"100 meters behind the future"

. . . a new work by eteam,

is a live film . . . shot, acted, directed, edited, screened, watched and deleted in real time. It’s a film about delay, the expansion of cinema and the paranoia that creeps in when the mash-up of several time zones and realities escapes the logical explanations of the captive audience.

The screening room is the front row of a van in which one or two people are being driven around while following the action in double view - through the windshield of the car and the screen of the device they hold in their hands. They simultaneously see what is happening right now and what has happened 10 seconds ago.

The project was part of the “For Real” program at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, 2012. Read more about the program here.

Video and more details re- eteam's project here.

P.R. Lessons from Religions

I'd embed Alain de Botton's TED talk, "Atheism 2.0," except that for some reason, TED's forcing a big bunch of empty space above the vidi, so scrue 'em; go here for the talk.

I had several of my own comments, among them being that while I agree that propaganda is a form of art, I believe there's an important, distinguishing characteristic of the greatest art, and that is that, intentionally or not, it conveys truth – because (unlike religions), artists who have proven over the long run to have been great have cared more about exploring and expressing truth in a non-judgmental way than they have about winning adherence to any pre-selected program. E.g., Karl Rove is a great artist if you define "great" as, effective in spreading emotionally compelling fiction; but his fictions probably won't be read 400 years later (unless as examples of effective p.r.). Shakespeare is a great artist if you define "great" as, effective in spreading truths that are timeless.

The Wedding Project

You may have seen an earlier post in which I warned I'd be on hiatius for while in order to work on a big project.

Well, Phase 1 of The Wedding Project was a participatory/performance/screenings event, in which a real wedding occurred (my own).

I made two one-hour videos for the project, one for guests to watch and the other to be projected onto their backs, and I and my sig. other and 80+ friends made or scavenged costumes, props (including 200 wedding veils and more than 650 flat paper flowers) and set decor (including thousands of yards of used videotape), shot lots of video and photos of the event, and threw a big party.

I'm interested in, among other things, the blending of the real and the artificial. In this project, a real marriage between two individuals serves as a metaphor to explore larger historical, sociological, psychological, epistemological, and metaphysical contexts – including the bond that, for better or worse, has in some sense always existed among all of humanity but that now, by virtue of the internet, is becoming much more intense, or at least more quickly and thickly interconnected.

There's a website for the project with a lot more info here, and I've just put some photos of the event here.

I'm now engaged in Phase 2, which means editing the video shot at the event and otherwise mashing up product for an exhibition.

So I'm afraid I need to make myself sparse here again for the next month or two. Thank you for your patience!

SCOPE Basel 2011 Catalogue

Here's their embed-able, virtual version; roll over one of the bottom corners to take it to full-screen:

"Free" at the New Museum

Wish I could see it (through 2010-01-22):

“Free” explores how the internet has fundamentally changed our landscape of information and our notion of public space. Our shared space has expanded beyond streets and schools to more distributed forms of collectivity. What constitutes this expanded public is not only greater social connectedness but a highly visual, hybrid commons of information. As the artist Seth Price wrote in his essay “Dispersion,” which serves as a touchstone for this exhibition and is featured here within a large-scale sculptural Essay with Knots: “Collective experience is now based on simultaneous private experiences, distributed across the field of media culture, knit together by ongoing debate, publicity, promotion, and discussion. Publicness today has as much to do with sites of production and reproduction as it does with any supposed physical commons, so a popular album could be regarded as a more successful instance of public art than a monument tucked away in an urban plaza.”

“Free” takes its name from free culture, a social movement that acknowledges the revolution the internet has caused in industries like music and print publishing, and argues that it be dealt with as an opportunity for greater sharing and distribution of knowledge, rather than a threat. “Free” is based in this commitment to openness — but not directly about the movement itself. Rather, it explores how artists are engaging with the complex freedoms of a newly expanded public space; how they are examining the possibilities and dilemmas enabled by broader availability and circulation of digital material, rooting out information that is missing or hidden in an ostensibly more transparent society, and locating new contexts for art to take place.

Instead of exploring the internet’s formal properties — code and connectivity among them — “Free” explores its broader influence as a territory populated and fought over by individuals, government, and corporations, as a tool and as a cultural catalyst. The artists included here span various disciplines: photography, sculpture, video, and installation, among others. They emerge from different modes of artistic practice, and are connected through an expansive conversation around the show’s themes. The exhibition catalogue will take the form of an active website — newmuseum.org/free — including descriptions of each artwork in the exhibition, biographical details on the artists, as well as essays and a blog.

“Free” is curated by Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome and Adjunct Curator of the New Museum.

NDTV India: 24/7 Coverage of Obama's Visit

here. The Indians are apparently excited.

I'd love to go to India; and not just 'cuz of the awesome commercials I'm seeing on this channel; I have the general if largely unresearched impression that India may now be the world's biggest lab for unfettered capitalism (possibly even moreso than the U.S.?)

