Digimag 22 - March 2007 - Net Art, Hacktivism, Software Art, Video Art, Electronica, Audiovideo, A.I., Design, Performing Art, New Media

:::DIGICULT:::
:::DIGIPOD:::

Montlhy Magazine:
Digicult Produzioni

Director/ Editing:
Marco Mancuso

Photo editing / Cover:
Arianna D'Angelica

Contents: Luca Bergero, Silvia Bianchi, Paolo Branca, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo, Isabella Depanis, Tiziana Gemin, Luigi Ghezzi, Alessandro Massobrio, Annamaria Monteverdi, Bertram Niessen, Eleonora Oreggia, Monica Ponzini, Elena Ravera, Silvia Scaravaggi, Massimo Schiavoni, Lorenzo Tripodi, Francesca Valsecchi

Translations:
Monica Amboni, Micaela Genchi, Stefania Longo , Ornella Pesenti

----------------------------------
CONNECTED LIVE ART
//Marco Mancuso

WEB TV
//Eleonora Oreggia

DAVIDE GRASSI. BRAINLOOP FOR VIRTUAL LIVENESS

Txt: Marco Mancuso
Area: Connected Live Art

It was a lot of time that, even if directly interested and involved within the new media audiovisual performances, I was not surprised by the theoretical, technical and aesthetical installation of a project like the new Brainloop of the Italian-Slavonian artist Davide Grassi. He was the winner of the ARCO/BEEP International Fair prize of the contemporary art Arco of Madrid, Brainloop is a performative platform which uses a brain-computer interface (BCI system) which allows a subject to use electronic instruments with the mere imagination of the motion of their limbs. In the case of a tetraplegic subject, the commands visualized only mentally don't transform into effective movements because they are blocked in the cortico-spinal level. The BCI interface were discussed for long in the recent period with that mix of esoteric curiosity and misbelief which usually are limited to the science and technology sectors which involve...

segue...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

JOOST E LA TELEVISIONE ONLINE

Txt: Elonora Oreggia / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Web Tv

Once upon a time, there was a household appliance called television, a magic box allowing normal people to watch and perceive images and distance sounds, once allowed only to some magicians, medium, telepaths and visionaries. (Magic faculties of democratization operated by technology, unfortunately, don't always strengthen cleverness). Conceived as radio's conceptual evolution and developed meanwhile in different countries with military purposes too, television was made available to the public just after the Second World War, and has become soon an influent political and commercial mean. Recently, we have assisted to a progressive renewal and to a territory redefinition of the diffusion and distribution of the audio visual product, before through satellites and cable TV, then through the web. In Italy , we have dreamed of a new television. We have imagined it reticular, local, distributed and auto-produced...

----------------------------------
HACKTIVISM
//Lucrezia Cippitelli

HACKTIVISM
//Francesca Valsecchi

SLUM TV, TV DI STRADA A NAIROBI

Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli
Area: Hacktivism

Everything started with a collective show of Austrian artist at the Alliance Francaise in Nairobi in March 2006, Economy class. Here different prospectives and attitudes of a group of artists coming from Vienna (Barbara Husar, Michael Lampert, Alexander Nikolic and Lukas Pusch), of an artist living in Nairobi , Sam Hopkins, meet with the life of a 700,000 inhabitants slum in Nairobi , Mathare. The result is Slum-tv, a television street project which describes the lives and identities of this city in the city from a point of view which is far from the common sense of the western means of information and with the idea of using poor and basic technologies to spread training, self narration and the development of a self financing economy. Alexander Nikolic, a Serbian artist living in Vienna and accustoms at the creation of collective projects in the physical and media public spaces, Lukas Pusch, Viennese artist with a strong...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top ---------

BIODOLL: WOMEN AND MANIPULATED TECHNOINFOS

Txt: Francesca Valsecchi / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Hacktivism

Milan, Historical centre, Monday afternoon. Outside the tube the evening edition and the remainder of the free press. In and out people in their routine. This Monday outside the metro you'll be approached by three (beautiful) girls wearing coloured coats, accompanied by drum rhythm. They're distributing a particular free press: a cut-up of four pages, paints and photos in which is hidden an artistic operation at the borders of technologies. The free press is called Bloki/Angel_f. and it's the last artefact of Franca Formenti. The action took place Monday 19 th February and was distributed in two thousands copies in two hours. A mechanism of distribution was built on a direct interaction with people, with the intent to create different situations of approach and attention that seemed looked like working. The group explained the artistic nature of Bloki...

segue...

