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| Redazione / Editing:
Marco Mancuso
Photo editing / Cover
Arianna D'Angelica
Artwork: Mixed Media
Contenuti:
Simone Bertuzzi, Marco Cadioli, Lucrezia Cippittelli, Alex Dandi, Clauda D'Alonzo, Isabella Depanis, Teresa De Feo, Beatrice Ferrario, Tiziana Gemin, Luigi Ghezzi, Luca Marzello, Alessandra Migani, Miriam Petruzzelli, MonicaPonzini, Domenico Quaranta, Barbara Sansone, Massimo
Schiavoni, Elena Vairani, Francesca Valsecchi
Translations:
Giulia Artioli, Ian Bolton, Micaela Genchi, Ornella Pesenti, Roberta Virgilio |
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---------------------------------- NET ART
//Monica Ponzini
NET ART
//Beatrice Ferrario
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ONLINE VIDEO
Txt: Monica Ponzini / Eng: Micaela Genchi
Area: Net Art
 “The mess is the message ”. This is how Wired magazine portrays the online video present situation. An explosion of aggregators , that is portals collecting and re-distributing different video materials and single Web sites such as vlogs, experimental animations, video-archives and newsletters. They don't offer with fee “recovering” of TV serials and high-cost productions only. The Internet, by means of a progressively faster connection, has become a virtual far West for new video-communication pioneers. In most cases the only common denominator distinguishing them from the TV screen products is the shortness, which is caused both by medium, limited budget and communicative grammar which is more and more based on concentred and non-dispersive elements. The landscape is crewed and variegated as in a real free zone should be...
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DIGITAL SCULPTURE IS ORIENTED TOWARD NORTH
Txt: Beatrice Ferrario / Eng: Micaela Genchi
Area: Net Art
 Sabrina Raaf, is a young but established Chicago-based artist working in experimental sculptural media and photography. She creates works of art linking science and technology, nature and mechanics. Her sculptures continuously relate to real world, but Sabrina alters familiar landscapes bringing invisible aspects back to life (these aspects are invisible since they are too big or too little). Maybe the visions she proposes us exist in her artist's mind only, but the world appears more captivating and “good” from her point of view. Sabrina dreams of a world where technology and research are at high human qualities disposal, qualities such as intellect that can intensify and enhance them putting them at community disposal. All her works look forward to a near future where genetic engineering, robotics, anti-gravity experiments, synthetic ecosystems, and biomorphic mechanical architectures will modify our time, space, sociality...
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MEET JARON LANIER
Txt: Miriam Petruzzelli / Eng: Ian Bolton
Area: Hacking
 After Geert Lovink, Meet the media Guru meets Jaron Lanier, eclectic personality and specialised scholar in exploring and bringing the their extreme the frontiers of virtual reality. Lanier, authentic computer genius, is one of the pioneers of Virtual reality, ossimoro that he himself coined in the early 80's, and co-inventor of the famous DataGlove, the interactive glove used to get into virtual reality. For some time now with the National Tele-Immersion Iniziative, Lanier takes care of developing advanced applications for internet2, the network of the future, and the teletransport , that is, on his mind, the natural development of virtual reality. INTERNET 2: FROM VIRTUAL REALITY TO THE TELETRANSPORT it is then really the title of the gathering that was held on May 9 th at the Mediateca di Santa Teresa in Milan in which Lanier illustrated the results of his research into the concept of Tele-immersion to which he is presently dedicated...
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TELEVISION SERRANA, MOUNTAIN NETWORK
Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli / Eng: Micaela Genchi
Area: Hacktivism
 Buey Arriba is a rural community placed down a hill. There's only a coach passing it by daily, main street crosses the village and coasts fields, every Sunday a small fair takes place some kilometres away from the village, near the banks of a little river. The village is on the Bayamo province, capital of the Granma state, one of the eastern regions of Cuba, at the core of Sierra Maestra, where Castro, Guevara and Cienfuegos planned their guerrilla actions against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1957-59, which is now a huge tropical mountain park crossing the states of Guantanamo, Santiago and Granma. Beyond expectations this tiny village is a centre of multi-media production, a training and social aggregation space. Top hill are the headquarters of Serrana Television, an independent network, which has been producing low-cost movies and documentaries for ten years to support (and with the support)...
