Posted by Steve Dietz on November 25, 2005 2:29 PM
The Design Studies program at Otago University is hosting Aotearoa Digital Arts_emerge_ symposium. (This is not their building, but much of the university - and town - has this over-the-top Edwardian architecture). Have had a few days of sightseeing and tramping and give my presentation Pacific Rim and New Media Art this afternoon.
Posted by Steve Dietz on November 21, 2005 4:30 PM
It's a long way to New Zealand, where I am attending the ADA emerge conference in Dunedin and the Cultural Futures conference in Auckland, but got a shot of adrenaline when 4 secret service agents walked on board my flight to LA. Moments later, former president Jimmy Carter started walking the aisle and shaking hands. Not sure what it is about celebrity, but also a certain amount of inspiration that someone who wasn't so great in one job can become pretty great in what s/he does next. Or maybe it's just a kind of nostalgia for cardigans in the home and staying put in the Rose Garden, which actually seems like better - or less harmful - ideas than drilling for a year's worth of oil in ANWR and nation (un)building a la Iraq.
The ground-breaking symposium aims to develop international awareness of locally produced work and link off-shore practices to conversations around New Zealand's shifting cultural and creative identities.
"New media" artists explore the new opportunities for artistic and cultural expression in the wake of the personal computer, mobile devices and digital networks. A key message from many of the artists is that the new media environment is not necessarily opposed to traditional artistic and cultural practices.
"The most interesting work in new media isn't always located in the US or Europe - it's right under our noses in the Asia Pacific rim," says co-ordinator Danny Butt.
There is a huge pool of creativity and innovation in this region, especially in New Zealand, that is already creating waves internationally.
Some of the questions that arise around biculturalism for example, aren't only happening within New Zealand. All countries are made up cultures with diverse histories and languages that have changed through colonisation and globalisation. How do we deal with that history? That is a key question in the arts right now. The vibrant international networks of indigenous artists show us that there's nothing about belonging to a particular place that stops you collaborating with other places and cultures.
"This event is really about bringing great artists and curators from overseas to engage with local artists and the local environment. The benefits go both ways," he adds. "It's also significant that we are holding this on Hoani Waititi marae - it's a great opportunity for people to engage with the Maori cultural context."
Cultural Futures draws together practitioners from as far afield as Delhi, India, home to the celebrated Raqs Media Collective, and from Australia, Canada and the Philippines. Aotearoa New Zealand is well-represented, too, with Albert Refiti, Charles Koroneho, Chaz Doherty, Lisa Reihana, Rachael Rakena, and members of Creative Combat.
Cultural Futures receives sponsorship from Creative New Zealand, Asia New Zealand Foundation and AUT. Creative partners include the University of Auckland, Artspace, the Moving Image Centre and The Lumi鑽e Reader.
Steve Dietz
Collecting New Media Art:
Just Like Anything Else, Only Different
in Bruce Altshuler, ed. Collecting the New
Museums and Contemporary Art
Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2005
I received my author's copy of Collecting the New: Museums and Contemporary Art yesterday. Here are the Contents.
Bruce Altshuler, "Collecting the New: A Historical Introduction" Howard N. Fox, The Right to Be Wrong Robert Storr, "To Have and to Hold" Jeffrey Weiss, "9 Minutes 45 Seconds" Christopher Cherix, "Breaking Down Categories: Print Rooms, Drawing Departments, and the Museum" Chrissie Iles and Henriette Huldisch, "Keeping Time: On Collecting Film and Video Art" Steve Dietz, "Collecting New Media Art: Just Like Anything Else, Only Different" Vishakha N. Desai, "Beyond the 'Authentic-Exotic'" Collecting Contemporary Asian Art in the Twinty-first Century" Pamela McClusky, "The Unsconscious Museum: Collecting Contemporary African Art without Knowing It" Gabriel Perez-Barreiro, "The Accidental Tourist: American Collections of Latin American Art" Lowery Stokes Sims, "Collecting the Art of African-Americans at the Studio Museum in Harlem: Positioning the 'New' from the Perspective of the Past Glenn Wharton, "The Challenges of Conserving Contemporary Art"
I haven't read it yet, but it will be intesting to see how the medium-based accounts of the new and more culturally and ethnically oriented collections overlap and differ.
