Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Movie to be made out of China’s first SMS novel
China’s first novel delivered through mobile short messaging services (SMS) is being made into a film that will also be delivered to cell phones and on the internet, state media said on Sunday.
The Taiwan-based company Bestis Technologies has bought the film rights to Outside the Fortress Besieged, a 4200-character, 60-chapter novel that has been sent out to mobile subscribers in short instalments, Xinhua news agency said.
CALL: Gathering of the Tribes Magazine - Sousveillance
Deadline: February 1, 2005
A Gathering of the Tribes (tribes.org) magazine seeks submissions for a special issue focused on the evolving Sousveillance art movement. We are looking for contributions reflective of how the arts are affected by monitoring and surveillance (socially pervasive computing) that are affecting human liberties. Defining the public space and identifying the opportunities for expression that public spaces afford needs to be contrasted with the importance of defining freedom and privacy in this era of instantenous access to information. From consumer data fed to advertisers via creditcards, to collecting information to ‘protect’ us from terrorists, to the monitoring of books we buy or borrow, the fact is that information collection systems are ubiquitous and converging with bio-informatics data mining, facial recognition, and even personal DNA data systems. Our world is closing in and the opportunities for autonomous creative expression are declining along with it. Reestablishing power and control over our own lives may come from a creative appropriation and understanding of how surveillance systems are integrated into the social environment. Sousveillance is one potential avenue towards achieving this goal. Surveillance, meaning to watch from above, can be countered by developing the art of Sousveillance, a phrase coined to describe the act of watching from below.
http://sousveillance.org/tribesissue/ (full call for submissions)
Monday, September 27, 2004
Virgin Galactic
A truly, amazing project. It’s great to see people with vision and an interest in cutting-edge design take it further.
Virgin Galactic is a company established by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of developing space tourism for everybody.
Virgin Galactic will own and operate privately built spaceships, modelled on the history-making SpaceShipOne craft. These spaceships will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in our history.
...“We’ve always had a dream of developing a space tourism business and Paul Allen’s vision, combined with Burt Rutan’s technological brilliance, have brought that dream a step closer to reality. The deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures is just the start of what we believe will be a new era in the history of mankind, one day making the affordable exploration of space by human beings a real possibility.”
Richard Branson
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Julia Hoffmann
Julia Hoffmann was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but she’s a total New Yorker. After spending a year in London studying Media and Visual Theories the rain sent her packing to New York where in 2002 she earned a BFA in graphic design from The School of Visual Arts. She began her professional career as a designer with Doyle Partners. Currently she works at Pentagram under the direction of Paula Scher and does freelance work during nights and weekends. Julia has received numerous student awards, including a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from The Type Director’s Club, and her work has been published in CMYK Magazine, ID Magazine and Graphis New Talent Design, and just recently was elected as one of this year’s ADC Young Guns. One day she’d like to be rich, famous and tan (and ultimately in the Encyclopedia.)
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
CALL: Art Keywords - Collaborative dictionary of the 21st century art
Deadline: Ongoing
http://www.no-org.net/texts.php
The aim of the project is to start a self-growing, collaborative encyclopedic dictionary that would approach central concepts, keywords, terms, and definitions related to 21st century art.
The project attempts to create a place for the data and definition exchange where the combination of theoretical, mediative and artistic (poetic) definitions comes from the need to establish different approaches to art definition.
We ask for artists, curators, critics and cultural mediators to send us terms and concepts relevant to their own approach to art, defined textually (definitions, articles, references, etc.) or through a media item (image, video, sound etc.)
The project will operate on ongoing basis, with an initial version launched by January 2005.
CALL: VIDA 7.0 - Art & Artificial Life International Competition (Spain)
Deadline: Wednesday, November 3, 2004
http://www.vidalife.org
VIDA 7.0 is the sixth international competition seeking to reward excellence in artistic creation that has embedded in it the practices of Artificial Life (A-life).
