Time for me to change scenery as this blog is slowly turning into we-make-money-not-berlin. Unless i don’t wake up on time to catch the plane which is scheduled at f… 6.30 a.m, i’ll be in Turin tomorrow to visit the dentist and give a talk at the Piemonte Share festival. The theme this year is Digital Affinity/Communities Now. There are some cool works in the exhibition such as the Mikro Orchestra Project, Amazon-noir, Sensity, The Analog Color Field Computer, Shockbot Corejulio, etc.

The event will kick off with a performance of Human-browser by Christophe Bruno and a concert of Mikro Orchestra Project (image on the left.)

Highlights from the conference include Simon Goldin & Jakob Senneby talking about The Port, the community driven space inside Second Life; Bruce Sterling wowing the audience and giving a hard time to translators, Alexis Rondeau presenting semapedia, Fabio Franchino discussing generative art, Paolo Pedercini embodying the Molle Industria, don’t skip the talks of new media art gurus Geert Lovink and Alessandro Ludovico, nor those of art critiques and curators Luca Barbeni and Domenico Quaranta.

I’m going to miss most of that because 1). the whole nation hates me 2). i’ll be in London where the students of RCA Design Interactions are having a Work in Progress Show on January 24-31.

Also looking forward to check out Miltos Manetas‘s internet paintings at Blow de la Barra gallery.

One canvas is bright as in “On” and the other dark as in “Off”. Their surface is like the Internet: ever-changing. Manetas updates them regularly by painting new websites, one over the other. Some websites disappear under a newly painted one, some others return to the paintings. They are also “interactive”: you can suggest websites by sending an email to paint at internetpaintings dot com.