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| Concept / Editing:
Marco Mancuso
Photo editing / Cover
Arianna D'Angelica
Translations:
Giulia Artioli, Ian Bolton, Micaela Genchi, Ornella Pesenti, Camilla Serri
Artwork:
Claudio Sinatti
Contents:
Giulia Baldi, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Alex Dandi, Teresa De Feo, Beatrice Ferrario, Fabio Franchino, Luigi Ghezzi, Leo Learchi, Alessandra Migani, Maria Molinari, Anna Monteverdi, Motor, Bertram Niessen, Sarah Nussenblatt, Miriam Petruzzelli,Monica Ponzini, Massimo Schiavoni, Domenico Quaranta, Maria Rita Silvestri
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---------------------------------- NET ART
//Marco Mancuso
NETWORKS
//Lucrezia Cippitelli
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CONNESSIONI LEGGENDARIE, INTERVIEW TO NETART
Txt: Marco Mancuso
Area: Net Art
 It is really hard to be an impartial journalist when, because of the critical approach hold in this professional figure and the intellectual responsibility of this role, you are almost obliged to express your opinion on what is happening into the world of elecgtronic art. Moving throught carefully between its cathedral, attending its customary things, talking with its spokemen and with memory and experiences keepers, being really into the interpretation of estethical form and communication languages with the aim of understanding how human nature express itself with electronical instruments that knock down, with increasing velocity, stylistic differences and ideological border, creative experiences and way of expression. This is the reason why it is always harder to face impartially the story and description of a show like...
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INSITE 05, ACTIVIST NETWORK
Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli
Area: Networks
 InSite 05 is the 5th edition of a show, developped since 1992 between San Diego (California) and Tijuana (Mexico). This project was thought to be set in and for these two cities, that from the end of August to November analyze the idea of Border and consider, throught artists and activists, Border as a mental and ideological concept. Border betwwen Usa and Mexico is a entity with many facets: both a wall and a noone's land in which everything was destroyed to allow better –military- controlls over latinos who try to reach illegaly the American Eldorado. The Border is also the story of who tried with bad luck passing over the wall (or swim around it) without passing the customs (“con el coyote no hay aduana”, with coyote there's no customs, sang almost 10 years ago Manu Chao). Or, luckily, he passed and now is working as a scullery-maid in a L.A. diner, wishing he won't face police anymore...
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COPYZERO: ALL RIGHTS DIGITALIZED
Txt: Maria Molinari
Area: Hacktivismo
 The Movement Costozero is a no-profit association that is fighting for free of charge communication rights, considered to be a real source of development. It supports free information and free access to the means of communication, the diffusion of open content, and the adoption of free software in public administration, in companies, in associations, in schools, in universities and in scientific research. Amongst various concrete projects and services promoted and offered by the movement – a list is available in the section Proposals and Services at www.costozero.org -, there is Copyzero, a way of safeguarding the author's rights (copyright) at cost zero (free of charge) and above all the author's permission ( copyleft ). The author's rights (copyright) (in Italy regulated by the law 22 April 1941, n° 633) include moral rights, that is the paternity and integrity rights of the work and the right of withdrawal...
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XX(Y), TECHNOLOGYAND CHROMOSOMES
Txt: Beatrice Ferrario
Area: Hacking
 Glass premises, very much like a shop, in the centre of the courtyard of a group of council houses in north Milan : this is the way Xxy , an association founded out of the gathering of a group of girls from the “ex squat” Shesquat and from the experience of the “ex hacking laboratory” Loa . And that's the way the name came about: a mutant chromosome that encloses both the feminine and masculine universes, with their differences. Young people who mix technology and social projects, at a time when hi tech training is hard, but compulsory and sold at a high price. Therefore, self-training through the sharing of knowledge (the so-called sharing) seems to be the only possible way ahead. At Xxy they immediately want to state that they are not a group in the traditional sense: <In fact, although the reality of a “no-group group”, that is a micro-community that continuously changes identity and objectives...
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KLEE AS SOFTWARE
Txt: Domenico Quaranta
Area: Software Art
 “When we leave a first mark/the page is no longer empty/the symmetry is broken/ and the drawing starts to live”. This is the incipit of Mobility Agents. A Computational Sketchbook , by John F. Simon, Jr ., which has just been published in a fancy CD-ROM+booklet by Printed Matter Inc. in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art (it now features on the last Gate Page of Artport, the Whitney's online gallery). As the subtitle suggests, it is a sketchbook, but “computational” i.e. it is not a simple sequence of notes and drawings like Pedagogisches SkizzenBuch published by Paul Klee in 1925 (that Mobility Agents explicitly compliments). It is not only an album you can read, it is also an album to fill; it is not a set of drawings, it is a set of software to draw. Mobility Agents is written in Java and collects three drawing tools developed in three different varieties: Hatch Tool, Rake Tool and Spin Tool...