At this moment, NDTV's reporting that the U.S. is now willing to lift restrictions against the export to India of sensitive nuclear weapons technologies so as to – surprise! – benefit U.S. companies selling same, and that it's probably only because we're in such bad economic shape that we're willing to do it. "US, India sign deals worth $20 billion," etc.

Michelle just got up and started dancing with the school kids. Now, Obama.

UPDATE: Per The Colbert Report on 2010-11-08, it was NDTV that cited an anonymous official as the source for the myth that Obama's trip is costing $200 million per day.

The Bechdel Test

(Thanks, Video Association!)

"Second Life Performance Night" at Eyebeam

(NY). "Alan Sondheim along with Foofwa d'Imobilite will present a performance using the aesthetics of the Second Life (or see Wikipedia) environment to create an experimental choreography; Lily & Honglei will present The Merry-Go-Around — a virtual installation addressing a series of environmental issues in today’s China; [and] Second Front has discovered a virtual crypt within Second Life and are inviting the public to witness its opening. Together, these three short performances (12-15 minutes each) will sample some of the contemporary trends in Second Life performance art.

"The performances will be followed by a brief panel discussion and a subsequent launch party of Avvie Road — the second DVD of Second Front’s performance works."

More at Eyebeam; wish I could be there.

New Work from Eteam

What can you learn about a society from what it throws away? These and other questions are explored by eteam's new video, PRIM LIMIT, which follows what happened after the artists opened Second Life Dumpster (more here and here) – what items were dumped there, who hung out there, how the Dumpster fit in with its virtual surroundings, etc. You can see a low-res version of the video here.

Eteam also has another new piece I like a lot, Truth in Transit; you can see that and more of their work here.

(Both images are from PRIM LIMIT; click on them for larger versions.)

No Need to End Online Social Life Just 'Cuz You're Dead

The whole article is one mind-boggling bit after another; but here's a taste:

A wave of new companies are starting to offer services such as virtual cemeteries where guests can visit and e-mail alerts set up by funeral homes to remind relatives near and wide about the anniversary of your death.

Some companies even offer to e-mail your wayward relatives in danger of being left behind when the Rapture whisks you to the threshold of the Pearly Gates.

* * * * *

Los Angeles-based EternalSpace.com launched its Web site in March, offering a variety of virtual scenic locations online for a person's final resting place: A "Zen Garden," a "Lake View," a "Tropical Valley" and other options. Sold directly through funeral homes, the service allows a person or relatives to establish a pastoral grave site and add digital amenities such as the image of a park bench or mausoleum.

Once there, visitors can purchase items to leave behind, such as flowers, religious icons and other trinkets symbolically important to the deceased, such as golf clubs, a horse saddle, a piano or trees that can grow over time. Prices for each range from $5 to $35 apiece.

I actually had the idea for online memorials years ago, but never imagined all the frills for which there's apparently a market.

Looking for a Safe Investment?

(Here's the, um, money shot; your reward for slogging through these posts.)

We knew it was imminent. All those motorized dildos, but no . . . ?

(Thanks -- of course -- Ben.)

Grand Opening of Cao Fei's "RMB City" in Second Life

Sat., Jan 10th, here. Per the press release,

Public Opening Ceremony & Celebration in SecondLife
Jan 9, 2009: 6pm-8pm (SecondLife Time)
Jan 10, 2009: 10am-12pm (Beijing Time)
Venue: People's Palace
(RMB City Hall, aka Sigg Castle)
Landmark in Second Life: RMB City 1, RMB City 1 (153, 32,126)

Special Opening Events
* Speech by China Tracy (RL: Cao Fei)
* Inauguration of RMB City Mayor, Mr. Uli Sigg
* Official opening of the city, with public celebration in People's Waterpark
* Opening and tours of "Master Q's Guide to Virtual Feng Shui" in various locations around RMB City, as well as the first exhibition of UCCA in RMB City (People's Aerial Castle)
* Release of "People's Monthly" (Issue #1), the official publication of RMB City, plus other downloads of information and surprises
* Visitors can visit these and other ongoing projects of RMB City, as well as beginning to explore the full city and all its treasures . . .

RMB City is a virtual real estate project created by Ms. Cao within Second Life ("RMB" is a name for the "real" life Chinese currency). The project is described as "a condensed incarnation of contemporary Chinese cities, with most of their characteristics; a series of new Chinese fantasy realms that are highly self-contradictory, inter-permeative, pan-political, extremely entertaining, and laden with irony and suspicion. . . . A rough hybrid of communism, socialism and capitalism, RMB City will be realized in a globalized digital sphere combining overabundant symbols of Chinese reality with cursory imaginings of the country's future."

(As you may recall, the promotional trailer for this project was exhibited in The Program, in which we also screened Ms. Cao's documentary shot in and about 2L, iMirror.) Lots more info about RMB City here.

Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds

I had to post this 'cuz it combines two things I'm really interested in. "[A]n event-based program . . . tak[ing] place in Second Life to create dialogue around the issue of Islam and to study any benefits or limitations of virtual worlds in the creation of new channels of communication between cultures." (Not exactly sure what they mean by "the issue of Islam," but.) By Dancing Ink Productions; via BoingBoing.

