Batt-O-Meter spotted in Tokyo

The Keith McMillen Instruments Batt-O-Meter was spotted in Tokyo by our friend from UCSD, Trevor Henthorn.

July Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous

An event about Artists and Scientists who work/think/imagine/engage at the intersections of the Arts and Science.

University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton Street
SF, CA 94117
McLaren building, Room #251

More info and RSVP.

• 6:30pm-6:45pm: Socializing/networking. During the evening anyone in the audience is welcome to present their work in 30 seconds.
• 6:45-7:10: Linda Gass (Artist) on “Can Art Change Our Water Consciousness?”A visual presentation on textile-based art informed by site, maps, aerial photography and environmental activism. The artwork portrays aerial views of the human marks on our landscape in an effort to draw attention to concerns about water, using beauty to encourage people to look at the hard issues we face.
• 7:10-7:35: Peter Foucault (SFAI) on “Systems and Interactivity in Drawing”A discussion on how drawings are constructed through mark making systems, and how audience participation can influence the outcome of a final composition, focusing on an interactive robotic drawing installation
• 7:35-7:50: BREAK
• 7:50-8:15: Cindy Stokes (Photographer) on “Dynamic Form”A discussion of photographs and comments on some of the universal principles involved in the image structures
• 8:15-8:45: Imin Yeh (Zer01 Artist in Residence) on “Downloadable Mahjong”A discussion and craft circle based upon print media in the digital age and contemporary possibilities for “La Perruque”.
• 8:45:  Piero Scaruffi on the next Leonardo Art/Science eveningI will simply preview the line-up of speakers for the next Leonardo evening.
• 8:45pm-9:30pm: Discussions, more socializing You can mingle with the speakers and the audience.

SoundWave Illuminated Forest Opening

lluminated Forest Exhibition: July 9 – August 7
Opening Night Time: 6p-10p July 9th.
Location: The Lab, 2948 16th Street, San Francisco
RSVP Here
More Information

Featuring sound selections by Luc Meier with exhibition artists Jorge Bachmann, Agnes Szelag, Ben Bracken, Alan So, Suzanne Husky, Sam Easterson, Alyce Santoro, Reenie Charrière, Vaughn Bell, Elin Øyen Vister, Jessica Resmond

In Soundwave Festival’s most ambitious presentation ever, Green Sound mounts a special month-long exhibition and performance residency at The Lab. The Illuminated Forest is an imaginary world inside the gallery walls of San Francisco’s preeminent experimental art space that features a large immersive multi-media and interactive exhibit and performance installation from the collaborative minds of Agnes Szelag, Ben Bracken, Jorge Bachmann and Alan So, and environmental artist works by Vaughn Bell, Alyce Santoro, Sam Easterson, Reenie Charrière, Suzanne Husky, Elin Øyen Vister, and Jessica Resmond.

The main installation is manufactured by projections, sensors, MAX/MSP, sound, sculptural shapes and light/shadow where visitors become its inhabitants and part of its ecosystem: their presence activates both visual and auditory sensations, and leaves an imprint on the environment long after they are gone. It demonstrates our own connection to the environment and how we are all interconnected. Our presence in the environment affects this space and is forever changed (for better and for worse) with our temporal presence. This experiential exhibit actively reminds people what we do has impact: on our own lives, on others, and the world around us, both in the present and the future. It is a human reminder of the life existing outside our urban borders, its importance, and the power it can play in our lives while raising questions about a natural world lost.

The Forest will host experiential performances by some of the most compelling local, national and international artists and musicians. Inspired sound purveyors from across the sonic spectrum will explore themes of reinvention and recycling, real and imagined natural environments and creatures, endangered species, water, environmental awareness and responsibility, plantlife/animal life, and other artist imaginations.

In various eddies around the forest, artists re-imagine a place with Suzanne Husky’s textile trees and soft rocks, Sam Easterson’s animal-borne imaging, Vaughn Bell’s moving and wall mountains, Alyce Santoro’s Sonic Fabric, Jessica Resmond’s birds nests, Reenie Charrière’s Washed Up waterfall and Elin Øyen Vister’s Soundscape Røst installation on the birds of Røst archipelago in northern Norway.

Join us in celebrating the opening of The Illuminated Forest featuring sound selections by Luc Meier.

