Digimag 26 - July/August 2007 - Net Art, Hacktivism, Software Art, Video Art, Electronica, Audiovideo, A.I., Design, Performing Art, New Media

contributo grafico

	NetArt \| HackArt \| SoftwareArt \| VideoArt \| Electronica \| AudioVideo \| A.I \| Design \| PerformingArt \| NewMedia

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Monthly Magazine::
Digicult Produzioni

Editing:
Marco Mancuso

Photo editing / Cover:
Arianna D'Angelica

Contents:
Giulia Baldi, Silvia Bianchi, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Teresa De Feo, Francesco D'Orazio, Luigi Ghezzi, Alessio Galbiati, Tiziana Gemin, Alessandro Massobrio, Maria Molinari, Annamaria Monteverdi, Bertram Niessen, Monica Ponzini, Silvia Scaravaggi, Massimo Schiavoni, Giulia Simi, Sara Tirelli, Lorenzo Tripodi

Translations:
Claudia Contino, Salvatore Iaconesi, Stefania Longo, Ornella Pesenti

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NET ART
//Giulia Simi

NETWORKS
//Sara Tirelli

CHALLENGE OF NETWORKED BOOKS: GAMER THEORY

Txt: Giulia Simi
Area: Net Art

Since ages we have been used to take part to always new web writing forms, i.e. weblogs different in style and genre mushroom everywhere, and they are so many that they inspired –already 2 years ago- the name of an essay called BlogGeneration. In their amount there are included several kinds: from the private blogs, having none art pretence, to the literary ones, from those dealing with political issues to those constituting real art projects. Editing systems more and more advanced and intuitive, and in this sector Wordpress is the undisputed leader, have made easier for people who desire it to make known and “open to discussion” their thoughts or pieces of information. What is rare to see is the application of these systems (blogs and other “open” writing forms) in the university world, and what's more for a declared creation of a theory, involving work. That's why Gamer Theory (or GAM3R 7H3ORY, as the author...

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CULTUUR 2.0: RIGUARDO L'ECOSISTEMA TELEMATICO

Txt: Sara Tirelli
Area: Networks

Prometheus fire has been a turning point for human life. At the same time, this brought problems to human race, that, for the theft to Gods, was condemned to live in a sad existential condition. The fire has been a technological innovation at that time, that we learned to dominate and use as instrument. Surely, Prometheus myth doesn't touch our minds on when we turn on our stove! During the most recent contemporaneous, Roland Barthes warned us once again: every new human invention will be reset to ground zero of our nature. It's still necessary to pay attention to collateral effects. If man creates a technological artefact and uses for its own aim, it inevitably ends up absorbing it in its own everyday life and it is de-formed from it. It is the unstoppable course that cultural undergo because of our osmotic relation with technology, because of reciprocal influence, generating a circular relationship between mental...

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HACKTIVISM
//Maria Molinari

HACKING
//Lucrezia Cippitelli

DECODER ISLAND ON SECOND LIFE

Txt: Maria Molinari
Area: Hacktivism

The 5th of June a new island emerged from the virtual ocean of Second Life . It is not palms and flowers, as every other, it is not decorated with sentimental balls and “Beautiful” houses. Its name is Decoder Island (you can find it at: Decoder 119, 218, 25) and its name already speaks volume on who followed with passion the Italian underground and cyberpunk scene. Who doesn't know Decoder magazine? It has always been interested to technology and counter-culture from 1987, and it is now in Second Life thanks to its founder Ermanno “Gomma” Guarneri , but even thanks to its Milan publishing house Shake e Idearum.org . At the inauguration, a big post-industrial structure of 5 floors was waiting, with the psychedelic and jazzy colours of Prof. Bad Trip . Experimental artist in the illustration area and reference point of the contemporary underground art, Prof. Bad Trip aka Gianluca Lerici...

