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.

Share

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.

Share

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

Share

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

Share

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/

Share

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?

Share

Alchemy is an annual San Francisco event, packed with interactive art installations built to connect and amaze you. Participation highly encouraged — but we know you won’t be able to resist picking up that joystick, paintbrush, or microphone. See the flyer and press release below for more information.

For investors, some of the more visible outbursts of imagination will come on May 1 at Gray Area Foundation For The Arts (GAFFTA), where Alchemy will take place. Activities from zoetrope-building to ice cream making will take place alongside an interactive hyphae video floor, puppet theater, an immersive diorama, strobe flowers, and demonstrations from a wide range of experts in exotic disciplines.

WHEN: Saturday May 1, 8pm-2am
WHERE: GAFFTA, 55 Taylor Street, San Francisco
HOW: $15 at the door
WHY: Because you’re tired of those same-old jello-mold art gallery evenings and want to have FUN with art instead!
RSVP: on the facebook page

Schedule of Speakers

9PM – MetaMind Evolution by Andreas Stadler, software engineer and inventor, presents his work on neuro-feedback EEG mind-machines. He explores their applications to meditation, lucid dreaming, and brain training, as well as creative uses in music and art. After the talk, you’re invited to don the MetaMind headset and software, displaying beautiful visualizations from multiple channels of your very own brainwave data. (http://meta-mind.de/)

10PM – In Your Mind’s Eye by Dr. Tristan Ursell, Stanford University. You are a highly evolved creature, bred to perceive that which keeps you alive best, not what represents reality best. Learn about why you see the colors you do, and how your brain distorts the world around us.

11PM – John Bela is a founder of the design collective REBAR, creators of the global PARK(ing) Day event, Civic Center Victory Garden, Panhandle Bandshell, and other transformations of public space. He is a producer of creative ideas and a maker of things. John will present the works of Rebar, and how its many pursuits remix the ordinary, repurpose the ubiquitous and restructure the fabric of the urban environment. (http://www.rebargroup.org)

12AM – cutsupposepossesssuck by M. Ryan Noble, redefines social roles for artists through collaborative and therapeutic art processes, covering a wide range of media and experimental performances that fuse archetypal traditions with contemporary experience. A discussion of cultural engagement, sensory integration, and sub/un/hyperconsciousness as a means to create a metaphysical art experience leads into an experimental performance. Noble becomes a living sculpture in the space, guiding and collaborating with participants to develop the piece. (http://www.imagici.org)

1AM – Matt Bell is an inventor, artist, and entrepreneur who has done a wide variety of projects including gesture-based interactive displays, intricate laser-cut sculpture, and, most recently, floating art for the Ephemerisle festival. He’ll walk you through his multiprojector no-computer-necessary video feedback system that generates fractals live, allowing you and your friends to manipulate the parameters and output.

Artists and Installations

- Tyson Ayers’ Sound Cave Roadshow
- Strobe Flower Garden by Shawn Lani and PJ Reptilehouse
- Ice Cream Lab by Langton Labs
- Group A – Telephone Booth and TXT ME MOVE ME
- LoveTechSF’s Electronic Jam Lounge
- The Bone Conductor by Jean Rintoul
- Head Room by Brent Bishop
- Hyphae Dancefloor by Mary Franck and Michael Broxton
- Cheeky and Practice - interactive video installations by Scott Murray
- Galaxy Conduit by Rich DDT
- Zoetrope-Making with Tim Anderson
- Mini-Masher by Moldover
- Finger Puppet Photo Booth & Salon
- Alchemyville Post Office

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC — Officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today announced that no regulations will be placed on the so-called Outlandish Ideas (OI) market. This move is seen as a victory for both capitalists and artists preparing for False Profit, LLC’s fourth annual Alchemy event on May 1.

“We’re pleased that the commission sees the wisdom in letting us take our batshit-crazy ideas as far as possible,” said False Profit staff economist Rosco Petracula, speaking through a prismatic tube from a tiny sacred galaxy unfolding inside the mind of an obscure minor deity. “After all, hasn’t this sort of reasoning driven every major economic advancement in history?”

Two years ago, the public learned an acronym previously only known to quantitative financial analysts: CDS (Credit Default Swap). These financial instruments, built on bets around subprime mortgages, led to the massive collapse of credit markets and sent the global economy into a tailspin. In hindsight, the way these types of investments pretended to do away with risk seem absurd.

Today, we know that risk is unavoidable and absurdity inevitable. False Profit’s Alchemy event, now cleared by the SEC, is expected to further provoke wild creativity in the OI markets. No idea is too outlandish to be unleashed. While some fear increases in spontaneous interaction and artistic expression, many are welcoming the preposterous unpredictability.

