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Calls + Opportunities

Augment it Yourself (AiY): Call for Proposals

AiY_logo“Perception, in whatever sensory modality, is the result of the brain’s cartographic skill.” Antonio Dimasio

New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) invites you to propose a hybrid net art project for Turbulence.org – Augment it Yourself (AiY). Projects must use both the World Wide Web and a physical site :: Deadline: July 1, 2014 :: Commission Amount: $6,000 :: Commission Date: July 2015.

  • The behavior of all particles is contingent on the presence of a conscious observer.
  • Our internal and external perceptions are inextricably connected.
  • Reality is the perpetual enfolding/unfolding of autopoiesis (self-making), in relationship with others and our environment.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a real-time experience of a real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input — such as video, graphics or sound — and mapped to GPS coordinates. Thus, after downloading an AR ‘app’ to a smartphone and going to the specified location, users are able to experience intertwined realities.

While AR refers to the technologies that make these experiences possible, we are interested in how we have always augmented our realities — with our brains and other reality-mediating technologies — modifying and/or enhancing reality by layering memories on real-time perceptions, for instance. How will your project contribute to perception, memory, and the creation of the autobiographical self?

Required: Proposal (max 500 words), Biography (max 300 words), and URLS of past work.

Email them to turbulence @ turbulence.org with the Subject: Turbulence.org – AiY Proposal.

* Do it Yourself (DiY) empowers individuals to make things without the aid of “experts” or professionals; it is an alternative to consumer culture’s emphasis on relying on others to satisfy ones needs.

Events

Dietmar Offenhuber: Diagrammatic Reasoning

Sunday, May 8th, 2011 at 9:34
MIT Media Lab [E14], 6th Floor, Room 633, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA

dietmar_offenhuber[Media Lab Map]

Abstract: Charles Sanders Peirce conceived the notion of diagrammatic reasoning as a method of inquiry through diagrammatic operations, emphasizing the fundamentally spatial and sensory nature of language and thought. This talk will show a selection of my projects that employ diagrammatic principles in a variety of time-based, spatial, and software formats.

Dietmar Offenhuber is a media artist and research fellow in the Senseable City Lab at the Department for Urban Studies and Planning, MIT. He has backgrounds in architecture, urban studies and digital media and works on the spatial aspects of cognition, representation and behavior.

In his artistic practice, Dietmar frequently collaborates with the sound artist Markus Decker and composers Sam Auinger and Hannes Strobl under the label stadtmusik.

His work has been extensively exhibited internationally and been shown, among other places, at ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, the Sundance Film Festival, Secession Vienna, the Seoul International Media Art Biennale and Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid.

Projects include:
mauerparkmauerpark with Sam Auinger and Hannes Strobl: The winter landscape of mauerpark in berlin turns into a theatrical stage, populated by pedestrians and cyclists following various, sometimes mysterious activities. What seems like a slice of daily life is in fact heavily digitally manipulated. The soundtrack creates a second space, sometimes contradicting the visual events in the picture. The travelling focus directs the visual attention and is controlled by subtle acoustic ambience. Its unnatural strength has a miniaturizing effect on the whole scenery.

mauerpark (excerpt) from stadtmusik on Vimeo.

Dust Serenade – with Markus Decker and Orkan Telhan – is a reenactment of an acoustic experiment done by German physicist August Kundt. Inspired by the Chladni’s famous sand figures visualizing sound waves in solid materials, Kundt devised an experiment for visualizing longitudinal sound waves through fine lycopodium dust; a setup that would allow him to measure the speed of sound in different gases. Dust Serenade intends to remind us the materiality of sound. Tubes filled with scraps of words and letters –- cut-up theory –- interact with sound waves and turn into figures of dust. Visitors can modulate the frequency of the sound emitted by moving a rod and create different harmonic sound effects. As sound waves figure, refigure, and disfigure the text, we invite visitors to rethink about the tension between their theoretical knowledge and the sensory experience.
dust_serenade

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Events

Serendipitous | Indeterminate Walk

Monday, April 11th, 2011 at 9:40
Park Street Station, Corner of Boston Common at Intersection of Tremont, Park and Winter Streets, Downtown Boston.

ecoarttech_IHExperience Serendipitor and/or Indeterminate Hikes. Meet us at the Park Street T Station on the Boston Common (Northeast corner). Then join us for drinks at Jacob Worth (31-37 Stuart Street, between Tremont and Washington Streets).

Mark Shepard’s Serendipitor is an alternative navigation app for the iPhone that helps you find something by looking for something else. Join us and participate in a 45 minute serendipitous city walk! Bring an iPhone (iOS 3.1.3 or higher), comfortable walking shoes, and ample curiosity. Bring a friend or two as well! Download Serendipitor for free from the App Store.

Ecoarttech’s Indeterminate Hikes (IH) is an Android app that acts as your guide through urban wilderness, directing hikers to the sublime Scenic Vistas inhabiting our most developed environments. Versions of Indeterminate Hikes have been exhibited previously, but this is the début performance of ecoarttech’s newly launched smartphone app! If you have an Android smartphone, download the IH app for free from the Android Market, or else just hike along.

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Events

Mark Shepard: The Sentient City

Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 11:56
MIT Media Lab [E14], 6th Floor, Room 633, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA

sentient_city_surivival_kit

Sentient City Survivial Kit: RFID_hers and RFID_his

Mark Shepard will give a lecture entitled Pathetic Fallacies and Category Mistakes: making sense and nonsense of the (near-future) Sentient City: As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, we increasingly find information processing capacity embedded within and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Artifacts and systems we interact with daily collect, store and process information about us, or are activated by our movements and transactions. Ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban infrastructure capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this near-future “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring its environment and our behavior within it, becoming an active agent in the organization of everyday life in urban public space. This talk will unpack some of the tacit assumptions, latent biases and hidden agendas at play behind new and emerging urban infrastructures.
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5480178086_15dfa7163aMark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose post-disciplinary practice addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network cultures. His current research investigates the implications of mobile and pervasive media, communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism. His work has been exhibited at museums, galleries and festivals internationally. In 2009, he curated Toward the Sentient City, an exhibition of commissioned projects that critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing and the city. He is the editor of Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture and the future of urban space, published by the Architectural League of New York and MIT Press.

Sentient City Survival Kit – Quick Start Guide from mark shepard on Vimeo.

Mark Shepard
Serendipitor
Sentient City Survival Kit
Media Lab Map

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Events

Patrick Lichty

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 11:00
MIT Media Lab [E14], 6th Floor, Room 633, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA

Patrick285[Media Lab Map] Patrick Lichty is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for The Yes Men, and Executive Editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. He began showing technological media art in 1989, and deals with works and writing that explore the social relations between people and media. Venues in which Lichty has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the Whitney Biennial & Turin Biennial, Maribor Triennial, Performa Performance Biennial, Ars Electronica, International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA), and TED Conference.

Lichty also works extensively with virtual worlds, including Second Life, and his work — both solo and with his performance art group Second Front — has been featured in Flash Art, Eikon Milan, and ArtNews.
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Lichty is an Assistant Professor of Media Theory and Experimental Media Art at Columbia, Chicago.
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ADDITIONAL URLS:

http://iam.colum.edu/plichty
http://patlichty.tumblr.com/
http://patricklichty.wordpress.com/

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