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INSTALANDO. ARTE Y CULTURA DIGITAL

Txt: Lucrezia Cippittelli
Area: Hacking

Instalando. Arte y cultura digital è il titolo dell'ultima fatica del collettivo Troyano di Santiago del Cile. A un anno esatto dall'organizzazione del progetto di conferenze e incontri Actualizando (organizzato nell'estate 2006 tra Santiago, Valparaiso e Rosario) e dopo quasi due anni dalla partecipazione all'interno della Biennale di Video e Nuovi Media di Santiago con il progetto curatoriale Elena , (e si veda l'articolo/intervista pubblicato in occasione della Biennale, Troyano, CIle critico alle soglie del futuro, Instalando è il punto di arrivo di un faticoso percorso che ha portato il trio Ignacio Nieto, Ricardo Vega e Italo Tello a fare tesoro di due anni di esperienze, connessioni, incontri, scambi e progetti e a materializzarle in un libro. Finanziato dopo un'Odissea di rinvii burocratici con un premio per giovani artisti cileni, Instalando raccoglie testimonianze, lectures ed esperienze di artisti, attivisti teorici e curatori di tutto il mondo...

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FREE SOFTWARE
//Bertram Niessen

SOFTWARE ART
//Monica Ponzini

MARK CONIGLIO: BUILDING BLOCKS ISADORA

Txt: Bertram Niessen
Area: Free Software

With their pros and cons, the real time process software for sound and image flow have an influence on the quality and organization of the today's audiovisual performances. Each specific program has a pretty precise address: software deriving from Max MSP (that a time was 0+55 and now it is Jitter) are highly flexible, but addressed for programmers and experts, while vj-oriented software as ArKaos o Resolume are limited by an extreme scarcity in available options. In the mid you can find Isadora software (now it is available only for Mac e in beta phase for pc). That's why in this number of Digicult we decided to interview its creator, Mr. Mark Coniglio. Starting from his work together with the multi-media theatre-dance group Troika Ranch and with Ms. Dawn Stoppiello , Mr. Coniglio has developed an extremely flexible and intuitive platform. From the early focus on interaction with performers, an interaction based on...

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SOURCE CODE

Txt: Monica Ponzini
Area: Software Art

Codice sorgente: una sequenza di istruzioni scritte in un linguaggio di programmazione, una serie di frasi in un codice comprensibile che viene trasformato dalla macchina-computer in input per eseguire un programma. Una successione coerente di caratteri alfanumerici che attiva un'azione, la base del funzionamento di qualsiasi software. Eyebeam, centro culturale newyorkese attivo nello sviluppo e divulgazione delle arti elettroniche, festeggia i suoi primi dieci anni di attività con una mostra intitolata, appunto, Source Code, in cui presenta una serie di artisti, programmatori e hackers che negli anni sono stati ospitati dal centro stesso. Un'esplorazione ad ampio raggio dell'impatto delle nuove tecnologie sulla creatività applicata ad ogni ambito, dal video al videogioco, dalla rappresentazione di network al riciclaggio dei dati in rete…La mostra offre un variegato panorama delle implicazioni artistiche legate alla tecnologia...

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VIDEO CLIP
//Alessio Galbiati

SONARCINEMA 2007, MUSIC FOR THE EYES

Txt: Alessio Galbiati
Area: Video Clip

As every year the Auditorium of Barcellona Contemporary Culture Centre (CCCB) was the venue for the three-day festival (14th, 15th and 16th June 2007) SonarCinema : the section dedicated to the evolution of the image in movement. What caught the eye clearly in the selection dealt with by the curators Andy Davies and Advanced Music was the intention to offer a heterogeneous and multifaceted programme consisting of those contemporary audiovisual productions characterized by their particular attention to the relationship between music (we might say electronic music, but since we are dealing with Sonar the reference to the term “avanzada” is inevitable) and image. Beside contemporary production some Devo's videos were presented, with the idea of critically re-evaluate a way of envisaging which have been definitely neglected by mainstream culture. Moreover, the documentary film “ Derailroaded ” dedicated to the American singer Larry Fisher was showed. By embracing in its exhibitions audiovisual forms of art typical of current artistic avantgarde expressions, animation, musical videoclips and experimental cinema, the festival has showed a possibile sampling of Avanzada Image. Yet, looking more carefully, what was missing in Sonarcinema section was the very cinema, that is to say the films. Everything but films. That absence is not casual or episodic at all, since during this kind of festivals which give primary importance to music (electronic or “advanced”) in their structure, all the emphasis is put on audiovisual experimentations thus neglecting what is commonly known as “film” . By the way, eleven sections, four between films and documentaries, sixteen videoclips and thirty experimental short films shot with new digital technologies. All completed by a particular attention to music, because the ten-hour programme of Sonarcinema 2007 has been music for the eyes this year too!

