This year’s edition of IDFA DocLab questioned the twofold power of technology. On the one hand, VR, AR, AI and other technologies can produce virtual life-like creatures, immaterial wealth and absorbing software constructs. On the other hand, those same technologies can bring about physical experiences and authentic feelings. And none of those experiences are simulated
Category Archive: events
Artists regard the “doomsday prepper” movement as the expression of a wider cultural anxiety and a loss of faith in governments capability to take care of their own citizens
In May, i will be running online classes that focus on activist art and provide an overview of the most inspiring and thought-provoking actions performed and orchestrated by members of the ‘creative resistance’
advertising
My notes from the Future Food Seminar which took place at Baltan Laboratories on Monday evening and gathered people with radically different backgrounds and insights to reflect on the re-invention of global strategies for the design of our future food system
The quality of groundwater is heavily affected by human industrial activities. Looking for innovative ways to get clean waters to irrigate agricultural fields, artist Rihards Vitols is currently experimenting with a new type of agronomy that relies on “cloud-farming”. In his scenario, people will raise thousands of helium balloons over their land to collect water from the cloud
Today’s guests are Evan Roth, Becky Stern, Geraldine Juárez and Magnus Eriksson from the Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab), a network of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians who are committed to supporting open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship, and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies, and patents
social
The Creator takes you into the surreal dream world of the visionary scientist Alan Turing, the father of the computer age and seed of Thinking Machines. Through Turing’s dream diaries, the Thinking Machines from the future embark on a quest to discover their origins and destiny of the universe
Erupting volcanoes, drug wars, famine in Niger, aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, children suffering from Agent Orange disabilities, abortions performed by untrained practitioners in Kenya but also lucha libre for women, traveling cinema in India and couchsurfing in Brooklyn
Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta, the authors of the very enjoyable and clever book GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames, are onto great game art adventures again. This time, they curated an exhibition that celebrates the work of Italian artists who have been experimenting with game-based technologies for more than two decades
Austin Houldsworthhas installed a 3 tonnes and 4m-tall ‘Fossilisation Machine’ in Tatton Park, a historic estate in Cheshire, England. With Two Million & 1AD, the artist is trying to create a fossil using rudimentary, human-designed machines that would substitute and speed-up the natural processes. Houldsworth’s project starts with the attempt to petrify both a Tatton-grown pineapple and pheasant, and conclude when it is a human that ends up fossilised
Mark your calendars and join us in Mexico City! Here comes the third edition of Postopolis!, a public five-day session of conversations curated by bloggers from the fields of architecture, art, urbanism, landscape, art, music and design
The exhibition explores the new “updated” textile crafts that are developed by a new generation of serious amateurs, innovative craftsmen, engaged entrepreneurs and political practitioners. Once again the home is the workshop where economic and ecologic innovation happens – not only in the labs of the industrial expertise. After decades of outsourcing, the new modes of production are in the hands of the layperson
The ‘Herbologies/Foraging Networks’ programme of events, focused in Helsinki (Finland) and Kurzeme region of Latvia, explores the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants, within the contemporary context of online networks, open information-sharing, biological and hydroponic technologies
Developing projects on the net, filming with mobile phones, remixing common moments and figures of today`s culture in an VJ-like audiovisual rhythm, Amerika redifines the characteristics of today’s culture and opens up the possibilities for new interpretations and thoughts from the audience itself
Cruel Weather explores artistic responses to crisis and the role of the moving image in today’s Middle East. The festival showcases a series of award-winning documentaries, experimental and mixed genre work
The artworks question in some way or another the existence of ghosts, they explore the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts, make visible or perceptible the invisible and trace the political implications as well as the aesthetics of such contemporary trans-communication phenomena
Waag Society and Adam Zaretsky’s series of workshops and lectures are back in Amsterdam and this time the focus will be biology and bacterial transformation
The second edition of Biorama was a workshop and symposium (set inside a cave) that explored the biology of the underground through the notion of umwelt developed by biologist Jakob von Uexküll and its influence on the development of biosemiotics by Thomas Sebeok.