DorkbotSF at Gray Area

About dorkbotSF
dorkbot-sf is a spinoff of dorkbot-nyc which is
“a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students and other interested parties from the new york area who are involved in the creation of electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term.)”
The purpose of dorkbot is to:
give artists/programmers/engineers an opportunity for informal peer review
establish a forum for the presentation of new art works/technology/software/hardware
help establish relationships and foster collaboration between people with various backgrounds and interests
give us all a chance to see the cool things that our neighbors are working on

Time:
Tonight at 7:30
7 July 2010

Location:
Gray Area Foundation
55 Taylor St
San Francisco, CA

Cost:
Suggested Donation – $5-$20
No one turned away for lack of funds.

Mike Kuniavsky - Information is a Material

We have passed the era of Peak MHz. The race in CPU development is now for smaller, cheaper, and less power-hungry processors. As the price of powerful CPUs approaches that of basic components (there are fast CPUs now that cost less than some LEDs, for example), how information processing is used fundamentally changes. When information processing is this cheap, it becomes a material with which to design the world, like plastic, iron, and wood.

This vision is the opposite of cloud computing and it argues that most information processing in the future will not be in some distant data center, but immediately present in our environment, distributed throughout the world, embedded in things we don’t think of as computers.

This talk will discuss:

* * What it means to treat information as a material.
* * The properties of information as a design material.
* * The design possibilities created by information as a material.
* * How information as a material enables The Internet of Things, object oriented hardware, smart materials, ubiquitous computing, and intelligent environments.

Mike Kuniavsky has been active in the intersection of design and technology for more than twenty years. In 1994 he designed one of the first e-commerce websites. Since then, he has worked on hundreds of interactive experiences: search engines, museum guides, digital pianos, kitchens of the future, wine racks, amusement parks, and more websites than he can remember. He co-founded Adaptive Path, an influential Web design company, and Wired Digital’s user experience lab, one of the first user research initiatives dedicated to a single company’s online products. In 2006, he co-founded a new company, ThingM, which designs and manufactures ubiquitous computing products.

His previous book, “Observing the User Experience,” has been popular all over the world and is used as a textbook at many universities. He lives in San Francisco. He blogs at orangecone.com.”

Visit Mike’s site: Orangecone

k9d – Chip Music

After homebrew enabling a gameboy or similar retro computer it’s possible to run whatever software you like on it, including contemporary software that has been written specifically for composing and performing music! starPause will provide a birds eye view of the culture around this trick as well as demonstrating how he builds a track from the ground up using a playstation portable.

Jordan the k9d writes code for cash, rides keirin bikes on city streets, and produces lofi electro music as starPause. He’s also active in the demoscene with the Northern Dragons, practices dayan qigong, and publishes the DINOAIDS pocket zine.

Visit k9d’s sites at Starpause and Indie Games.

A. Tobias Tenney – Night Garden: Bio-Modified Photography

T.bias is compiling a book of photographs that he has taken of plants & flowers at night. Armed only with his point & shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 he has discovered an interesting way to biologically modify his process to capture stunning night time photographs. He intends to release his book of these photos, “Night Garden”, in tandem with the Dorkbot talk.

T.bias is a jack of many trades; Music, video, web production, graphic design, interaction design, geekery and hackery. He spend some of his time trying to capture photographs that he finds pleasing with the limited photography gear he has.

Visit Tobias’ Site.

Scott Kildall – Gift Horse

The Gift Horse is:

* * 13′ high sculpture depicting the mythological Trojan Horse.
* *A public project where everyone is invited to make hundreds of real and imaginary paper viruses sculptures.
* *A means to smuggle the viruses into the museum and release them in a public ceremony.
* *Constructed almost entirely of sustainable and recyclable materials.

Scott Kildall is cross-disciplinary artist working with video, installation, prints, sculpture and performance. He gathers material from the public realm as the crux of his artwork in the form of interventions into various concepts of space.

He has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Philosophy from Brown University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through the Art & Technology Studies Department. He exhibits his work internationally in galleries and museums. He has received fellowships and awards from organizations including the Kala Art Institute, The Banff Centre for the Arts and Turbulence.org and the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center

Victoria Scott strives to understand the transformation of matter and energy as it flows from one state into another. Working with electronic media, sculpture and social relations, she creates site-specific installations, digital prints, objects and audio works.

Her recent projects include constructing 3D paper representations of objects that exist both in simulated environments and real life. She is also developing a series of batteries that are charged by human emotional energy.

Scott completed her MFA in 2005 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago within the Art and Technology Department. She has exhibited in Sweden, Mexico City, Toronto, Berlin, Boston and Chicago and received several Canada Council arts grants.