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ELECTRONICA
//Marco Mancuso

ELECTRONICA
//Giulia Baldi

SOUND ART
//Alessandro Massobrio

SONAR 07,QUATTRO CHIACCHIERE...A RITMO DI MUSICA

Txt: Marco Mancuso
Area: Electronica

Digicult had the honor of establishing a partnership with the 2007 edition of Sonar, objectively the most widely known and populated advanced music and multimedia arts festival. The project has been carefully executed and many were the difficulties encountered by our small team, but we did it, and we can now proudly present you this double summer issue of the magazine filled with a report that is so complete and exhaustive that it can easily clear any doubts you might have left in your mind about the efefctive possibilities offered by editorial projects on the web, on both their viral capabilities and their structural dinamism. The report, after 3 months of continuous partnership and collaboration, documents the 3 days of the Barcellona based festival by providing 4 articles covering all of the faces animating this festival, in its absolute unicity, deriving from its complexity and artistic offering: a report on the music section...

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SONAR 2007: ELECTRONIC MUSIC FOR THE MASSES

Txt: Giulia Baldi
Area: Electronica

If every city in the world has its own music, its own clubs and festivals, for advanced and/or electro music lovers Sonar remains the best they can ask for. And when who actually goes to the festival is just a part of those arrived in Barcelona (some doesn't even have the tickets and search for alternative parties, some have the pass but don't want to get into the crowd and prefer be alternative…), the air you can breath during Sonar renders everything special, inside and outside the Festival. This edition has been for me more interesting and amazing than the lasts. The line up was fascinating, so, overcoming snobbism and sloth, I dedicated to Sonar. During 3 days I passed through different atmospheres and époques, styles and languages far but close to me, artist that I always known and artists I've never met before. And I got out happily ever after. Obviously, some doubts arose (one on everything: why Fangoria?!?), but it's been a Sonar that I'll remember with pleasure.

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LIVE MEDIA
//Marco Mancuso

LIVE CINEMA
//SIlvia Bianchi

FEED, VISIBLE SPACE COLLAPSE

Txt: Marco Mancuso
Area: Live Media

Feed, an audiovisual performance on sensorial, spatialized, electronic experimentation produced by austrin artist Kurt Hentschlager ( for the ones that don't know him, he, together with Ulf Langheinrich, is one of the two souls of Granular Synthesis) is, at this time, a project that is unique in its genre, outside of the aesthetic and technical languages currently spoken in the contemporary world of performances and multimedia installations. There's really nothing to discuss: opinions are in total accordance among audience and critics. Whoever was able to "experience" Feed (experience: this is its main significance) truly knows what I'm talking about. Designed for the Biennale di Teatro di Venezia in 2005, passed through Netmage in 2006 and replicated many times all over the world up to its arrival, a short time ago, to the Sonar festival in Barcelona , Feed is the artistic and research project effectively enclosing the whole of the path, ideas, theories...

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SYNKEN: AUDIOVISUAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Txt: Silvia Bianchi
Area: Live Cinema

Synken is an experimental project, imaginative and ambitious, born by the collaboration of the visual artists Transforma and the composer O.S.T. Transforma are Baris Hasselbach, Luke Bennet and Simon Krahl , a collective of vj, experimental video-artists and graphics from Berlin , collaborator of Apparat and Funkstoerung as well. O.S.T. is Chris Douglas, Californian musician known because of his different performances under the name of Dalglish, Rook Valard and Rook Vallade . Synken is a vibrating, evolved trip through mysterious landscapes where shapes and abstractions are reverberated inside fragile soundscapes. Synken is a unique work, that explores the borders between vjing, videoart, graphic and analogical elaboration, creating an hybrid being between utterance and statement, hanging in the balance of live and digital support. Synken is an hybrid project, an audio-visual project that...