----------------------------------
GAME ART
// Paolo Branca

GAMESCENES, REFLECTIONS ABOUT GAMEART

Txt: Paolo Branca / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Game Art

John & Levi is one of the house editor to keep on eye on. The Milan editor, that already published a monograph about the artist Mauro Ceolin , return in the library with GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames, an ambitious and successful roundup on "Games Art", a term that designs the work of a series of artists that compare with the videogame. The work suddenly manifests its international work, both in the section artists, both in the bilingual texts. In its complex, it's a unique experience, optimized by a rigorous cleanliness of the graphic, enriched with images of works by "Game Artists" exposed in the text. This book prosecutes the activity of his authors Domenico Quaranta , curator and critic of art, intervened even on Digimag, and Matteo Bittanti , author of numerous essay and articles on videogames, cinema and new media, as well as one of the maximum expert in the area of "game studies". Bittanti is both researcher at the University of Berkley and Stanford and curator of the web site videoludica - game culture . He works as well with Gianni Canova at the editorial series Ludologica. Videogames d'Autore. The presentation of this book coincided with the inauguration of the exhibition GameScapes. Landscapes and cities of videogame by five international artists , held in Monza together with the World Cyber Games and anticipated by a comment of the same Matteo Bittanti on the GameSetWatch , blog that referred to an unknown editorial project. We can talk about this project, no more unknown, with its creator: Domenico Quaranta and Matteo Bittanti...

----------------------------------
VIDEO ART
// Monica Ponzini

VIDEO CLIP
//Claudia D'Alonzo

DOUG AITKEN: SLEEPWALKERS

Txt: Monica Ponzini
Area: Video Art

Tutto attorno al MoMA, ogni sera per 4 settimane, una videoinstallazione ha mostrato 5 storie particolari, ambientate in una città altrettanto particolare. Le storie svelano vita e visioni di donne e uomini interpretati da attori come Donald Sutherland e Tilda Swinton, colti in una quotidianità sbiadita e ripetitiva che, all'improvviso, scivola un'esperienza quasi mistica. La città è New York, co-protagonista dei video non con i suoi luoghi più famosi, ma anch'essa colta in prospettive “quotidiane” che rivelano all'improvviso una bellezza nascosta. Così, Sleepwalkers di Doug Aitken celebra l'elemento umano colto nella sua capacità di trovare anche nell'alienazione e nella solitudine momenti di epifania che lo risollevano da ogni miseria, in una città che più di ogni altra racchiude in sé ogni estremo e pulsa di un'energia inarrestabile. L'installazione si snoda lungo le pareti esterne di uno degli edifici-simbolo della vita culturale...

segue...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

MIXING IDENTITIES: QUALI DIREZIONI PER I VJ ITALIANI?

Txt: Claudia D'Alonzo
Area: Video Clip

E' in uscita per l'etichetta Minus Habens-Mixing Identities, la prima raccolta in forma di videoclip sul vj'ing italiano, nato dalla collaborazione tra VjCentral.it e la Fonfazione Arezzo Wave. Silvia Bianchi, Valentina Besegher, Antonio Zavagli, Claudio Sinatti, Mattia Casalegno hanno curato la selezione di 17 artisti chiamati a fare un punto sulla situazione del fenomeno in Italia. Intento dei curatori, quello di creare uno strumento di promozione per gli autori e, allo stesso tempo, fornire una ricognizione delle tendenze in atto nel campo del live visivo. Gli artisti partecipanti provengono per la maggior parte dal portale di VjCentral, divenuto ormai un riferimento per l'ambiente dell'a/v, mentre la lunga traccia audio che fornisce l'ossatura audio del lavoro è costruita dal mixing del dj Alex Neri. La scelta di organizzare il progetto su tale matrice sonora, ha forse condizionato una lettura un po' univoca del fenomeno del vj'ing italiano...

segue...