Check out Scott’s site: Trojan Gift Horse

MC Sasha Harris-Cronin

Sasha Harris-Cronin is a San Francisco based multimedia artist who creates interactive exhibits for museums. freelances designer, programmer, artist, technologist, integrator, manager, and all-around outside-the-box thinker.

StringPort Released – The First Computer Platform for Guitar

“The path of the righteous string musician is betset on all sides by the inequities of MIDI and the tyranny of keyboards.”

Let’s face it, MIDI is about the smallest possible straw you can suck a compelling music performance through. For guitar players, it has been nearly impossible. That’s why after more than three years of development, I and the rest of the team at Keith McMillen Instruments are proud to announce the release of the StringPort, the worlds first computer platform for guitar (and coming for other string instruments – violin, viola, cello and bass).

It can do so much that it is hard to describe in just a few words what it is, but the best explanation is that the StringPort is a computer platform for string instruments. It allows you to control software in a personal computer using your instrument as the interface.

The StringPort is used in conjunction with an instrument with a polyphonic pickup (a pickup that outputs a mono audio channel for each string of the instrument, such as are available from Roland, GraphTech, Zeta and RMC) to enable the player to use multichannel effects processing and synthesis control. Prior to the StringPort, the only way for a string player to accomplish this was via a dedicated hardware box.

While some of these products work well, they have several disadvantages. Foremost, they are very rarely updated so the feature set that initially comes with the product may well be what is available for the duration of its lifespan. By contrast, the StringPort’s features are implemented in software on a personal computer. This not only means updates are as easy as downloading a new version of the applications, but also that as processor speeds increase the StringPort will gain a natural advantage over its competitors. While a dedicated hardware device is never going to get any faster, and never going to be able to support more features than its locked hardware can provide, our software can take advantage of every increase in personal computing power whether is be clock speed or additional cores.

At its base the StringPort is simply an audio interface, albeit an optimized one.  You can use the hardware without our software and record every string of your guitar separately right out of the box. This makes it possible to put different effects on each string of the instrument in any DAW software such as Logic or ProTools.  However, our software also includes an analysis system that looks at the incoming audio from each string to provide a full set of spectral metadata. While other devices simply output MIDI (a single pitch and “velocity” and sometimes pitch bend), the information provided by the StringPort analysis is much richer. It contains continuous pitch and loudness, pitch bend, centroid, parity, noisiness, and inharmonicity for each string. These spectral parameters are gained from complex FFT analysis to describe the continuous vibrations of the string, not a single event. All of this control data can be output to other software programs on your computer or over the network, meaning anyone can write a software program to use this analysis data. This really does make the StringPort a platform for controlling a computer rather just a completely isolated effects and MIDI output system.

Of course, we also provide standard guitar and studio effects. Take, for instance, our PolyFuzz application. It contains an entire effects rack including compressor, EQ, pitch shift, filter, delay modulation, amp simulation, delay and reverb. All of these effects are available for every string independently. Not only are they available for every string, but they can all be modulated with the realtime spectral analysis data. Do you want your filter frequency set by the note you are playing? Or your reverb level to go up depending upon the fret you are playing? We have build a modulation matrix capable of controlling every knob you can touch with a mouse cursor with the realtime spectral data.

We also provide two very satisfying synthesis applications. The first is a three operator “classic” synthesizer. It contains a two operator FM section, a subtractive section, and an LFO. This synthesizer is driven directly from the continuous spectral data, so it is very responsive to a variety of subtle playing techniques. It is easy to perform sounds with this application that it previously seemed impossible for a guitar to create, let alone control in realtime.

This just scratches the surface of what can be done with the StringPort system. The software package comes with twenty-four separate modules including notation, MIDI output, additional synthesizer control, phase driven synthesis, sound file playback and manipulation, and physical modeling. We’ve really put a lot of tools at the guitarist’s disposal with this product, and are excited to hear what gets created with it.

Find out more information on www.StringPort.com. What features would you like to see in a polyphonic audio processor? Let us know.

Libre Graphics Meeting Roundup

From May 27th – 29th I attended the Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 in Brussels. The conference turned out to be a really inspiring and creative group of people really pushing the envelope of what is possible, not only with open source software, but with visual arts as a whole. Building upon the previous LGM years focusing primarily of developers of the big list of open source graphics programs (such as GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus and Blender) this year added a large number of presentations by users and artists. There were even media art focused presentations such as this one on metaphor and images by Mirko Schafer.