Update on "Second Life Dumpster"

here.

Here's a pic of another virtual-virtual incarnation; objects curated by Marcin Ramocki, Lovid, Olaf Breuning, Makiko Aoki, Caspar Stracke, Gabriela Monroy, Ijan Hilaire, Kirin Schwindt, Jason Dean, Arnold von Wedemeyer, Annette Gödde, Penelope Umbrico, Jim Supanick + more.


Background here and here. eteam comprises Franziska Lamprecht + Hajoe Moderegger.

US Army to Use World of Warcraft to Test Sci-Fi Tech

The U.S. Army wants to use the massively multi-player online game, World of Warcraft, to see if they can fool human players using "self-aware virtual photorealistic soldiers that can be deployed in the battlefield through 'quantum ghost imaging'" -- sorta like a robot, only it's a hologram?

Other scary projects include technologies to translate one person's thoughts into electrical signals that can be beamed to others and to selectively erase memories. I'm not kidding.

Via Gizmodo (thanks, Ben!)

Unauthorized Group Exhibit in MoMA's Restrooms

On April 4, Jonathan Hartshorn, Brendan Carney, Thury Sigurthorsdottir and Scott Lawrence installed photos, sculptures and other works in an unauthorized exhibit in a the restrooms at MoMA. The photo (by Scott Lawrence) shows Hartshorn's performance piece, in which he crouched under a shower curtain.

As the NYT reports, "The exhibition lasted only from 6 to 6:26 p.m., . . . because a security guard, alerted by concerned bathroomgoers, showed up and tapped on Mr. Hartshorn’s shower curtain . . . and said, ‘I heard there was a mental patient in here.’"

The more enduring part of the exhibit is on the internet. Mr. Carney purchased the domain, "momaexhibitions.org," and replicated MoMA's site exactly, except for adding his own group's restroom show to the list of official exhibitions. The show's listed as, "Group Exhibition Down to Nature."

"Shiftspace": a Meta-Web Of, By, and For Users

One of the coolest things I've seen on the 'net, esp. when you consider the potential.

"ShiftSpace is an open source layer above any website. . . . ShiftSpace provides tools for artists, designers, architects, activists, developers, students, researchers, and hobbyists to create online contexts built in and on top of websites.

"While the Internet’s design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. . . . ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web.

"By pressing the [shift] + [space] keys, a ShiftSpace user can invoke a new meta layer above any web page to browse and create additional interpretations, contextualizations and interventions – which we call Shifts. Users can choose between several authoring tools we’re working to develop – which we call Spaces. . . . .

"Notes is a Space that allows a ShiftSpace user to leave post-it annotations on websites. Highlights is one we’re still developing, which would allow a user to highlight text on the page. Some Spaces lead more naturally to an interventionist usage. Two such Spaces that we have implemented are ImageSwap, which allows a user to grab any image on the web and swap it in place of other image, and SourceShift, which allows users to freely edit a page’s HTML code.

"When a user visits a modified (’Shifted’) webpage, the small ShiftSpace icon (§) pops up in the bottom left side of the screen. Pressing the [shift] + [space] keys reveals the ShiftSpace console. From the console, the user can browse through existing Shifts, choosing to enable those that might be of interest. Holding down the [shift] key shows a small contextual menu, allowing the user to create Shifts of her own. The user can then choose whether to share her Shifts or to keep them private."

Initiated by Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv and under continuing further development by an open source community comprising Avital Oliver, David 'dudu' Buchbut, David Nolen, "and more."

You have to use Firefox as your browser and download a bit of code, but ShiftSpace is easy to install and use.

UPDATE: The creators have upgraded to another version, which allows you to use Safari, among other benefits.

Artist Plays U.S Military's Marketing Video Game

On March 20, 2008, the fifth anniversary of the date of the U.S.'s latest invasion of Iraq, Joseph DeLappe will enact his ongoing protest and memorial art work within the DoD's online military recruiting and marketing video game, America's Army. Using the login name "dead-in-Iraq," DeLappe will enter the multiplayer game as a player and, forgoing fighting, use the game's features to memorialize US troops killed in Iraq.

More at Eyebeam.

Cao Fei’s "iMirror"

. . . a documentary “filmed” entirely in Second Life and directed by her SL avatar China Tracy. Including some slightly hilarious avatar disco dancing and rather long credits at the end, Part 3, below, is 9:28 min.



Part 1 opens with a great quote from William J. Mitchell's Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City: "I construct, and I am constructed, in a mutually recursive process that continually engages my fluid, permeable boundaries and my endlessly ramifying networks. I am a spatially extended cyborg."

More iMirror: Part 1, Part 2.

Info re- current exhibits of Fei's work at Artkrush, which quotes Fei, "[i]n the end, I think this 3-D world is the future world." Which 3-D world?

Transform Your Wii into a Virtual Reality Portal

Worth watching all the way through (4:45 min. total).



If this could be combined with a holographic screen to make it work for more than one viewer . . . total reality control.