The exhibition nEUclear reactions explores new ways of Europeaness amidst a society that has become more complex and where concepts like 'multiculturalism', 'globalization', 'identity' or 'the other' represent no more than a series of preconceived or artificial ideas lacking any meaning at all.

In this context, nEUclear reactions proposes new approaches to this Europe of big immigrations, tourism, globalization and low cost flights taking as starting point the basic concept of the 'family', which, according to Paul Gilroy, represents “the approved, natural site where ethnicity and racial culture are reproduced”. It departs from this model in order to reflect on the fundamental ideas such as 'who am I', 'how do I relate to others', 'what does the notion of home mean to me', and 'how do I build this home'.

The group of artists chosen to investigate these ideas lives in different parts of the world and all share a bi-cultural background. The feeling of not sitting squarely within either culture is central to their work. Most of them have a (grand)father and a (grand)mother that are from Europe and another continent. These new family structures bear witness of critical non Euro-centric visions. We experience how the concept of 'home' is continuously in flux, sometimes a distant memory –not even their own but of their (grand)father.
http://www.cabdeburgos.com/english.htm

Finally, Brenda Laurel is talking about animism at the closing keynote of Ubicomp 2006 next week, bookending Bruce Sterling's opening. I'm glad that animism is finally making it to mainstream thought about people's attitudes toward user experience design for ubicomp. I feel vindicated enough to include a gratuitous reference to the piece I wrote about it three years ago. ;-) AND I'm pretty excited to see what Brenda has to say.

Many of the objects about us seem alive, or as I often say, "enspirited". Cars have the names of animals; money is imprinted with images of dead politicians; food is labeled with fictional parents; TV commercials ply products with voices of the long departed; mythical captains sell cereal; our emotions are bottled; on our clothes are the replicated skins of creatures big and small; the names of places have life references; and of course, on the radio we listen to dead rock stars.

AIR is a public, social experiment in which people are invited to use Preemptive Media's portable air monitoring devices to explore their neighborhoods and urban environments for pollution and fossil fuel burning hotspots.
link

INSTRUCTIONS
1) Get up off of the couch
2) (but bring the remote control with you)
3) Go to the south west corner of 3rd and Arch
4) Use your remote to activate the park

Contemporary public art practice has become an audienceless affair with application-based works directed purely at those that fund them. While artists and funding bodies are locked in dialogues of mutual gratification the public are the ultimate losers. The creation of alternative platforms for interaction and discussion must subvert these well established pathways and deliver their content to a wider general public.

This year痴 festival sees a blur of pervasive assaults on the town of Stavanger, an invasion of territories between the media. A week of cross town subversion, demonstration and events to accompany the Numusic Festival.

A totally brilliant look at office spaces and organisational cultures:

Video 1 - The Office Values (Google video)
Video 2 - Realising Potential (Google video)

I've just stumbled across the debate about Grayson Perry's article on new media art, in which I am heavily quoted, and I am sad and slightly dismayed at the hostility it seems to have engendered. My first reaction is that some of the responses seem extremely defensive. Also almost everybody seems to lack the will to deal with the fact that a lot of new media art is not that great or that interesting and that some other stuff involving new media that isn't *art* is, frankly, more interesting. I strongly believe that until new media art or whatever it's called is prepared to face up to the need to engage in proper critical discussion about what it actually is or could be, it is doomed to be a ghettoised activity which enjoys its marginalised status, because, frankly, it's warmer snuggling together making snide comments about people being in Murdoch newspapers, than dealing with engaging with such discussion.

In case this sounds overly irritated just to point out that I have been working in, thinking about and supporting this area of practice for nearly two decades, and have also been involved in a number of historical and other projects which have allowed me to see exactly how the same syndromes repeat themselves (including the defensive refusal to be properly critical about uninteresting or pointless work, and the failure to engage in the greater speed of technological over cultural development). If this makes me the Brian Sewell of New Media Art, so be it.

[snip]

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