In the competitions held to date, prize winners have included autonomous lifelike entities that pleasure us (Tickle, 2.0; Tickle Salon, 5.0), converse irrationally with us (Head, 3.0) or invade our social space (Cour des Miracles, 2.0); virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation (Autopoiesis, 3.0; Electric Sheep and Remain in Light, 4.0); autonomous systems that use feedback as both a mechanism and a metaphor for transformation (Appearance Machine, 3.0; Levantate, 5.0); and works that emphasize social commentary relevant to A-life (Novus Extinctus, 4.0; The Relative Velocity Inscription Device, 5.0).
Further themes appear in the honorary mentions: avatars and agents in their unique worlds (Iconica, 2.0; Life Spacies II and Unconscious Flow, 3.0), re-workings of the roots of A-life such as cellular automata (Sandlines, 3.0; Dadatron, 5.0), and system feedback or autonomy translated into simple, familiar means (Breathe and Autistic-Artistic Machine, 4.0; The Responsive Field of Lattice Archipelogics, 5.0).
We’re interested in art that reflects upon the panorama of potential interaction between synthetic “life” and organic life, for example:
- autonomous agents that shape and perhaps interpret the data-saturated environment we have in common.
- portraits of intersubjectivity or empathy, shared between artificial entities and us.
- intelligent anthropomorphising of the datasphere and its inhabitants.
- user-defined exploration and interaction that is designed to mitigate fear and enhance curiosity in the face of emergent phenomena, which are by definition beyond our control.
- dynamic cybernetic ecologies that invite human participation.
The international jury will grant awards to the most outstanding electronic art projects employing techniques such as digital genetics, autonomous robotics, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, computer viruses, embodied artificial intelligence, avatars, virtual ecosystems, and interfaces between software, hardware and biomass.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
CALL: Wellcome Trust and BBC Imagine Competition (UK Citizens)
Deadline: January 14, 2005
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/imagine/index.html
How do you think biomedical science is changing us? Capture your vision in a photograph and you could win up to £2000 worth of photographic equipment.
The competition is open to UK citizens of all ages.
Nokia’s Connect to Art brings art to mobile phones
Connect to Art is a new dimension of art and Nokia’s answer to artists’ need to find new, innovative channels for artistic expression and ways to reach new and existing audiences by using new methods.
Connect to Art is the result of cooperation with artists and Nokia and launches with a mobile exhibition featuring three Finnish artists, Stefan Lindfors, Osmo Rauhala and Kati Aberg. Each artist has created audiovisual works of art that draw on the advantages of new media and mobile phones as an alternative channel for distributing art and as a unique environment for experiencing it.
Nokia’s vision is life goes mobile. In the future, people will create, distribute and consume digital information and entertainment almost anytime and anywhere, each according to their needs. Already today, features such as news, music and games can be enjoyed in a mobile environment. It is only natural that art will go mobile, too.
Connect to Art will first be introduced in Finland. Starting with visual artists, the concept will later expand also into music. Connect to Art will later make its debut outside of Finland where artists from other countries will be joining in.
Connect to Art
Full Press Release
Kimono-Makers Employ Computer Graphics
For centuries, Japan’s kimono-makers have relied on stencils, paintbrushes and hours of labor to turn out their elaborate and graceful creations.
Kimono designer Yuko Iwakuma uses some more up-to-date tools: a computer and an ink-jet printer.
Iwakuma is one of a new breed remaking the ancient Japanese art of kimono, relying on computers to make kimonos with brash new designs and then sell them on the Internet.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Rooms to move
Rooms in a box, appearing and disappearing with the mere touch of an electronic keypad?
Movable rooms sound futuristic, but they are here now.
The same space in the Allan Builders’ Colridge model home at Pabst Farms’ Eastlake Village subdivision transforms into a fitness center, children’s play center, handyman workshop and all-purpose room. These arrangements can appear in any of five spaces throughout the 2,040-square-foot house, transported on a track hidden inside walls and based in the basement.
SCOTTeVEST Solar Powered Jacket
SCOTTeVEST INC. (SeV) maker of Technology Enabled Clothing(R), and Global Solar Energy, developer and manufacturer of flexible solar cells, announced that the first solar-powered jacket designed to carry, connect and charge portable devices will be available in time for the holidays.