----------------------------------
SOUND ART
//Luca Bergero

ELECTRONICA
//Silvia Bianchi

SOUND ART
//Alessandro Massobrio

KAFFE MATTHEWS, LOVELY MUSIC FOR BODIES

Txt: Luca Bergero
Area: Sound Art

The dynamic aim of Music for bodies is to find a new way of producing and perceiving music. Planned by the artist Kaffe Matthews, a collaborative study tries to explore new projects which are able to develop towards music and architecture, up to furniture and clothing. Music for bodies makes specific questions: have you never listened to music towards the back? It moves towards the legs, around the arms till the end of the fingers…these questions open a total sensorial winding world. Music doesn't involve only the auditory side, it uses not only the acoustic space, but it transforms the body from a mean of involving to a mean of auto-spread and perception. Music for the body. With the analysis of practical studies of the bio-resonance, a direct connection between “the sound map of the body” the space and the music is created in order to develop not only new forms of experimentation, but also to make the sound more

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

OPTRONICA 2007:VISUAL MUSIC ON BIG SCREEN

Txt: Silvia Bianchi / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Electronica

After the big success of the first edition of 2005 in London, Optronica comes back from the 14th to the 19th of March thanks to the collaboration among the British Film Institute , Addictive Tv audio-visual artists and producers and the association Cinefeel , to present what announce to be one of the most innovative and dynamic events of 2007. The location will be the BFI IMAX cinema, the biggest projection room of London , and the restored National Film Theatre Complex, which will re-open under the name of BFI Southbank . Optronica is conceived by Additive TV as an event devoted to the exploration of the fusion between audio and video and will house performances, screenings, talks and work-shops devoted to field experimentations. “Recently, the scene has developped quickly all around the world, new artists very different among them have worked in the field of musical and visual exploration...

----------------------------------
LIVE CINEMA
//Bertram Niessen

LIVE MEDIA
//Silvia Bianchi

RAN SLAVIN, IMPROVISATION LIVE CINEMA

Txt: Bertram Niessen
Area: Live Cinema

In the international panorama of audiovisual performances, one of the most structuring characteristics of the projects is the high degree of control that performers want to have during the performance. Ran Slavin , musician, video-artist and multimedia artist from Israel, works in a completely different manner. His Israeli origins turn into in a message, sometime even politic. Ran Slavin is though a complete artist, that means interested to his universe more than to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. The work of Ran Slavin is hardly definable and hardly comparable with other international audio-visual artists. His last work is called Insomniac City , an experimental noir science fiction movie of 40 minutes. A mediation on the extreme consequences of the contemporary urban life. Invited at the Architecture Biennale of Venice, Insomniac City, after lots of peregrinations, has been produced by the Mille Plateaux label...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

ARMIN LINKE/CLAUDIO SINATTI: DETAILS

Txt: Silvia Bianchi / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Live Media

Details is a production of Netmage 07 which took place recently, and came into existence thanks to the cooperation between Armin Linke and Claudio Sinatti, both looking for an experimental area in which photography overcomes the limit of its static nature thanks to an essential movement, aimed at catching what is already inside the picture. Their extremely poetic live performances on Carl Michael Von Hausswolff's music stood out for its simplicity and uniqueness during the last edition of Netmage International Festival. An invitation to think about the real meaning of image as well as an expression of very high aesthetic value, a show which Netmage's audience could not but sit down and watch. Armin Linke is one o the best known international photographer an a tireless traveller, who works both as a reporter an audio-video researcher. The thousands of images taken by Linke and shown in magazines...