Reacting to the SEC statement, Mary Pranckster, Director of the Gonzo Tactics Institute said, “The primary reason we saw a meltdown in ‘08 was actually low insanity levels. Sure, at the time everyone thought things were crazy, but let me tell you: You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Share

One of the first composers to start exploring the possibilities of the K-Bow system is Richard Boulanger at the Berklee College of Music. Boulanger has been involved in computer music composition for many years, and has a long history with alternative controllers — he has premiered his original interactive works at the Kennedy Center, and appeared on stage performing his Radio Baton and MIDI PowerGlove Concerto with the Krakow and Moscow Symphonies. In this video you can see two string performers with K-Bow, as well as some of the K-Apps software projected onto the big screen.

Share

At Southern Exposure and Kunst-Stoff

Participants make sounds and improvise together, in a series of structured exercises and games. There is some running around and yelling. Parts of the class are very noisy and chaotic; parts are very calm and quiet. The exercises are all vocal – no instruments. No experience is necessary.

While musicians and performers are welcome to this class, non-musicians are even more welcome. The classes are based on the idea of improvised music as a participatory form – as something enjoyable and interesting for people to do together, rather than as a means to the end of performance.

Misha Glouberman, the instructor, has taught the classes for several years in Toronto, where they have been described as “legendary” (MusicWorks Magazine) “a cross between an asylum and the best party in the world” (Eye Weekly) and “a very, very good time” (music critic Carl Wilson).

This is the first time these classes are being offered in San Francisco.

Presented in partnership with Southern Exposure Gallery, as part of Extended Play, a series of weekly live performances and workshops. (soex.org/Exhibit/84.html)

A longer announcement about this class is at: schooloflearning.org/sf2010/

For more information or to sign up, email:improvise@mglouberman.com

Share

This Thursday is the next edition of the Recombinant Media Labs +dialog symposia series, presented at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. This month we will be exploring sustainable models of cultural production within organizations and festivals, and will be joined by several leading voices in entities known for their artistic incubation.

Alain Mongeau of MUTEK, Marian Goodell of Burning Man, Naut Humon of Recombinant Media Labs, and Mathias Holzmann of Palomar5 will be lead in discussion by Mathew Dryhurst. As we enter into both a new economy and a new technological reality with the means of production distributed to a wide audience, focus and foundation of arts organizations must change to properly catalyze and nurture artistic works and communities. We’ll be discussing ways that some of these organizations have already managed to be agile enough to survive in this complex environment.

When: Thursday, April 15th 2010 at 7:00pm
Where: 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.
Seating is limited, and on a first come first serve basis.

Recombinant Media Labs is proud to present the third installment of its monthly +dialog symposium series.

In the aftermath of the economic meltdown, arts and innovation play a pivotal role in reinterpreting and revolutionizing the spaces where we live, work and play. Whether it be in re-branding business practice or empowering community development, creative thought is an indispensable ingredient to reclaiming and recoding our collective futures.

This discussion will focus on new and sustainable models for creative economies, and the importance of nurturing creative impulse to developing new models, new tools and new behaviors. What are the challenges we will face in this new dawn of creative enterprise? What roles can we play as individuals and communities to support these efforts?

Invited to this discussion is Alain Mongeau, founder and Artistic Director of Montreal’s MUTEK festival. MUTEK is a non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination and development of digital creativity in sound, music, and audio-visual art. For 11 years, Mutek has worked to challenge and redefine notions of our communities and greater culture, paving the way for numerous artists, festivals, labels, and other relevant support nodes. Earlier this month, MUTEK was the proud recipient of the distinguished Grand Prix du Conseil des Arts de Montréal, the highest honor bestowed on an arts organization in Montreal.

He will be joined in conversation by:

Marian Goodell, Director of Business and Communications for Burning Man. Amongst other accomplishments, Goodell worked with Burning Man participants in 1997 to create a Regional Network supporting their local communities, inspiring civic participation, and engaging people through Burning Man’s ethics and values. As of 2009, the Regional Network includes over 160 individuals in 125 locations worldwide.

Naut Humon, founder of Recombinant Media Labs, former Director of A&R at Asphodel Records and AV curator for select portions of the annual ARS Electronica Festival in Austria where he also helped coordinate their Digital Musics category for ten years.

Mathias Holzmann, resident artist at Gray Area Foundation For the Arts and founder of Berlin’s nomadic Palomar5, a non profit initiative that explores new spaces for innovation and new formats for people to cooperate and make real change.

The panel will be moderated by Mathew Dryhurst (Recombinant Media Labs).

The event will take place at 7:00pm on Thursday, April 15th 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.

Press inquiries, general questions and suggestions are welcome at mat [åt] rml-sf [dot] org

Schedule:
7:00 – 7:30pm reception
7:30 – 8:30pm panel discussion
8:30 – 9:00pm Open Q & A
9:00 – 10:00pm Networking and drinks

Share