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GENERATIVE X, BETWEEN ART AND CODE
Txt: Fabio Franchino
Area: Generative Art
 Marius Watz , active as an artist since the early ‘90s, has recently organized Generative X, a meeting of conferences and exhibitions centred in computational design, which took place in Oslo at the end of September. This is a very important event because it's the first to be centred in this ambit and it boasts of the presence of some of the most important names on the computational field like for example Casey Reas, Ben Fry, Martin Wattenberg, Golan Levin . The festival theme is also very interesting because it raises a fundamental question: what's the software and art and design generative strategies actual role? The festival is like a framework in which we can distinguish some essential ambits, i.e. generative aesthetics , designing processes , performative software and software by creatives for creatives . In particular there are two principal sections called ' Code as Material' and 'Code as Method'...
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VIDEO ART
//Miriam Petruzzelli
VIDEO ART
//Monica Ponzini
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TECHNE 05, BORDER POETIC
Txt: Miriam Petruzzelli
Area: Video Art
 The space of choice of the art choosing new technologies and technology innovation becoming linguistic change is one of the most waited for events of this autumn in Milan : Techne 05 third edition of an international biennial exhibition promoted by the Province of Milan that, from 1999, collects some of the most refined and mature artistic experiences in this field. The first edition proposed a journey in the video installations world between classic works and last generation experimentations and the second one was centred in interactivity in Italy . 2005 edition is aimed at looking into the relationship between analogical or digital video image and its possibilities “beyond the screen”. It is difficult to consider it a coincidence if we dwell upon the importance of the “visible” in our culture – as this year Philosophy Festival testified; actually this choice – sided with consolidated and often disputable positions...
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DARA FRIEDMAN: SUNSET ISLAND
Txt: Monica Ponzini
Area: Video Art
 Created by Woody and Steina Vasulka in 1971 as an artistic association and privileged space for video and vanguard music experimentations, The Kitchen in New York remains one of artistic experimentation contemporary hot spots. Its programming ranges from multimedia to performance, from concerts to lectures and offers a various landscape of new trends. During the years the centre entertained such artists as Vito Acconci, Gary Hill, Kiki Smith and the ones who are now part of the directive board, for example Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass and Meredith Monk . Since last year the direction of the centre has been entrusted to one of the most interesting promoter of the moment, Debra Singer , who co-promotes the last Whitney Biennial. In September-October of this year The Kitchen presented the last Dara Friedman work, a two channels video installation entitled Sunset Island...
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ELETTRONICA
//Leo Learchi
CLUBBING
//Alex Dandi
ELETTRONICA
//Giulia Baldi
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RETINA.IT: IN THE VOLCANO HEARTH
Txt: Leo Learchi
Area: Elettronica
 It's a pleasure to talk about Retina.it, the project of Lino Monaco and Nicola Buono. Born from the collaboration with Rino Cerrone, a well known Neapolitan Dj, the sound of the group has cut down the post new wave elements to create a personal and mature formula. Electronic striking for its ability to create an autonomous path: no European models subjection, composition ability avoiding what has been largely listened, thought and analyzed: neither electro nor glitch, neither media bombing nor ultra-minimal rarefaction. We like the proposal, exclusively instrumental, while other roster artists as Hefty, Telefon Tel Aviv above all, have introduced the singing with modest results; I'm talking about Map of what is effortless of 2004. Two CDs released: Volcano.waves.1.8 . released in 2001 by Hefty that proposes a floating electronic drift, wisely light and never taken for granted. In 2004 the second CD...
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SLICES, ELECTRONIC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Txt: Alex Dandi
Area: Clubbing
 While in Italy we can enjoy the yearned first magazine devoted to electronic music extracted from a well-known French format called Trax , the cunning German are enjoying their first electronic music magazine completely on DVD. Name of the editorial project Slices: the electronic music magazine . And if you want to die for envy, you have to know that Slices is for free. You can't miss that small logo on each cover of each new issue: “Electronic Beats”. Starting from this logo you come to know, without any particular effort, that the project is supported by no less than T-Mobile, the Teutonic equivalent of our beloved Telecom, pushing and supporting this way the so called electronic music life and style in Germany . So the young German can benefit from a vanguard product without spending a single euro. It's still a long way to go for our poor Italy . But if you're lucky you can find Slices in Italy (or for free shopping on some...