----------------------------------
ART+SCIENCE
//Silvia Scaravaggi

ART+SCIENCE
//Luigi Ghezzi

ACTUATING CONSCIOUSNESS OF CYBERNETIC FUTURE

Txt: Silvia Scaravaggi / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Art+Science

The importance of science and art relationship is internationally discussed and it is at the basis of important academicals and experimental institutions programmes, daily exploring borders and links between art, mathematics, physics, electronics, chemistry, widen possibilities of knowledge and creativity, reflecting the structure of the nature itself, made by many layers and differences. Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand research is complex and suggestive; pioneering regarding sound and light waves universe, exploring sonoluminescence phenomena; original and spontaneously curious towards perception and media perpetualty. Evelina Domnitch was born in Minsk , Belarus , 1972 and received an MA in Philosophy from State Belarussian University . Dmitry Gelfand was born in St. Petersburg , Russa, 1974 and received a BFA in Film/Video from New York University , 1996. Evelina and Dmitry...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

LINGUAGGIO E IMMAGINAZIONE SCIENTIFICA

Txt: Luigi Ghezzi
Area: Art+Science

Language and the Scientific Imagination è il titolo del Call of Paper che la International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) propone per una conferenza che si svolgerà ad Helsinki dal 28 luglio al 2 agosto 2008, in collaborazione con il Language Centre della University of Helsinki. Ho già sottolineato in un precedente articolo quanto le relazioni tra i campi artistici e quelli scientifici siano oggetto di rinnovata e importantissima attenzione. La conferenza di Helsinki invita a riflettere ancora una volta sulle possibilità di dialogo tra le scienze umanistiche e quelle naturali, dell'informazione e delle tecnologie. La conferenza verrà suddivisa in 5 sezioni: la prima tratterà storia , geografia, scienza; la seconda politica, economia e giurisprudenza; la terza pedagogia, sociologia e Women's Studies; la quarta letteratura, arte, musica, teatro e studi culturali, ed infine la quinta religione, filosofia, psicologia e linguistica...

segue...

----------------------------------
GRAPHIC DESIGN
//Elena Ravera

AUDIOVISUAL DESIGN
//Isabella Depanis

MARIUS WATZ: CODE, ART& AESTHETIC

Txt: Elena Ravera
Area: Graphic Design

He is programmer, graphic, vj and experimenter. He is hedonist of the visual environment, lover of colours and organic forms. Editor of the Generator.x project (between conference, exhibitions and live concert) maybe the most known and qualified platform for the diffusion of the generation art and the sharing of the knowledge tied to the open source processing code and of Code & Form one of the most important resources for whom is interested in the computational aesthetics. He is Marius Watz, he comes from Norwey but is adopted by Berlin , one of the most representative and authoritative person on an international level of the alliance among art, experimentation and communication, which many artist and professionals of the world of electronics and digital culture are searching today. His graphic tables, his generative settings rich of colours and shapes, were exposed in the main expositive centres...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

TAKAGI'S TREASURE

Txt: Isabella Depanis / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Audiovisual Design

In the video art panorama, an original figure is the Japanese artist Takagi Masakatsu . His works have a peculiar approach and they're suddenly recognizable. His work is a perfect fusion between images, colours and sounds. His images are simple, from the everyday life, scenes from the world during travels. And maybe this simplicity is the strength. Often the subjects is children laughing and interacting with the video camera. The images are then processed in a way that they result an explosion of colours and lights, very often strong colours, yellow, pink and "acid" green that send back to a childhood imaginary. Even the musical part is personally composed by the artist, sweet melodies frequently played with the piano and then digitally elaborated. Looking at some works of Takagi Masakatsu such as Bloomy Girls, The Color of Empty Sky, Aura, El Viento, 18 Portraits of Atlas, Lightening , the sensation is harmony, joy...