The conference was held at a very comfortable arts venue called Pianofabriek. Complete with bar, the sessions were broken up into a main presentation space plus several breakout rooms for birds-of-a-feather meetings and workshops. Every day of the meeting was filled with interesting content and real use cases and user feedback for the software packages being developed. The theme of this conference “reclaim your tools” was reinforced from nearly every angle from conception to final product. This is what really brought the message home for me, people actually using these tools and showing the great results they can achieve with complete open software and content packages. This is a stark contrast from most other arts, music, and engineering conferences I’ve attended where the papers are abstract, the tools extremely academic, and the products proprietary. None of these things applied at LGM, and the feeling of mutual creativity between all the participants was as big an argument as any in support of open source tools, free content, and shared knowledge.

Friends at Libre Graphics Meeting

Some of the most interesting things at the meeting were the sessions on desktop publishing. People self publishing and developing sophisticated tools made it clear that contrary to some opinions about the directions of literary technology, new tools will only strengthen the printmaking community, not wipe it out with dedicated e-readers. The sheer ingenuity of  projects solving publishing issues with freely accessible tools showed a steady movement that will with time inevitably destroy even the highest volume censored app store in the world. Excellent presentations were given on open font design by Christopher Adams (the publisher of Joi Ito’s book Freesouls) and on self publishing by Ana Carvalho at Plana Press on transitioning from closed source software to created independent comic books. Also Tom Lechner’s talk on his program Laidout shows off its many impressive features, including laying out print on an arbitrary polygon.

Jon Phillips of Open Clip Art showed off the new website created with a very interesting new database based CMS framework called Aiki.

Another very interesting thread was that of open source fashion. Susan Spencer‘s presentation for her project Sew Brilliant that aims to make scalable free sewing patterns available, and also create open source software for fashion design. The fashion industry currently has no open source solutions and is thus enslaved to expensive proprietary solutions for their entire production pipeline.

We stayed at the Pantone Hotel in Brussels, which is obviously leveraging the Pantone brand (basically big squares of color) into a panoply of overpriced products (like $15 coffee mugs). This made the presentation by Ginger Coons introducing the Open Colour Standard, a new effort to standardize a color definition model not owned by a corporation, particularly noticeable.

To see a more of the talks at LGM head over to River Valley TV, who recorded all of the presentations.

For some more perspectives on the Libre Graphics Meeting:

Inspiration at Libre Graphics Meeting 2010, And What Led Me To Brussels – Pete Ippel

“Libre Graphics Meeting 2010″ at LWN.net – Nathan Willis

Tonight at Gray Area, SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures

Tonight at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts we open with an exhibition from the MiT Senseable City Lab. We have been installing this extensive overview of the labs work all week, and everything has turned out well. ome by from 7-10 to get a sampling of some of the groundbreaking data visualization and urban planning products that this group of researchers has put together over the last 7 years.

Gray Area Foundation is pleased to announce:

SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures, featuring the works of MiT’s SENSEable City Laboratory.

Please join Researchers from MiT Senseable City Lab and Gray Area Foundation for the exhibition opening night reception:

Friday, June 11th, 2010 7:00pm – 10pm

Exhibition Description
Since 2003, MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory [http://senseable.mit.edu/] has been investigating how emerging digital technologies can be employed to make cities more livable, sustainable and efficient. We recognize that the digital revolution has lent our cities a new layer of functionality and that now is the time to explore how sensors, cellphones, micro-controllers and networks of other handheld devices can be used to more effectively manage city infrastructure, optimize transportation, analyze our environmental impact and foster new communities.

In this, the first retrospective of the lab’s work, we have chosen 15 past projects that represent the potentials of this new world of pervasive computing. A collection of works from MoMA, Venice Biennale, Expo 2008, and Design Museum Barcelona. The work ranges from a pollution-sensing e-bike, to tiny sensors that can detect the final journey of trash in the waste removal system, and from real time visualizations of calling patterns during Obama’s Inaugural speech to a new smart building from the London 2012 Olympics.

SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures commences with a series of public events, June 11th- 13th, with related programming running through August 11th.

Below are a few projects included in the exhibition:

Copenhagen Wheel

Cars have GPS and traffic awareness; now bicycles can, too. But the Copenhagen Wheel has a new feature no ordinary auto navigation awareness has: it can track pollution awareness as well – in real time. The state of the art hybrid bike also saves power when you pedal and lets you use it when you need a bit of a boost. Copenhagen Wheel is an example of the city data dialog taken to the next level – beyond dialog to interactive decision making.

