Architecture. Looking closely at one of the units, Gavin reads a kind of handbill with beautiful typography, which says:
Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe, has vows to live in this container hotel until the last $500,000 is raised in support of ZeroOne San Jose, a unique global festival of work one the edges of art, technology, and society, which is only the First Act in an ongoing biennial, and which will be world renowned for its exciting cultural programming in the heart of Silicon Valley in the same way that Edinburgh and Venice are synonymous with world class performance and contemporary art.
Before Gavin and Kelly and Guna can cross the street the Karaoke Ice truck pulls up, and Remedios the Squirrel Cub pops out. According to Cellular Memory, the cell phone docent:
Karaoke Ice is a delicious pop culture mash-up, an ice cream truck turned mobile karaoke unit, deployed to unite people in a collective quest to perform, record, and rate as many new versions of ice cream truck songs as possible. Participants perform for an audience while sitting in the transformed front cab of the vehicle, and use a customized karaoke engine to select, sing, and record a song for later broadcast, as the unit makes it way to a variety of festival locations. Free frozen treats of various size and shape lure prospective performers to participate, distributed by Remedios the Squirrel Cub, who drives the truck and choreographs enigmatic rituals of his own on a periodic basis.
After 20 minutes the group heads again toward the museum, but before they can make it inside the cafe, they are lured into a shipping container sitting in the Circle of Palms. Part of Container Culture, an exhibition of art from port cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Auckland, Lima, and Vancouver, this particular project one from Mumbai, an installation by the artist Shilpa Gupta.
Finally, entering the cafe space, they see that it is transformed. Everything is sort of the same but different. The lighting color is based on an index of current events; the table they sit at is an interactive aquarium surface, and they are joined virtually by someone in Brazil, who is unable to attend the Festival in person. He asks them about the performance later that week of the California premiere SuperVision, a performance by Builders Association, the Wooster Group of the performance world. And later in the evening - it is already getting dark - there is a commissioned work by Ryoji Ikeda, the sound designer for the internationally acclaimed performance group Dumb Type, folowed by the ceremonial lighting of the new Richard Meier City Hall by Kanazawa-based projection artist Akira Hasegawa.
Guna's and Kelly's day passes give them access to all these events, but Gavin, who didn't think he would be in San Jose for more than an hour or two, has to buy his tickets - which he uses his cell phone to do. In the process, he finds out that the next day, his favorite creative, David Kelley, who just founded the new Stanford Design School is giving a keynote talk at the Commonwealth Club. And they haven't even seen any of hte exhibitions yet at the Tech Museum, the Convention Center, the Flamingo Motel, ICA, Works, MACLA, and throughout the city. Reluctantly, Gavin goes online to book a hotel room and stay another day in San Jose.
Interesting example of social knowledge formation. Presumably, it's also a way of building committed support for the nomination.
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In an exhibition that marks the 10th anniversary of the Banff New Media Institute, one might anticipate a gallery space bristling with computer monitors, video screens and other gadgets of the digital age.
The viewer is first confronted by a polished wood cabinet fitted with a brass viewfinder and crank handle. The panel above proclaims "See Banff! 3D, Interactive, Just Like Being There!" in gold lettering -- quaint salesmanship reminiscent of a travelling carnival.
Peering through the viewfinder while turning the crank, the piece takes the participant on a virtual tour of local sites. A hike along the Bow River takes seconds -- zipping smoothly over the trail as the movements of hikers are accelerated to a comical degree. The crank can also be turned backwards, sending everything into reverse. The result is an immersive, interactive, virtual experience. Victorian style.
See Banff! by Michael Naimark is a kinetoscope -- a short-lived form of early cinema developed by Thomas Edison and quickly replaced by the new medium of film projected onto a screen. A long-obsolete form of technology produces very effective results, interrogating our never-ending quest for newness.
This mix of old and new technology is central to the premise of the exhibition, curated by Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz. Their intention was to emphasize meaning over medium. The works chosen also reflect a sort of historical perspective. As the title implies, "new" media is not a relevant definition when the meaning of new is always in flux.
Three Seconds in the Memory of the Internet by Maciej Wisniewski exemplifies this. For a month before the exhibition opened, a custom-designed "spider" program was employed to search the Internet for files created or modified at a specific second in time.
The files retrieved from the first point, Dec. 10, 1989, at 00:41: 45 GMT, are projected on the wall, which forms an archway into the next room. Beyond this, another archway built into the space shows material from April 4, 1994, at 20:00:00 GMT, and finally, on part of the rear wall, Aug. 2, 2001, at 14:53:54.
The differences between each point are marked. In 1989, the images consist of text on a black background, 1994 features simple, brightly coloured graphics and, by 2001, fully rendered photographs and video appear. Caught in the light from projectors, the viewer's own body is always shown in silhouette, walking through the barrage of information.
In the rear room of the gallery, the physical body takes precedence over media. The works here use technology as a tool for facilitating collaboration.
In Greg Niemeyer, Dan Perkel and Ryan Shaw'sOrganum Playtest 3.0, a stage with five microphones has been erected in front of a screen that shows a graphic representation of the human trachea. The image remains inert until a sound is made into a microphone.
The goal of the game is to steer through the trachea and out the mouth. Each microphone controls movement in one direction -- right, left, up, down and forward. All five participants are required to work together, modulating and co-ordinating their voices. The louder the sounds, the faster the movement and higher the score. During the opening reception, a series of strange, atonal quintets took the stage -- quiet at first, then gaining confidence and volume.
The last installation considers the possibility of disconnecting the body from media altogether.
Shroud/Chrysalis II by Catherine Richards is housed in a clean, white room. In the centre of the floor, a heavy glass platform sits on clear glass blocks. A life-size print, seen through 3D lenses, shows a body wrapped in a copper-coloured shroud. Glass and copper both act as insulating materials, isolating the body from all forms of wireless signals -- radio, television, phone and Internet. By providing a means of escape, Richards questions the future for our bodies in an environment of ever-increasing connectivity. Will unplugging mean death, or a kind of rebirth?
The Art Formerly Known as . . . provides critical perspective on an area that, while not so new any more, is still struggling to develop its own discourse. The ideas generated by this exhibition make a valuable contribution to the discussion.
After 20 minutes the group heads again toward the museum, but before they can make it inside the cafe, they are lured into a shipping container sitting in the 