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MAX PAYNE CHEATS ONLY
Txt: Domenico Quaranta / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Software Art
 What happens on the screen of our computer can tell a lot about us, of our tastes as well as of our daily existence. Back in the far- off 1997, the project Desktop IS, by Alexei Shulgin, showed how a simple desktop screenshot might be an effective self-portrait. Since then, the reflection on the narrative “screen grab" potentialities has continued, up to produce narrations more and more refined from the point of view of dramaturgy. An exemlpe which is becoming a cult on the web is offered by The Scene, a serial distributed on the web peer to peer building an irresistible narration which makes use of what happens on the screen of the main character, Drosan: chat sessions, webcams, programs opening and closing, telling the adventures of this group of pirates involved in plots more and more complex. Videogames, starting from the suicide attempts collected by the English artist Brody Condon on the DVD Suicide Solution...
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C.STEM, GENERATIVE ART FORMS
Txt: Tiziana Gemin / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Generative Art
 It is not easy to give a definition of generative art if you do not want to be limited, moreover some aspects of this expressive form can create misunderstandings and doubts on the comprehension of this phenomenon. An explanation clarifying some essential outlines is given by Philip Galanter : “The term generative art refers to any kind of artistic practice in which the artist creates a process, such as a group of rules of a natural language, a program or a machine or a mechanism of different type which is then started with a certain level of autonomy helping in creating, or having as en effect, an ended work”. Starting from these preliminary remarks it can be affirmed that it is not exactly adequate to describe generative art as a stylistic current or as an artistic movement, but it should be looked at in terms of strategy giving birth to a work. Generative art is an attitude traceable to different tendencies...
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VIDEO ART
//Isabella Depanis
VIDEO ART
//Barbara Sansone
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A CUP OF TEA WITH MATTHEW BARNEY
Txt: Isabella Depanis / Eng: Roberta Virgilio
Area: Video Art
 Drawing Restraint 9 , the new work of Matthew Barney. A full-length film 135minute long with soundtrack studied by Bjork. Two of the most interesting minds of the nowadays scenery have worked together on this project, a video plunged with Japanese culture. Matthew Barney and Bjork are the two main characters of the movie, the two Occidental guests invited by the Japanese host to attend the tea ceremony, crucial moment of the movie. The story develops in the space of a day. The arrival of the guests by ship, their preparation and dressing in order to be allowed to assist to the ceremony, their meeting, love between them that transforms into mutual mutilation. The movie begins with a beautiful image of a woman packing small packets: full of poetry, with a soundtrack that emphasizes her movements, her slowness and discipline, the story goes on with the procession, composed of some dancers, that...
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VIDEO ART IN LOOP
Txt: Barbara Sansone / Eng: Roberta Virgilio
Area: Video Art
 May will be a month full of dates in Barcelona this year. The many and unmissable spring festivals can represent the way to explore more or less remote corners, but always very interesting, of a city that seemes to be always discovered. Among these, OFF LOOP '06 , a four-year-old video-art festival, seems to fit perfectly the suggestion of a route to discover the most active meeting points, essential tesserae of the cultural mosaic that turns Barcelona into an international attraction point. This festival is indeed situated in many places of the city, such as small galleries and cultural centres. These often flowered from the meeting of few devotees and started with district activities that found the backing of the inhabitants, just like Almazen , central office of the cultural association La Ciutat de les Paraules , born in the heart of Raval in the rooms of an old shoemaker's shop. It's spaces are on a human-scale and...
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CLUBBING
//Alex Dandi
ELECTRONICA
//Simone Bertuzzi
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WHEN THE DJ GOES TO THE CINEMA
Txt: Alex Dandi / Eng: Ian Bolton
Area: Clubbing
 In these last few weeks news has emerged that Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homen Cristo have finished a feature film entitled Daft Punk's Electroma that talks about two robots that are intent on finding their own humanity. In practice they have put images to the concept that lies behind their latest studio album Human After All and a large part of their aesthetics “cleverly inherited” from Kraftwerk . It's not so much the daftpunkian aesthetics that we want to talk about but rather the fact that the two producer/Djs have decided to become directors bringing in some way electronic dance music to the centre of attention. How many times have club culture and Dj culture become cinema? How many times has the cinema taken from club culture to build its own stories? How many times has Dj culture been visually transported in the right way? These are some of the questions we tried to answer taking a glance at some of the films...
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GIUSEPPE IELASI - UNTITLED
Txt: Simone Bertuzzi / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Elettronica
 It is worth noting – for the Italian musical panorama- that a new record by Giuseppe Ielasi was released. I would like to avoid biographical notes and recording lists and focus on this new untitled disk of the musician, producer, distributor (ex-unfortunately after the recent closure of fringes recordings ), as well as organiser of little events which will bring big international musicians in our country. Untitled was released by the Sweden Häpna - become a cult label- particularly attracted by Italian productions. It has published 3/4 Had Been Eliminated, Sinistri , and is not new to Ielasi too with which he published Gesine , to which we will refer often in the following conversation, where I tried to leave as much intact as possible the author's declarations. Untitled is a very dense work, complex and stratified. After a careful listening it is possible to perceive unexpected details, opening a wider imaginary, not fully declared...