New York Talk Exchange

Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York Talk Exchange asks the question: How does the city of New York connect to the global conversation? Using phone and IT data, the images reveal the real time connections between various boroughs and the countries they connect to.

iSpots

The iSpots project maps the dynamics of MIT’s wireless networks across campus, revealing the ebb and flow of daily life.

Obama One People

For President Obama’s 100th day in office, MIT SENSEable City Lab created visualizations of mobile phone call activity that characterize the inaugural crowd and answer the questions: Who was in Washington, D.C. for President Obama’s inauguration day? When did they arrive, where did they go, and how long did they stay?

Amsterdam

Through partnership with mobile operators, Current Cities reveals the inner workings of a city through text messages, articulating the life of Amsterdam, here, These images depict the volume and intensity of text messages during on New Year’s Eve day and night.

Trash Track

Have you ever wondered where your trash goes? MIT researchers attached tags to trash to track it. Some trash is provincial – expiring not far from home, while other objects travel great distances to be disposed of.Trash Track has received wide attention in the national and international press. It has been deployed in several U.S. cities, including Seattle and New York.

–Complete List of Projects–

future NENEL / 2010
flyfire / 2010
the cloud / 2009
AIDA / 2009
the copenhagen wheel / 2009
trash track / 2009
currentcity /2009
spacebook / 2009
eyestop /2009
obama | one people / 2009
world’s eyes / 2009
real time copenhagen / 2008
digital water pavilion /2008
NYTE / 2008
The wireless City /2007
wikicity rome / 2007
wikiCity / 2007
venice biennale / 2006
real time rome /2006
zaragoza bus stop / 2006
tsunami_safe(r) houses / 2005
mobile Landscape Graz / 2005
iSPOTS / 2005
Raster Cities /2005
A.C. Milan / 2004
Sandscape / 2004
Illuminating Clay / 2004
Phoxelspace / 2004
Programmable Window / 2004
Cannes Reloaded /2004

–People–

Carlo Ratti / Director
Assaf Biderman / Associate Director

–Current Researchers–

Clio Andris, German W Aparicio Jr., Rex Britter, Francesco Calabrese, Filippo Dal Fiore, Giusy Di Lorenzo, Jennifer Dunnam, Xiaoji Chen, Carnaven Chiu, Luigi Farrauto, Cesar Harada, Lindsey Hoshaw, E Roon Kang, Kristian Kloeckl, Aaron Koblin, David Lee, Eugene Lee, Mauro Martino, Vincenzo Mazoni, Stephen Miles, Mahsan Mohsenin, Sey Min, Nashid Nabian, Walter Nicolino, Dietmar Offenhuber, Christine Outram, Francisco Pereira, Santi Phithakkitnukoon, Adam Pruden, Francisca Rojas, Christian Somner, Bettina Urcuioli, Malima Wolf, Caitlin Zacharias

–Past Researchers–

Alan Anderson, Burak Arikan, Dima Ayyash, Euro Beinat, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Daniel Berry, Andrea Cassi, Natalia Duque Ciceri, Enrico Costanza, Pedro Correia, Talia Dorsey, Sarah Dunbar, Samantha Earl, Paula Echeverri, Chris Fematt, Lucie Boyce Flather, Saba Ghole, Fabien Girardin, Lewis Girod, Gabriel Grise, Daniel Gutierrez, Tim Gutowski, Margaret Ellen Haller, Alex Haw, Bartosz Hawelka, Guy Hoffman, Teerayut Horanont, Sonya Huang, Myshkin Ingawale, Sarabjit Kaur, Jan Kokol, Sriram Krishnan, Xiongjiu Liao, Alyson Liss, Liang Liu, Jia Lou, David Lu, Andrea Mattiello, Justin Moe, Eugenio Morello, Kenneth Namkung, Kevin Nattinger, Sarah Neilson, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Yaniv Ophir, James Patten, Jill Passano, Fabio Pinelli, Riccardo Pulselli, Pietro Pusceddu, François Proulx, Daniele Quercia, Martin Ramos, Rahul Rajagopalan, Jon Reades, Bernd Resch, Renato Rinaldi, Susannes Seitinger, Andres Sevtsuk, Louis Sirota, Najeeb Marc Tarazi, Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Musstanser Tinauli, Andrea Vaccari, Kenny Verbeeck, Yao Wang, Sarah Williams, Shaocong Zhou