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AUDIO VIDEO
//Bertram Niessen
LIVE MEDIA
//Marco Mancuso
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MIKOMIKONA, MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY
Txt: Bertram Niessen
Area: Audiovideo
Mikomikona is a Berlin duo composed by Andreas Eber and Birgit Schneider. Their audiovisual performances, aimed at an aesthetic minimalist strictness, are experimental lab sessions in which the duo focuses on the physic changes of sound into image and vice versa. “Extreme” experimentalism, aliveness and strong stage impact are the main features of their work, planned between deep theoretical awareness and technological research. For their performances they work with overhead projectors provided with self built analogical devices reading and transforming in audio signals the optical layer stratification on glossy papers or strange machinery with the 16 mm. Each performance is the result of a media archaeology path rarely observed in audiovisual electronic experimentation. While we are waiting for them to perform live in Italy...
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NEW CENTER OF DATA PROCESSING
Txt: Marco Mancuso
Area: Live Media
 Rechenzentrum, a data processing centre. It's the best chosen name for an audiovisual electronic experimentation collective, with that Teutonic touch us Italian, and not only us, are so fascinated by. All those who work and are interested in digital art, have learned to know and appreciate this Berlin trio, that from 1997 has made its own way acting as pioneers and watershed between art and electronic music, in such a way that now they are accused of having achieved that sort of creative plateaux with more and more inactivity features or lack of stimulus. It would be stupid not to admit that the young discipline of audiovisual electronic seems to show more and more its end, in creative terms, in relation to a growing artistic production and to a general technical equalization. Marc Weiser , music and programming, and Lillevan , video and loop, are deeply aware of what is around them, of how they get in short time to the necessi...
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----------------------------------
I.A.
//Teresa De Feo
TECHNOLOGY
//Luigi Ghezzi
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WHAT WILL BE THE VIDEOGAME TO COME LIKE?
Txt: Teresa De Feo
Area: Intelligenza Artificiale
 Someone has called it the videogame to come: full interactivity, artificial intelligence, refined language decoding, great technologic complexity. But it is not a proper videogame. It completely disregards the rules the big game industry aims at. It is called Facade and its creators like to define it an interactive drama: long pauses, silences, characters with a complex psychology, no special effects, not a very refined graphic. Scrape, perplexity, embarrassment. Facade stages the difficulties of relationship dynamics and it seems to wink at intimist and psychological theatre by Albee, Tennesse Williams or neo Nobel Prize Harold Pinter. Pretty good! Super technologies at contents disposal! It could be the first experimental video game. Let's enter the game, here's the prelude: you're at your friends' house, Trip and Grace, you're invited for dinner, but in the middle of the conversation a furious altercation breaks out between...
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CRYONICS, A PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY
Txt: Luigi Ghezzi
Area: Technology
 On the opposite pole of pessimists “à outrance” there's a thought current that has a positive and maybe positivist attitude towards future: I'm talking about supporters of cryonics therapy. Cryonics (sometimes called hibernation , cryo-preservation , bio-stasis and cryonics suspension) consists of the immediately after death freezing of a human body trated with peculiar protective agents to better assure the preservation of cellular tissues. The aim of hibernation is the hope in a technology to come that will make the maybe restored to youth (i.e. nanotechnology) body return to life. Hibernation is a common science-fiction subject (let's think about 2001: Space Odyssey ) but the challenge to death is a constant in the human history (it is for instance testified by the mummification of ancient Egyptians). The first scientific work about hibernation is the book The Prospect of Immortality , published in 1964 by Robert Ettinger...
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INTERACTION DESIGN
//Alessandra Migani
INTERACTION SYSTEMS
//Motor
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THE CONTEMPORARY CITY SIX SENSES
Txt: Alessandra Migani
Area: Interaction Design
A new and interesting phenomenon occurred at the Congresses Palace in Rome during the 49 th town-planning and architecture world congress IFHP (International Federation for Housing and Planning) – city futures: continuity and discontinuity, a reflection approach that prefers to read the city through senses. As a matter of fact from 2nd to 5th October at the huge and marmoreal spaces of the Congresses Palace at Eur (a Roman quarter of imposing architectures) multimedia and interactive installations found their place as an integrant part of the Congresses Palace body. Worldwide architecture and town-planning exponents met in Rome for these four days of meetings and workshops and Rome is the ideal city for this kind of convention. The new element offers itself to the audience senses when they enter the big congress assembly-room and...