Posted by Steve Dietz on November 4, 2005 11:04 PM
COMMUNITY DOMAIN CALL FOR PROPOSALS #2 (Final)
This is an invitation by the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to groups and individuals to submit proposals for exhibition of interactive artworks and projects reflecting on the thematic of Community Domain.
ABOUT THE ISEA2006 SYMPOSIUM AND ZEROONE SAN JOSE FESTIVAL
The 2006 edition of the internationally renowned ISEA Symposium will be held August 7-13, 2006, in San Jose, California. See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu for more information.
The Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. Prior host cities include Helsinki, Paris, Sydney, Montreal, Chicago, Manchester and Nagoya.
ZeroOne San Jose is a milestone festival to be held biennially making the work of the most innovative contemporary artists in the world accessible. In 2006 it will be held in conjunction with the ISEA2006 Symposium.
ABOUT THE COMMUNITY DOMAIN CALL
ISEA2006 and ZeroOne San Jose seek to engage diverse communities -- of interest, geography, ethnicity, race, or belief. In particular, we seek projects that recognize the hybridity of communities and take transverse routes across communities.
Many of the members of these communities have no specific interest in art or technology or their intersection. Yet they have stories to tell and images of the city to map. ISEA2006 and ZeroOne San Jose are looking for exemplary projects that actively engage these audiences and help build bridges between them in ways that may utilize digital technologies, but which are not necessarily specific to those technologies.
In other words, the goal is not to train community members to become artists but to use digital and networked technologies to allow them to participate in the creation of their own stories -- to become dynamic producers rather than only static consumers.
Proposed projects can derive from any local context and do not need to be related specifically to San Jose and the surrounding Silicon Valley region, although projects can, of course, engage San Jose / Silicon Valley audiences as well.
For this call, unlike with the early Community Domain call (http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1/), we do not have available funding to support accepted projects, although we will do what we can to provide materials necessary for and helpful to fundraising as well as a venue and an audience for the work.
TIMELINE
Submissions Due: December 15, 2005
Notification: February 10, 2006
Posted by Steve Dietz on November 3, 2005 11:01 PM
Eduardo Kac
University of Minnesota
November 3, 2005
We are all transgenic
I heard Eduardo Kac speak last night at the University of Minnesota. I was hoping he would talk about his new commissioned work, but it was a typical artist overview - and typically clear and thoughtful for Kac.
Kac talked about his desire and focus in the 80s and 90s to move from the traditional subject - object relationship of a viewer to an painting or sculpture to a subject - subject relationship, which he refers to as intersubjectivity or dialogical artmaking. When talking about his transgenic work, particularly Genesis and GFP Bunny, he referred to a new artmaking role, the creation of a subject. In a sense, the subject as object, although he didn't say that.
Kac also said that on a panel with some human genome scientists, he found out that part of the human genome is composed of bacteria and viruses - non-human life forms - hence, "we have always been transgenic." What's the big deal?
7pm-12pm Registration and opening party, Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Sound: Michael Morley (Dunedin), Simon Kong (Christchurch) Alison
Isadora (Netherlands)
Image: Daniel Belton and Good Company, Iain Cheesman, Kim Pieters,
Nathan Thompson, Ana Terry, Don Hunter
Saturday 26 November::
University of Otago Design studies
9am registration and coffee.
9.30 - 10. 15 Networked event: "the proposal" in 3 acts by Avatar
bodycollision, Helen Varley Jamieson, Karla Ptacek, leena
Saarinen,and Vicki Smith with invited international guests.
10.30 - 12.30 Noise and sound: Zita Joyce, Michael Morley, Simon Kong,
Alison Isadora
Respondent: Danae Mossman
LUNCH 12.30 - 1.00 (the analogue art of the sandwich; instruction and
ingredients provided by caro mccaw)
1 - 2 Keynote: Digital arts and the Pacific Rim - Steve Dietz (Zero
One, San Jose)
Chair: Stella Brennan
2.30 - 4.30 Digital encounters: Ana Terry, Su Ballard, Douglas Bagnall,
Mark McQuire
Respondent: Michael Morley
5.15 Bus trip and collection of digital footage for RGB project - bring
your digital video cameras/ video phones...
return from bus trip around 7.30pm.