The solar panels are attached to SeV’s signature jacket, Version Three.0 Finetex, an all-weather jacket with removable sleeves and over 30 hidden pockets. The jacket features SeV’s patent-pending Personal Area Network (PAN), which conceals wires associated with power sources and earbuds.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Susan Grant
A winner Susan Grant blasted into the writing world at warp speed when she created an entirely new sub genre: aviation romance. As one of the first women in history to attend the US Air Force Academy, a former Air Force instructor pilot, and currently a 747 jumbo jet pilot for United Airlines, this New York Times best-seller loves writing about what she knows—flying, action-adventure, and the delicious interaction between the sexes. A busy mom to a couple of school-age children, Susan lives amongst the towering oaks in Northern California.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
City Survives Art Geek Invasion
Congratulations, residents of Linz. You and your city have again survived the annual geek invasion.
Once an industrial town that tourist guides warned was devoid of any cultural attractions, Linz, in northern Austria, has become the center of Europe’s alternative art scene thanks in part to the Ars Electronica festival, the world’s largest technology and art showcase, and the thousands of black-clad, laptop-lugging people who show up for the festival every year.
More than 40,000 people from 42 different countries attended this year’s festival, which took place the first week in September. And as usual, Ars Electronica turned the entire city of Linz into one big digital art installation.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Nick Pugh
Nick Pugh is an independent concept designer, engineer and fabricator whose mission is to do advanced design and research in transportation, entertainment and architecture. Born in Paris, France, he attended schools in England, Rio de Janeiro, and Berkeley, California before graduating from Art Center with a B.S. in transportation design.
Pugh’s design and automotive work has been published in Wired, Omni, Metropolis, LA Times, GQ and numerous other publications, and he was a featured guest on the recent TV shows “The Ride Of Your Life” and “Rolling Art TV.” He is a central figure in the book Build the Perfect Beast by Mark Christensen, which chronicles the building of Pugh’s first personal concept car--the XENO III that was unveiled in January ‘02 to over 700 guests and media at Art Center. XENO III has since been on exhibit in the United States and Europe.
Pugh is a co-founder of NGV-USA, the company that created the patented fuel storage chassis that increases the range of natural-gas and hydrogen powered vehicles. This ARPA sponsored project culminated in the first unsupported drive across the US (from Los Angeles to Washington DC) in a dedicated NGV. Other automotive projects include design and engineering consulting for Mitsubishi, Hyundai, GM and DZN Studio.
His work in the entertainment field includes projects for Warner Brothers, Universal and Chiat Day. He currently is contracted as a concept artist at Rhythm and Hues Studios on projects ranging from TV commercials and feature films to motion rides. He was instrumental in the design of Scooby in the 3D Scooby Doo movies and of Garfield in the recent 20th Century Fox release.
His current automotive projects focus on the design and development of personal concept cars for other clients. Pugh’s work bridges the gap between the world of exotic artistic design and that of the hands-on production engineer. Nick Pugh is married with a beautiful one year old daughter, Serena, and lives in Long Beach, California.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
CALL: First International Video Reporting Award
http://www.backup-festival.com/
Deadline: September 15, 2004
The International Video Reporting Award is an international competition for short, innovative, non-fiction, digital filmmaking. The films must be helmed by a single person who is solely responsible for content, direction, camera, sound and editing, and who fully explores the creative dimensions of digital technology. The filmmaker should also be taking on the challenge of autonomous production and distribution.
The preselection committee and the jury will be looking for excellence in content, as well as for imaginative use of documentary techniques.
The Top Prize carries an award of 1000 Euros.
In addition, the Michael Rosenblum Junior Award will be conferred, containing a personal two-day training with the tv creator Michael Rosenblum.
The award ceremony will take place during the backup_festival in Weimar/Germany Oktober, 7. - 10. 2004.
The applications for the “International Video Reporting Award” may be registered online at http://www.backup-festival.com/
where all current registration forms can be downloaded as a pdf.
Address your entries to:
backup_festival
Bauhaus University Weimar
Faculty of Media
Bauhausstrasse 11
99423 Weimar
Germany
The independent jury for the International Video Reporting Award consists of established television producers, VR-Coaches and University/Film school teachers. The jury members for 2004 are Sabine Streich, Michael Rosenblum, Wolfgang Kissel, Jan Metzger (hr) and Benedikt Otto (mdr)
Contact an information: