I’m sure many of you have heard of James Bridle. Either because he coined and formulated the concept of New Aesthetic. Or because you’re interested in drone warfare. A few months ago, Bridle launched Dronestagram which uses Google Earth images and data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to document systematically the locations of deadly U.S. drone strikes. Bridle has also been traveling from Istanbul to Brighton to Washington DC to paint crime scene-style outlines of UAVs
Sitting somewhere between criminality, deceit and disruption, each scheme seeks to exploit the unique infrastructure, ecology, potential for dispute, and legal ambiguity of the Arctic region to provide devious financial rewards
The title of this issue of the new media art dvd-magazine is literal: this is the final stop for a publication that, in 10 years & 26 DVDs, has shown, promoted, curated, archived and put into context the works of over 200 artists working in new or experimental media
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Alternative Guide to the Universe focuses on individuals who develop their ideas and practices outside of official institutions and established disciplines. Their work ingeniously departs from accepted ways of thinking in order to re-imagine the rules of culture and science. Some of their speculative visions rival the wildest inventions of science fiction – with the difference that these practitioners believe in the validity and veracity of all that they describe and propose
Post Cyberwar proposes 3 methods to prepare for the time after a cyberwar: one is an open navigation system that uses seismic activity, the second one uses analogue television broadcasting to provide a wireless communication infrastructure and the last one would use London’s sewerage system to store data
My guest tomorrow will be Ilona Gaynor and she’ll be talking to us about forensic science, police reconstructions and the not so technically sophisticated (but very smart) way to rob a bank in broad day light on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles
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The Open Eye Gallery is now showing the sensational Charles Fréger, The Wild and the Wise. One of Fréger’s series documents some of the pagan rites that still celebrate the cyclical patterns of nature and life in general in Europe. Another portrays Hereros people dressed in a vernacular version of colonial uniforms…
The book ‘features outstanding poster campaigns, publications, and cross-platform corporate design for international cultural institutions by both young designers, who are striving to prove themselves creatively, and established studios, who are experimenting with new forms of visual expression.’
With the introduction of bioprinting the possibility of new organs is becoming a reality. The ability to replicate and print cells in complex structures could mean different cells with various functions could be put together in new ways to create new organs that would take millions of years to evolve naturally. Frankenstein-esque hybrid organs could then be put together using cells from different body parts or even different species
A discussion with artist and filmmaker Matthias Fritsch on why and how he is planning to produce a film about the story of my favourite internet meme: the Technoviking, a story that involves millions of users and that lately got him into court
Atau Tanaka is a composer and performer whose practice bridges the fields of media art, experimental music, and research. During the show we will talk about the relationship between art & tech and how it has evolved over the past few years, about reenacting one of John Cage’s performances, about the space and place for (new) media art in the contemporary art world, etc.
While emphasizing the multiple correspondences between collectives and groups like Arte Povera, Archizoom, Superstudio, and figures such as Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini, The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968-1976 also highlights previously overlooked spaces, works, and performances generated by Zoo, Gruppo 9999, and Cavart. Newly commissioned interviews and essays by historians and curators shed light on the era, while contemporary practitioners discuss its complex legacy
A discussion with Rasa Smite about “Biotricity No.5”, a project that experiments with “green energy” technologies and sonifies the process of generating electricity from bacteria living in water
HeHe took the invitation to turn FACT (the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool) inside out literally. Their new piece used the exhibition space to extract gas from the ground underneath the gallery and suggest that in the future we might want to bypass big energy companies and extract our own fossil fuels ourselves in our back garden
Adam Brown is a conceptual artist working with scientists to create art pieces that use robotics, molecular chemistry, living systems and emerging technologies. He recently demonstrated how bacteria can, over a period of one week, digest the toxins of gold chloride and spit out nuggets of 24-karat gold
Oil City takes audiences into the underbelly of London’s oil economy, looking at UK finance for Canadian tar sands projects. By eavesdropping on business people and seeking out secret documents hidden in dead-drops, you will help piece together a puzzle that interweaves government files with financial deals
Sascha Pohflepp is an artist and designer interested in the myths and realities shaped by science and technology. During the radio show, we will be talking space exploration, and more specifically space gardening but we will also talk science fiction, complex science and impossible projects
The Welsh Space Campaign (WSC) launches ordinary Welsh people into outer space, by finding a cosmic context for Welsh traditional culture and skills
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby use elements of industrial design, architecture, politics, science and sociology to provoke debate around the power and potential of design. UmK challenges assumptions about how products and services are made and used, through reinterpretations of the car and other transport systems
The order of the book is based on necessity, for instance it is important to know what to do to avoid arrest immediately after breaking into a building. And how to get access to drinking water, heat and cook food before dealing with issues of public space and establishing a communal economy
Patrick Sevenson-Keating uses design to create objects and experiences that communicate and make the most sophisticated theories in physics more tangible. Not only are we going to talk about quantum physics, Big Bang and particle accelerators but it’s actually going to be pretty enjoyable
The Reposition Matrix is an investigation into the military-industrial production and trading networks of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (also commonly referred to as Drones). The workshop aims to reterritorialise the drone as a physical, industrially-produced technology of war, and consequently explore how this affects our understanding of the covert drone campaigns in the Middle East
A new work by Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen in which a product was designed especially to be made in China. The object’s only function is to choreograph a dance performed by the labourers manufacturing it. By shifting the purpose of the labourer’s actions from the efficient production of objects to the performance of choreographed acts, mechanical movement is reinterpreted into dance. What is the value of this artefact that only exists to support the performance of its own creation? As the product dictates the movement, does it become the subject, rendering the worker the object?
La Cosa Radiactiva is a “research on transparency and nuclear secrets. A performance to demystify radiation while building awareness of its risks. An imagination exercise to reflect on how it would be like to live with radiation and above all this, a call about the importance of citizens having their own tools to be able to verify public health data provided by governmental authorities.”
Ranging from bold to subtle and from temporary to permanent, the architecture and urban design featured in Going Public offers inspiring and surprising interpretations of our public surroundings and natural landscapes
An interview with Haseeb Ahmed, one of the winners bio-art contest DA4GA, about his project to erect a hybrid building made of the bones of fish altered after exposition to toxins. Can mutation be generative of new forms instead of considered to be simply dangerous?
During the show we will be talking about how she managed to get her hands on a fresh human brain but Helen will also discuss some of her broader projects such as The Body Is A Big Place, a large-scale installation that explores organ transplantation and the thresholds between life and death
Under the Shadow of the Drone is a life-size depiction of a Reaper drone, one of a number of such weapons in service with US and UK forces. The Reaper is used for surveillance and bombing missions, in the declared war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the illegal wars of assassination taking place in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Such wars are made possible by the invisibility of drones to most people
In the context of omnipresent telecommunications surveillance, “The Pirate Cinema” makes visible the invisible activity and geography of peer-to-peer file sharing. The project is presented as a control room that reflects P2P exchanges happening in real time on networks using BitTorrent protocol. The installation produces an improvised and syncopated arrangement of files currently in exchange
One of the projects that you can see right now in Brighton is a body of work, by Mariele Neudecker, that makes visitors reflect upon (and reluctantly admire) the use of technologies in contemporary warfare. The artist documented with seducing photo portraits and patient rubbings a series of weapons of mass destruction that were developed at the height of the Cold War
Today on ResonanceFM, Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead will be talking about how to handle and archive materials found on the web, the absence of any image documenting war in certain parts of the world, spam and other jolly subjects
KLE – Kit de Libertad de Expresión (or Freedom of Speech Kit) is a portable digital device that allows people from all over the world to participate to remote protests by sending and displaying text messages in public space. The interactive banner is (unsurprisingly) inspired by the record number of social protests that took place in Spain in 2011. It is estimated that over 23.000 demonstrations have been organised that year around the country
In-Potentia exposes, in the most limpid and absurd way, how science is blurring what we are used to regard as clear-cut categories, such as where life begins and ends or what constitutes a person. Or in Guy Ben-Ary’s words:
What is the potential for artists employing bio-technologies to address, and modify, boundaries surrounding understandings of life, death and person-hood? And what exactly does it mean culturally, artistically, ontologically, philosophically, politically and ethically to make a living biological brain from human foreskin cells?
Today i’m talking with artists, curators, writers Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett. 16 years ago they founded Furtherfield, an organization with a very strong online and offline presence. Furtherfield.org is an online community where artists, theorists and activists meet and talk about art, technology and society but Furtherfield is also an art organization with a gallery located in Finsbury Park that invites the public to discover and reflect upon digital/networked media art and social changes
Cultural Hijack explores the role of art and the artist in contemporary society and offers the opportunity to rethink the growing field of intervention in relation to cultural activism and social change
Daniel Lombraña González tells me about Citizen Cyberscience Centre, an international collaborative project that invites volunteers to help the scientific community develop a whole range of projects that include: identifying and marking deforested areas with high-res Earth imagery, researching the elusive Higgs particle with a virtual atom smasher, understanding the fundamental laws of the universe, or the secrets of magnetism at the molecular scale
Drones / Birds: Princes of Ubiquity taps into the debate of an increasing autonomous technology, connected to machinic vision, the post-human and the New Aesthetic. Core to the exhibition are digital artifacts and instances of the computational or digital in nature. Birds as objects reflecting our contemporary relation with technology
Designers and biohackers Raphael Kim and Funk are in the studio with us today to talk about the London Hackspace, the largest hackerspace in the UK. Being part of this community obviously involves much coding but also laser cutting, soldering, drilling, woodworking, sewing, 3d printing, learning, tinkering, repairing and pizza eating. The space even welcomes a small bio-hacking lab
Today is the last day to witness the week-long performance from Liberate Tate at the Tate Modern gallery. Filming devices strapped on to their bodies, performers are reading aloud sections of the transcripts of the trial which started in February in New Orleans and sees BP stand accused of gross negligence over the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry
In this episode of #A.I.L., Adam Zarestky will be talking about what you can do with a preserved turd of William S. Burroughs but also eyeballs in armpits, ethics, biotechnological materials and ”Full Breadth Genetic Alterity