Second day of the blogathon in Los Angeles. I’ve lost my notes and my memory is not that great. Still, here’s for you a couple of architecture wonders, a strange floating landscape that makes pollution glow, and a project to turn America into a commune
Highlights of Day one includes postborder city, gardening instead of mowing the lawn, temperature architecture, adventures in Kazakhstan and live interviews. Do not forget to bring on the blankets tonight. It’s freezing up there on the roof top
Join us in Los Angeles for a series of discussions, interviews, slideshows, panels, talks, and presentations about architecture, landscape, urbanism, art and space
The Game is Up! chose a challenging theme: today’s ecological and economical crisis. The festival could hardly ignore that it was stepping on trodden tracks. Yet, the event’s pleasant mix of low tech, no-tech and high-tech installations, performances, graffiti, workshops and debates managed to amaze and inspire
Live music and cinema shows, performances, talks, exhibitions, films, workshops, etc. I’ve got 5 day tickets for April 8th – 13th for you. Anyone interested, just send me your name and email address
I’ll have to put a stop soon-ish to this avalanche of posts about ARCO. But there’s still a couple of stories i owe you. On top of the list is a report on Expanded Box, ARCO’s section that specializes in new media art and video art. I’ll focus on the former. Obviously
Postopolis is a 5-day blogathon with discussions, interviews, panels, slideshows, films and parties designed to push the architecture, urbanism and landscape conversation from virtual to reality. It’s hosted by bloggers which means that the event will also be an opportunity to reflect on how blogs participate, and sometimes even redefine and lead the architectural discourse
The online channel covers in a very professional and surprisingly fast and elegant way the opening receptions (vernissages) of exhibitions and events and i’m grateful to them for that. I profess an intense dislike for vernissages where people seemed to be more passionate about tepid wine and showing off their mere presence at an art event than about the artworks on show…. but that doesn’t mean i’m not curious about vernissages
Asking for your help in collecting videos, information, links, online essays, artistic experiences, etc about the role of architecture, urbanism and technologies in the conflict Palestine/Israel
Resist is bringing you a live webcast with Gael Garcia Bernal, supported by Amnesty International UK. The debate that will try to bring some answers to the question: How will decentralised communications networks shift the way we understand poverty and our power to resist its causes?
A sculpture garden of everyday objects deprogrammed of their original function, embedded with new intelligence and transformed into surrealist and surprising readymades.
No ars for me. Instead i’ll be covering the Pictoplasma conference and screenings in New York and the Media City biennale in Seoul. Any tips about Seoul is more than welcome
The exhibition demonstrates how the development of construction and manufacturing processes have enabled the rise of a new culture of ornament. One which is not only innovative and aesthetically stunning but also economically viable
Two site-specific projects at the Contemporary Art Space in Castellon engage with the theme of ‘remodeled spaces and minimal interventions.’ One is a semi-transparent space for mediation, the other is a community of plants
The workshop was great and extremely insightful. The least one could say about my contribution to this PDF document is that is extremely minimal but the rest is well worth your sunny afternoon my friends
The International Symposium on Electronic Art takes place biannually in various cities throughout the world. This year, the main exhibition features 16 works developed specifically for ISEA2008 by international and local artists. Priscilla Bracks reports from Singapore
Photographer Burtynsky propses a 10.000-year gallery to go along with the foundation’s plans for The Clock of the Long Now in a remote mountain site.
Banquete_nodos y redes presents more than 30 Spanish digital and interactive works that critically and creatively explore the notion of Network as a shared matrix, not just from a technological perspective but also from a socio-cultural perspective
Brendan Walker is a thrill researcher. Originally trained as an aircraft engineer, he now specializes in death-defying experiences, screams and cold sweat, using performance art to find out what people feel on fairground rides and crashing planes.
An augmented reality device to visualize nodes of free access to wi-fi networks in the city but also the intimate links existing between urban space and virtual communication connections
also serve as the conceptual base for the interactive installation titled
Some of my favourite artists, activists and architects were in Barcelona for an amazing conference. And where was i that week?
Get a free pass to Mediabistro Circus and send your proposals for the upcoming Conflux festival