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ROBOTICS
//Tiziana Gemin

ART AND SCIENCE
//Teresa De Feo

TECHNOLOGY
//Luigi Ghezzi

LIGHT BULB AND SURREAL ART

Txt: Tiziana Gemin
Area: Robotics

During 2007 edition of Sonar festival which ended a few days ago in Barcelona, a project by Jeff Lieberman, entitled Light Bulb, was presented at Sonarmatica , a show which takes place together with the usual festival. This year Sonarmatica presented a selection of works dealing with the ‘magic' side of technology, showing processes which cannot be understood merely with intuition and trigger our wonder. Light Bulb showed an undoubtly surreal vision, with an exhibition which called to mind illusionism tricks or maybe a paint by Magritte. A normal light bulb hangs in the air within a structure; it is turned on, though no wire is connected to it. Actually the installation shows two interesting phisics phenomena: magnetic levitation and electric current transmission without wires and has been inspired by one of the most important researches by the Croatian scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla...

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EDOARDO KAK: AND SO ARTIST CREATED LIFE

Txt: Teresa De Feo
Area: Art+Science

In case this summer you have bought one of the latest works by Eduardo Kak, you should then find someone or somewhere to entrust with your new work, together with your pet. No, this is not a provocation, but one of the latest bioart frontiers. Specimen of Secrecy About Marvelous Discoveries is the latest work by the Brazilian artist. Hosted in the last biennal exhibition in Singapore , this “work”or new creature (it always remains to be seen) brings totally into question the border existing between art and nature. And this is in accordance with the artist's attitude. After all in an old interview, Mr Kac in person acknoledged his agreement with Joseph Kossuth's point of view about the way of measuring artists “value”. Mr Kossuth's proposal was to measure artists according to their skills in fostering the debate concerning the border and the dialogue between art and nature. And in following...

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L'INDAGINE DELLA GLOBAL DIGITAL AGE

Txt: Luigi Ghezzi
Area: Technology

Uno dei meriti del lavoro Territory, Authority, Rights di Saskia Sassen è di riuscire a proporre un'analisi dei mutamenti moderni che parte dal periodo medievale per arrivare a quella che definisce la “global digital age”. In poche parole, la Sassen riprende “le grandi narrazioni sociologiche” di un tempo. Per fare ciò ha utilizzato innanzitutto la storia come fonte di intelligibilità dei cambiamenti sociali, in particolar modo ha tracciato e indagato un campo di analisi ai cui vertici possiamo trovare le categorie politiche di territorio , autorità e diritti . Sassen ha saputo infatti reinterpretare le vicende di generazione e degenerazione dello stato moderno (cfr. P. Schiera, Lo stato moderno : origini e degenerazioni , Clueb, 2004) attraverso tre momenti fondamentali della sua storia: la costruzione (intesa come “montaggio” o “assemblaggio”, in inglese assembling ) del nazionale, la sua decostruzione e la nuova costruzione...

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INTERACTION DESIGN
//Silvia Scaravaggi

SONIA CILLARI: BODY AS INTERFACE

Txt: Silvia Scaravaggi
Area: Interaction Design

If you are close to me , created in 2006, is requested by many. Festivals, digital art and new media exhibitions try to obtain it, though it is not always easy. Sonia Cillari , the author, says this interactive installation/performance is so unique and expensive that its duplication in order to have it in different places at the same time is not advisable l'autrice. A sensitive platform on which the visitors place themselves to become actors, performers and audience of their own actions at the same time. The actions turn into geometric shapes and lines around their bodies and movements and can be seen thanks to the huge projections on the surrounding walls. The core of If you are close to me and its charm lie in the extreme simplicity and effectiveness of the shape and the freedom the public has to be protagonist and performer of the installation. This is one of the significant experiences Sonia Cillari 's activity. Though Italian...

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SONARMATICA 2007: MEDIA ART AND FANTASMAGORIA

Txt: Francesco D'Orazio
Area: Multimedia Design

If I should pick a house flag for the multimedia part of the Sonar 2007, I surely choose FEED by Kurt Hentschlager, performance presented for the first time at the Venice Biennale of 2005 that is becoming more and more a classic of the international media art. Imagine a sort of brain-machine where the entire body enmeshes the material of the representation. A genial realization of the idea of the immersion, based on an amputation of the sight and on a total device that exemplify the best the technological declination of the sublime as show for a new nature. It is not a case that his performances have always been crowded and that during the days of the festival a real buzz about the black cube of SantaMonica invaded Barcelona . Perfect background of this performance is the Black Out Concert by Tres , a silent concert that where progressively the different textures of the everyday soundscape were disarticulated or switched...