----------------------------------
TECHNO TEATRO
//Annamaria Monteverdi

PERFORMING ART
//Massimo Schiavoni

EURIDICE AND THE OTHERS PINK RUMOR ACD. MOTUS

Txt: Annamaria Monteverdi / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Techno Teatro

In 1999 Orfeo and Eurydice, unhappy couple, moved to Motus' place. Stuck to Hades because of a glance, Eurydice became the omnipresent shade and the object- relic of a phonocentric god, Orfeo, disguised as Nick Cave . Their story is nothing but a small drama occuring in a New York loft. Pink noise is the last extraordinary Motus' theatre play already presented at Turin Hill Festival last summer and now frantically touring the centres of theatre research (from Scandicci Dro to Catania India Theatre). The sentimental melancholy here comes back, mixed with the tormented wistfulness typical of picture- stories, though characters are all women and stolen not from the myth but from the American family drama of the 50s and its atmosphere, particularly that of Douglas Sirk's films re-read by Fassbinder. In this work Motus interprets, thanks to the excellent stylization of both the setting and the interpretation...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

FRANCO VACCARI: IN REAL TIME

Txt: Massimo Schiavoni / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Performing Art

Talking about Franco Vaccari is kind of talking about contemporary society and people's desires and expectations in communication age. Do they wish to be protagonist, to be recognizable and recognized? Do they like to be in some way spied, spotted, turned into a show? We can say that, yet not without precautions and distinctions. The Modenese artist has certainly been the precursor of what we now call the show society; the forerunner of relational and interactive work in progress art, one who foretold modern TV formats based on every-day life and media control. His exhibitions in real time represent a unique and evocative current of contemporary art, the overcoming of the old concept of relationship with the public supported by Kaprow in 1959, according to which the artist's direction was always well planned. His work spans from visual poetry to artistic cinema, from video to photography, up to performance...

----------------------------------
NEW MEDIA
//Tiziana Gemin

URBAN TECHNO
//Lorenzo Tripodi

TRANSMEDIALE 2007. UNFINISHED RETURN

Txt: Tiziana Gemin
Area: New Media

Dal 31 gennaio al 4 febbraio 2007 a Berlino, si è tenuto il Festival Transmediale, giunto al suo ventesimo anno di vita, e ospitato dalla scorsa edizione all'interno dell'Akademie der Künste. Il festival, che cominciò nel 1988 come Video Film Fest dedicato alla cultura video, nei '90 si aprì anche alla media art, diventando nel 1998 International media art festival. E in seguito evolvendosi ulteriormente, da due anni a questa parte, nell'attuale Festival for art and digital culture; uscendo quindi dall'ambito di nicchia della media art, e puntando a presentare più in generale, progetti culturali legati alle tecnologie digitali. Questa edizione del festival tedesco ha visto chiudersi un'epoca importante, quella appunto della direzione artistica di Andreas Broekmann , che ha lavorato per Transmediale dal 2001 al 2007, e che lascerà sicuramente un buon ricordo avendo contribuito non poco al successo della manifestazione all'interno...

segue...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- top -----------

URBAN SCREENS

Txt: Laura Colini and Lorenzo Tripodi / Eng: Giulia Artioli
Area: Urban Techno

This year the Transmediale of Berlin has presented a panel called Urban Screens 2007, conference preview that will be hold in October 2007 in Manchester , UK . The first edition of Urban screen.05, held in Amsterdam , was produced by the Institute of Network Cultures and conceived by Mirjam Struppek . Both conferences are the result of a growing interest from societies, architects, media designers and researchers in the chameleonic media transformation of public spaces and relief architectures in the most important European countries: the Blade Runner city's sci-fi landscape becomes ordinary, from Times Square icons, and Tokyo's and Hong Kong's colourful LEDs up to the familiar Termini train station of Rome provided with digital screens in each platform. “Urban Screen” means a variety of dynamic surfaces as bright LEDs, plasma screens, and similar communication digital surface forms in places traditionally defined...