Sunday 27 November::
9.30 - 10.15 Networked event: 'The 'Smoke In' presented locally by
Marcus Williams, in conjunction with HOWL festival in Austria; with Monochrom [Austria] and mathieu & molicnik [Switzerland]
10.30 - 12.00 Images and spaces: Brit Bunkley, Stella Brennan, Caro McCaw
Respondent: Iain Cheesman
LUNCH 12 - 1
1 - 1.30 screening of RGB and live feed back to Canada
1.30 - 3 Developing Networks: Anna Munster (Fibreculture, Sydney), Melinda Rackham, (ANAT, Adelaide) Steve Dietz (Zero One, San Jose)
Chair: Su Ballard
3.30 - 5.30 The future - forum on ADA. Closing Plenaries.
ADA 2006, and SCANZ presented by Trudy Lane and Ian Clothier
Chair: Helen Jamieson
5.30 - 730....
LAUNCH of FILTER # 61 - the ANAT magazine
LAUNCH of the brand new ADA website
Closing drinks
Posted by Steve Dietz on November 3, 2005 12:45 AM
Gary Singh
Silicon Alleys: San Jose Gets Global Stage
Metroactive
November 2, 2005
To steal a lead from Herb Caen: Why doesn't he write any nice stories? OK, OK. Here's a get-together that will finally put San Jose on the international map. Other folks have already waxed poetic about it, but the internationally renowned Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) will host its biennial symposium in San Jose in August of 2006. This is a huge world class arts and technology conference that will literally take over downtown San Jose and environs . . . Gary Singh, San Jose Gets Global Stage
Edgy Products Call for Participation
ISEA2006 Symposium
ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge
Proposals Due: December 15th, 2005
Final Decisions: Feb 10, 2006
Call for Participation
This is an invitation by the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to groups and individuals to submit proposals for exhibition of interactive art work and projects reflecting on the thematic of Edgy Products. This is the first and only call for artworks in this category.
The consumer electronic device has become the standard currency of technology in contemporary global culture. The light bulb and the home sewing machine have bred and multiplied to fill every part of our homes, offices, pockets and purses. They have colonized industry after industry: publishing, photography, music, film, communications, and entertainment. Consumer electronics have gradually colonized publication and photography, music and film, communications and entertainment. With the constant promise of increased efficiency, these devices may be seen as improvements over previous techniques. But for every measure of ease or efficiency there are secondary effects, artifacts, and renegotiations. Far from being neutral, consumer products are powerful arguments for norms and lifestyles, suggesting and facilitating specific ways of acting and being in the world. Made by researchers and marketers working for corporations, they form a sort of culture industry. And as Theodor Adorno suggested, their products serve the interests of this industry as much as they serve their users.
Artists and designers have tried to refigure the product, with varied results:
Modernist painters, for instance, often incorporated coffee grinders or industrial aesthetics; Warhol even ran a factory. Electronic artists, though, are in a unique position to develop functional alternatives. Dunne and Raby have theorized a darker, more complicated design noir, comparing traditional products to the banality of Hollywood film. Others have moved towards turning Consumer Off The Shelf (COTS) tools into weapons for activism and non-violent political dissent. Such projects acknowledge the importance of products to shape our lives, and then use the idiom of an edgy product to offer alternatives, stage critiques, or subvert market interests.
Edgy Products is a call for work by artists and designers who are manipulating, hacking, subverting, queering, hijacking, recombining, or reformulating the notion of product. We are looking for projects large and small, for gallery installation or public intervention, for showing, selling, or gifting.
Susan Joyce, Co-Chair Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Co-Chair
Edgy Products Call Committee Kelly Dobson Anthony Dunne Nathan Martin Eddo Stern
The Design Studies program at Otago University is hosting 
It's a long way to New Zealand, where I am attending the 
I heard 