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INTERACTIONS AND NEW PERCEPTIONS
Txt: Motor
Area: Interaction Systems
 "I figure that the listener requires about half of what you think you require when you're the creator," says Brian Eno. During festivals I often hear artists and organizers say “digital art is for few people”. The exhibitions numbers (affluences, sold specialist books or DVDs, software licenses etc.) seem to confirm this statement. But is it entirely true? Is really creative digital art for few people? Obviously not. Nowadays digital is an integrant part of mainstream culture. Let's think about chat lines, mobile phones, video games, films entirely made up of digital effects, remix culture, television, personal computer, Disneyworld like virtual reality, electronic gadget culture. We can't even say the audience doesn't like digital creativity, let's think about how new technologic wonders are welcomed - above all from the youngest people. And there it comes “But you can't call it ART”. Add the presumption of knowing...
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TECHNO TEATRO
//Annamaria Monteverdi
PERFORMING ART
//Massimo Schiavoni
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LIVING THEATRE, FUCK THE LEGEND!
Txt: Annamaria Monteverdi
Area: Techno Teatro
Judith Malina and Hanon Reznikov of the Living Theatre have introduced to the Politeama of Cascina ( Pisa ) the movie Resist! by Dirk Szouszies and Karin Kaper about the history of the revolutionary theatre company. Twenty years after Julian Beck dead. Julian Beck died in New York the 14 th September 1985 . He was the founder with Judith Malina of the “Living Theatre” group, still alive after fifty years of activity and most famous group of the theatrical neo-avant-garde. His anarchic-pacifist message has turned the world-wide scene upside-down, becoming the cornerstone of the contemporary expressive research. Julian Beck has been one of the most extraordinary creative minds of the twentieth century. Poet and painter, director, actor and stage designer, he has been the cries and the rebellion to the capitalist and warmonger society with his cruel theatre inspired by Artaud, that touched the public sensitivity...
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IT'S TIME TO ZIMMERFREI
Txt: Massimo Schiavoni
Area: Performing Art
 «I'm not interested in creating excellent, beautiful, new, marvellous “art objects”, but I am in proposing time and sense: different ways to listen to time, different places where share time, exercises to train senses or ways to find our own sense. I have the great privilege to work in the field of art: I have the right of free expression and attention. All my thoughts and fears, my tension, sensitivity and intuition, my energy are related with my activity. It is like living a double quantity of life in the middle of a community». In these few lines the video director and performer Anna de Manincor expresses a clear concept, though hard to absorb and digest in a while: time and sense are key words of everyday life, but they can also come into conflict with each other. Time and sense live in the same habitat, in the same soul, until our artistic activity put us in front of a possibility: our alter ego, predisposed to be open and agreeable to...
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NEW MEDIA
//Sarah Nussenblatt
NEW MEDIA MARKET
//Maria Rita Silvestri
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FRIEZE ART FAIR
Txt: Sarah Nussenblatt
Area: New Media
 Regent's Park it's a beautiful park in the heart of London. But for the last three years, during October, it is no more crowded by lazy tourists or English that hope to find some tepid ray of autumnal sun. This green paradise become actually an enormous bazaar, so perfect in its organization that it turned into the most authoritative European expositive exhibition. More than 160 gallery chosen between the best of the world expose their worthy artist, a real Toy-land for collectors, onlookers and layman searching for the new cult object… Is this true? The only critic, not unimportant, of this awesome marathon, named Frieze Art Fair, surely is the quality sometimes mediocre of the selected people. This creates and feed the unpleasant difference between a National Gallery and a private one that links the first one with the noun quality and the second one with experimentation, not always noteworthy. The Frieze deconsecrates the expo...
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NEW MEDIA ART, SELLING IMMATERIALITY
Txt: Maria Rita Silvestri
Area: New Media Market
 The immateriality of the new media art creates confusion in the world art system to the point that at its start the ownership of this digital works to the traditional and institutional art system was in doubt. But this is the real exciting aspect of the phenomenon. The works created through the new technologies are, in their pure form, software, that is nothing but 0 and 1, on and off. Simple electromagnetic impulses that, being digital then electric, are naturally immaterial. This art form is composed of a code appropriately written by the artist. So the code is like colours or clay that the artist usually mould to create something. Results may vary, as always happen in art, most of all because of the higher versatility of the digital instrument. However the art worth has always been immaterial, as we are delighted by its aesthetic, so the net art is a little bit closer to the substance that constitute its own worth. After some year from its naissance...
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