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----------------------------------
VJING
//Claudia D'Alonzo
LIVE MEDIA
//Alessandra Migani
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VISUAL SIGNAGE IN THE ITALIAN ETHER
Txt: Claudia D'Alonzo / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Vjing
 Next 9 th and 10 th June the spot in disuse of the Pontedera Piaggio factory will put up the 2MANYVJS second edition, vj'ing and electro music festival that unites young artists of the electro scene, with due care for Italian area. The idea was born in 2005 during the meeting of a little group of vj's and new media experts, with the intent to create a dynamic feedback among visual artists, structured in a roundtable where different performers work together on three screen. This year the event, organized by Susanna Tesconi, Silvia Bianchi and Antonio Zavagli and promoted by VjCentral , proposes a mix of the two souls of the electronic a/v production. The dance matrix of the entertainment and the experimental collaborations. From this ambit the a/v symbiosis of the 9 th June. Besegher e Flushing Device , with Monotono , a dedicated trip into the fascinating world of little things that create the real outside the Es, stimulated by...
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MINIMALIST MONDAY AT THE TATE MODERN
Txt: Alessandra Migani / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Live Media
 The London Tate Modern, sanctuary of the contemporary art, has just welcomed a series of events to celebrate art, music, dance and movies. UBS Openings: The Long Weekend , this is the name of the first festival of live events. A rich program to cover four days, from Friday 26 th to Monday 29 th May, with free events during the day, inside and outside the building, and evening concerts in the magnificent Turbine Hall you had to pay for. Every day has been characterized by an “artistic” adjective. So Friday has been called futurism, Saturday surrealism, Sunday abstractionism and Monday minimalism. The festival satisfied everyone needs . Talks, a flight for skaters outside the building, workshop and activities for the families, dance performances, projections and the opening of new collections purchased by the Tate Modern. The hot moments were the evening events, with music and images live...
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ROBOTICS
//Teresa De Feo
TECHNOLOGY
//Luigi Ghezzi
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LEMUR ROBOTS, ELECTRIC MUSIC PLAYERS?
Txt: Teresa De Feo / Eng: Micaela Genchi
Area: Robotics
 Mechanical creatures are always captivating, although digital culture seems to be directed toward visual, web semantic shifts, and informatics codes poetic and revolutionary linking. But we are talking about robots that keep on lasting and astonishing despite the success of immaterial dimension. Karel Capek 's offspring is increasingly numerous. This time creatures are LemurBots . They are real talented music players: robots which can fly in the face of every great music player when it comes to fastness and precision. You could meet their creators in Milan if you came at MixedMedia , a great electronic culture event. Lemur ( League of Electronic Music Urban Robots ) are a Brooklyn-based big group of artists and engineers. The work of art they presented at the hangar Bicocca event was ForestBots. This is an evocative interactive installation. It consists of 25 ten-foot stalks that gently arc up from bases on the ground...
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COLLABORATION PARADOX
Txt: Luigi Ghezzi / Eng: Micaela Genchi
Area: Technology
 Collaboration is one of the most consolidated scientific practices. Scientific collaboration derives from the increasing knowledge specialization, from the complexity of investigation problems and from the increase of technological devices costs. According to the theory of collaboration an abatement in prices would stimulate collaboration overcoming political and economic barriers and encouraging knowledge sharing. To this end it is interesting to have a look on the outcomes of a study realized last year by some of the scholars of the Baton Rouge Louisiana State University . In the paper Collaboration Paradox: Scientific Productivity, the Internet, and Problems of Research in Developing Areas , published by Social Studies of Science (October 2005) , Ricardo B. Duque, Marcus Ynalvez, R. Sooryamoorthy, Paul Mbatia, Dan-Bright S. Dzorgbo, and Wesley Shrum reflect on two “axiomatic” practices of modern...
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GRAPHIC DESIGN
//Barbara Sansone
GRAPHIC DESIGN
//Luca Marzello
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OFFF FESTIVAL, GRAPHIC DESIGN CON AMORE
Txt: Barbara Sansone
Area: Graphic Design
 Una volta un musicista pose una domanda piuttosto comune: "Qual è il senso per il pubblico nell'incontrarsi fisicamente con gli autori di web art? Ovviamente il senso è umano, ma allora perché gli enti pubblici (o sponsor privati) dovrebbero pagare questa cosa? Di solito le conferenze le fanno bene i filosofi. Gli artisti normalmente li si fa parlare del loro lavoro, quando si trovano nel luogo dell'esibizione, già che sono lì". È sempre difficile rispondere a questa domanda per chi, oltre a non concordare con molte di queste affermazioni, trova che il senso è più che ovvio. È come quando ti chiedono perché nella tua lingua madre si dice una certa cosa o la si dice in un certo modo. Difficile dare spiegazioni. È normale e basta. Chi ancora ha dubbi di questo genere, continua a non capire perché sarebbe importante e prezioso organizzare incontri con gli artisti e i creativi del Web, avrebbe dovuto partecipare alla sesta edizione del festival OFFF...