–Advisory Board–

Eran Ben-Joseph, Rex Britter, Gillian Crampton Smith, Joseph Ferreira, Dennis Frenchman, Hiroshi Ishii, Michael Joroff, Bruno Latour, Frank Levy, William J. Mitchell, Antoine Picon, Adele Santos, Saskia Sassen, Lawrence Vale, Mirko Zardini

Jon Rose w/ K-Bow at STEIM Hotpot Lab #6: Dirty, Throbbing, Bowing and Golden

John Richard’s Dirty Electronic Ensemble with Chris Carter (Throbbing Gristle)
Palimpolin – Solo tenor violin and interactive K-bow by Jon Rose
Golden Fur – Electro acoustic trio from Australia

Thursday, June 3, 2010
Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Time: 20.30 hrs. (door opens at 20:00)
Charge: Free

Chris Carter from the legendary Throbbing Gristle is teaming-up with the Dirty Electronics Ensemble led by noise doctor John Richards (Kreepa / Sand) to perform a piece for a specially designed DIY electronic instrument. The instrument will feature an original copper etching artwork! designed by Carter that will become part of a dirty electronics instrument. Random sequences, distortion and noise coalesce in a unique hand-held instrument the size of a postcard. Social noise for all! This concert follows a 4-day workshop.

Additionally, violin extraordinaire, Jon Rose returns after an impressive demonstration of the interactive K-bow a year ago. This time he will present a new piece that utilizes some of the extended features and possibilities of this device. Golden Fur, the adventurous and young trio from Melbourne, is on their first European tour. They will be performing a short set crossing between electro acoustic improvisation and contemporary composition. See you there!

LINKS:
John Richards http://www.jsrichards.com/
Throbbing Gristle http://www.throbbing-gristle.com/
Jon Rose http://www.jonroseweb.com/
Golden Fur http://goldenfur.com.au/
video of Hotpot Lab 4 http://vimeo.com/12012223
Keith McMillen K-Bow http://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/k-bow/

Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 Presentation

Here is my presentation from this week at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2010. It was intended to give the open source graphics community an overview of the kinds of models we are trying to develop in our performance software so that as further realtime graphics solutions develop they can be aware of the directions we are going in, and I also threw out a lot of ideas I’ve been trying to come to terms with about technology’s current impact on the arts; particularly for realtime performance. The presentations were recorded by River Valley Technologies.

Overall I had a fantastic time at LGM, and meeting some very interesting people progressing multimedia software on multiple fronts. It’s a creative group that I would definitely be a part of again.

Open source writer Nathan Willis really hated it. What do you think?

+Dialog: A Natural History of Media and Electric

Recombinant Media Labs SF (in collaboration with Gray Area Foundation For the Arts) is excited to announce +DIALOG, a symposium series inviting local and global artists, scholars and polymaths to present and discuss their work in an intimate environment.

In a time when the information we consume is unprecedentedly estranged from its origins, +DIALOG will provide a forum to commune, collate and derive fresh context direct from the source.

“A Natural History of Media”

Media technologies have become the last best hope for a dated modernist march into the future only because they are imagined to have no nature. In fact, nature has gone in and out of circuit with modern communications technologies since their inception; natural radio was heard two decades before radio was invented; and communications technologies have never merely been about communications.

To present these ideas and field your questions, Recombinant Media Labs and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts welcomeDouglas Kahn. Douglas Kahn is a historical theoretician of experimental arts and music; is the author of Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts; and has three new books forthcoming on experimental music, the arts and early computing, and electromagnetism and the arts. He is a Guggenheim Fellow on the historical discovery of natural radio and is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University of California at Davis.

“Electric”

Kahn’s presentation of “A Natural History of Media” is paired with a presentation of “Electric,” a new project by Chris Kubick, which explores the raw sonic edges and subtle mythologies of the basic source material underlying electronic music: electricity itself. Chris Kubick is an artist, composer, and sound designer tracing the boundaries between sense and non-sense, signal and noise, representation and formlessness. His work has been seen and heard in venues such as Whitney Museum and The New Museum (New York), MOCA and the Getty Center (L.A.), and many others.

The event will take place at 7:00pm on Friday, May 28, 2010 at Gray Area Foundation For the Arts, 55 Taylor St. San Francisco. Recommended $5-10 donation, however no-one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Schedule:
7:00 – 7:30pm reception
7:30 – 9:00pm presentations
9:00 – 9:30pm Open Q & A
9:30 – 10:30pm Networking and drinks

Press inquiries, general questions and suggestions are welcome.