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PERFORMING ART
//Annamaria Monteverdi

VIDEO TEATRO
//Massimo Schiavoni

EZIO CUOGHI, HIGH EDUCATION OF BRERA 2

Txt: Annamaria Monteverdi
Area: Performing Art

The Academy of Brera in Milan has been proposing the Course of New Art Technologies since 1999. Now it's introducing three more masters in Multi-media Arts, while big steps forwards have been made in education, especially in the fields of graphics, cinema and digital communication. But that's not all. It is also addressing to all the professions concerned by the world of the new media with a special focus upon 3D Animation, Digital Video, interactive advices, web design and show design. The lecturers of Brera 2 are all worth: among them we can find some of the major Italian multi-media artists (Paolo Rosa, Tullio Brunone, Mario Canali), some experts of info-aesthetics (Antonio Caronia, Andrea Balzola, Emanuele Quinz, Lorenzo Taiuti) and of web-art (Domenico Quaranta). We interviewed Ezio Cuoghi, a famous multi-media artist who started his career in theatre (we will tell you further in one of the...

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POLVERIGI, TRA HOLLYWOOD E BIG BROTHER

Tx: Massimo Schiavoni
Area: Video Teatro

Sono tornati in Italia, nelle Marche. Sono loro, come prima più di prima, irriverenti, inventivi e grotteschi per natura, tecnologici, globali e mediali per antropologia. Il Big Art Group in occasione del trentesimo compleanno del Festival Internazionale Inteatro, alias Inteatrofestival di Polverigi (AN) non potevano non stupirci ancora, presentando in anteprima mondiale l'ultimo lavoro frutto di una residenza creativa nel paese marchigiano durata 65 giorni dove hanno coinvolto l'intera comunità locale. Il gruppo newyorkese con il nuovo spettacolo THE PEOPLE , un living cinema ispirato al ciclo tragico dell'Orestiade e firmato dal regista Canden Manson e dal co-autore Jemma Nelson, fatto di telecamere, computer e schermi giganti, ha trasformato Polverigi in un set ed i suoi abitanti in attori. Nei giorni pre-evento, The People cerca…. le emozioni, le facce, i sorrisi; cerca le parole e le immagini, cerca unioni sensibili, occhi indiscreti e parole private, cerca la gente di Polverigi.

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LOCATIVE MEDIA
//Lorenzo Tripodi

NEW MEDIA MARKET
//Marco Mancuso

WE NO LONGER GET LOSTAS IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST

Txt: Lorenzo Tripodi
Area: Locative Media

Locative media , the obsession of the moment. Thanks to new technologies all can be perfectly detected, since everything is nowhere and all is perfectly followed and spotted as a principle, placed in an universally known cartesian grid. Some time ago critic public opinion seemed worried about the idea of living in a controlled society, as in David Lyon's text; a society in which control devices with an unlimited power can watch every perceivable movement from above and from the inside and track it. Nowadays that worry seems generally overcome, the digital panoptic process seems accepted, while the attention has shifted to the social potentials of that process which apparently can involve anyone. Satellite positioning military technologies has become commercial public domain , the operative basis of the more and more popular GPS. Surveillance cameras, which seemed to threat people's right to privacy...

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SOFTWARE ART SPACE. SOFTWARE ART ?!?

Txt: Marco Mancuso
Area: New Media Market

You can bet on it. As soon as the news gets around through reference mailing-lists, word of mouth, international festivals, interviews by the most acclaimed critic or curator of the moment, infinite will be the praises raised to Software Art Space, the second operation performed by Steven Sacks, founder of the phantomatic Bitforms gallery: digital in conception, but with a physical (micro) headquarter in New York. In that same city and neighborhood, Chelsea, in which an apparently infinite army of galleries and exhibition spaces devoted to contemporary arts seem to be struggling to be part of the quadrangle between 4th and 5th streets, determining the destinies of the international art market. Fooling around is useless. As useless is the tell-tale reminding us that praises and criticisms will come about: real critiques would be hard and direct, not pats on the shoulders to constituted order...