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THE BEST OF OFFF
Txt: Luca Marzello / Eng: Micaela Genchi
Area: Graphic Design
 The Barcelona-based OFFF festival presented as usual a series of meetings with the world's best graphic designers. The artists introduced their works to the audience during meetings, workshops, and projects. This article presents the artists' best outcomes of this digital kermesse , which offered enthusiasts and professional people a lot of spurs. Hector – The first thing you noticed entering the festival was a robotic arm spraying on a canvas. Hektor is a Graphics Output Device. It was realized in two months in Summer 2002 by Jürg Lehni and Uli Franke , an electronics engineer from Zurich, for Lehni ' s diploma project at the école cantonale d ' art de Lausanne (écal). Hektor consists of a suitcase, which contains two electric motors, a spray-can holder, toothed belts, cables, a strong battery and a circuit board, which is connected to a laptop and controls the machine. Through the use of Scriptographer , Hektor is directly...
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PERFORMING ART
//Massimo Schiavoni
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THE NEW ON THE STAGE
Txt: Massimo Schiavoni / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Performing Art
 A work by Mario Merz identifies the eleventh edition of the Festival delle Colline Torinesi a Fibonacci series that grows from one to a multitude of numbers. The staff of the festival started to work in the 1996 in the Hopefulmonster center, the publishing house of Beatrice Merz . Now that the festival celebrate its decade, the homage to the great master has several symbolic meanings. The 2006 edition, qualified as Turin Contemporary Creation, reveals a look onto borderlands between theatre and art, theatre and literature, proposing synergies with realities that make Turin the capital of the book and contemporary art, but most of all giving spaces to artists of the scene that try to renovate the languages with passion. From 7 th June to 7 th July the Festival presents five co-productions in different phases of work related to the new plays by Pippo Delbono , Antonio Latella , Valter Malosti and the companies Motus e Fanny & Alexander , four stranger plays by Alexis Forestier , Rodrigo García , Amir Reza Koohestani , Ludovic Lagarde and guests such as Franco Branciaroli , Michele Di Mauro e Graziano Piazza , La Girandola , Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio , Teatrino Giullare...
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NEW MEDIA
//Francesca Valsecchi
MUD
//Marco Cadioli
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MIXED MEDIA: S'ALZI IL SIPARIO SUL DIGITALE
Txt: Francesca Valsecchi
Area: New Media
 L’occasione per Milano è ghiotta: la location spettacolare su cui tutto è già stato detto e scritto, un programma dal respiro internazionale e convincente nel percorso trasversale a cui ambiva, sugli schermi i contenuti dell’arte digitale ed elettronica, disciplina che raramente trova spazio nella programmazione culturale della nostra città. L’Hangar Bicocca ha ospitato lo scorso weekend, 25-28 Maggio, la prima edizione di MixedMedia, un festival di quattro giorni specificatamente ideato e realizzato come momento di riflessione estesa e continuativa sulle più recenti manifestazioni dell’arte veicolata dalle tecnologie digitali. L’evento si inserisce nella tradizione dei festival sul live media, con il preciso intento di indagare gli estremi e le estensioni della riflessione sul modo in cui il digitale sta modificando le strutture culturali e le modalità percettive della società moderna.Gli aspetti estetici dei media digitali sono infatti ormai consolidati....
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MUSIC IN SECOND LIFE
Txt: Marco Cadioli / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Mud
 There's heaps of music in Second Life. Each night of the week there are dozens of lives, new record labels have opened, the BBC channel 1 has bought an island and broadcast on Saturday the 13 th and Sunday the 14 th of May “One Big Weekend” festival. Avatars are sitting in the hall dancing, chatting and meet the artists at the end of the concert. Independent artists start to have their new fans following them in the various live performances in SL and are already selling their own music and promoting their groups in the real world. I met some artists in Second Life and tried to understand thanks to them the development the musical panorama is having in the virtual world. Multiverse Records is one of the first record labels of Second Life. It organises events, promotes artists and allows them to sell directly their music supporting this way independent artists and their skill in earning with their own art...
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