Digimag 46 - July/August 2009 - 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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Pubblicazione mensile:
Digicult Produzioni

Editing / Photo Editing:
Marco Mancuso

Cover:

Contents: Davide Anni, Giulia Baldi, Silvia Bianchi, Philippa Barr, Loretta Borrelli, Silvia Casini, Claudia D'Alonzo, Luigi Ghezzi, Alessio Galbiati, Elena Gianni, Mark Hancock, Jeremy Levine, Marco Mancuso, Valeria Merlini, Marvin Milanese, Marco Riciputi, Max Schiavoni

Translations: Monica Amboni, Luisa Bertolatti, Valeria Merlini, Philippa Barr, Emanuela Cassol, Giulia Tiddens, Sara Cavagna

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NETWORKING
//Marco Mancuso

NETWORKING
//Mark Hancock

PERSEPOLIS 2.0:
CREATIVE SUPPORT TO IRAN
Txt: Marco Mancuso / Eng: Valeria Merlini
Area: Networking

The facts happening in these days in Iran have been and still are evident to anyone. After the alleged rigging of ballots, the President Ahmadinejad was elected once again in Iran the last mid June. This unleashed formal protests coming from the defeated candidate Moussavi which then let loose more violent and widespreaded acts of protest on the streets of Teheran and in the main cities of the Country. As dreaded, the Iranian police did not stay inactive, but reacted with unequalled violence and repression, arresting lots of young people, torturing them and killing an undefined number of people in the streets. This repression continued on the Net, since it was the place elected by some brave bloggers to widespread news on the development of the events, skilfully using also some social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The press agencies worldwide were at first interested in the events, but then gradually moved their...

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VLOGGING,
NETWORKED CINEMATIC POETICS

Txt: Mark Hancock
Area: Networking

Hegemonic systems of mainstream culture depict the World Wide Web as host to a number of large, central (but none-the-less global) sites controlled by a few corporate bodies. The names are ubiquitous for anyone trying to explore the modern media world: Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, YouTube, and others that have either fallen by the wayside or are just bobbing below the surface of our awareness. These platforms all have their place of course, and most of us are making use of them. But there are a multitude of web presences out there that aren't global brands, that work against the idea of a global brand and seek to create their own space in which to create work. This is when digital art is at its best, when it carves out its own territories and zones of discussion. The Internet works like that, it has its standard modes of deployment of everyday media and every now and then, reconfigures them into something differen...

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P2P
//Marco Mancuso

HACKTIVISM
//Davide Anni

PIRATES AT THE PARLIAMENT:
THE BIG DREAM?!

Txt: Marco Mancuso and Marco Riciputi / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: P2P

"In just 24 months we have witnessed an amazing increase in consensus toward our ideals across the globe". Renowned worldwide for being one of the most defiant and cheeky online centres for Peer to Peer and exchange of audio and video files, fresh from their success in the European Elections which took one of their representatives flying from the meshes of the Net straight into a political seat in Brussels, the board of Pirate Party International, the political branch of The Pirate Bay project, is euphoric. And who could oppose such euphoria! The party of the pirates presented itself in Sweden and Germany obtaining a massive 7,1 % in the Scandinavian country that collocates it between those parties with the most consensus in the under 30 range. Only 0,9% in Germany, a good result nonetheless, in order to obtain a greater audience worldwide and the access to election funds, which represents...

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A NEW CENTER
FOR ART & TECHNOLOGIES

Txt: Davide Anni / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Hacktivism

A new Center for Arts and Technologies was born in Brescia, with the payoff of "have an idea and put it into practice", to identify the personality of the place itself and of the members of it. In comparison to other international centres, like the digital media lab of Ljubljana, Rhizome, Eyebeam, NYResistor, Medialab Prado, or to more virtual organizations like Thing.net, Nettime, Spectre, Runme, and in Italy I might add Tinker and Digicult, the Center shares the exigency to bring out the possible relations between artists and tech experts, acting as a bridge between the fundamental aspects of the contemporary culture. Do not mistake the idea of technology with that of an exclusively digital entity, all the contrary! Technology has to be multidisciplinary, linked to creative processes, intellect and collective relations ability. We could make a savagely compare the contextualization of technological object with the presence...

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FREE SOFTWARES
//Loretta Borrelli

GAME ART
//Philippa Barr

HACKMEETING 2009:
MEETING WITH THE DEBIAN COMMUNITY

Txt: Loretta Borrelli / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Free Softwares

On the official website of the Debian project can be read: "The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system that we have created is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run." Therefore, Debian is mainly a community (born in 1993) which links thousands of software developers around the world, united by devotion for free software. In other words, Debian is an open source system which is based on the voluntary participation of millions of active users who enter step by step in the community, characterized by rules and voting systems to deliberate on decisions to allow the optimal development of the platform. This community during the years has decided to define the terms of this dedication in an actual social contract, the Debian Social Contract...

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ALESSANDRO DE GLORIA,
FROM CHILD'S PLAY TO SERIOUS GAMES

Txt: Philippa Barr
Area: Game Art

Dr. Alessandro de Gloria is a professor of Electrical Engineering and member of the Elios Group at the University of Genova. This group is involved with the design and development of serious games, which use human computer interaction technology to create gaming scenarios for educational purposes. The first game created by Elios was Road Rider, a game for learning road rules, where the group designed everything from the story to the 3D scene to the virtual human dialogue. The group are now working on Travel In Europe, a project which involving 15 different partners across Europe to design a virtual world for the promotion of European cultural and artistic heritage. In an online environment the player will move in a3D space representing the map of Europe, visiting cities, facing trials, improving their score. A Project Scientific Committee will drive the project, guaranteeing that 3D reconstructions, contents...

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EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA
//Alessio Galbiati

VIDEO ART
//Silvia Casini

RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO
A SPECTER WANDERS IN THE NET

Txt: Alessio Galbiati / Eng: Philippa Barr
Area: Experimental Cinema

Documentaries are often boring, especially when you consume something that insistently defines itself as a "good" thing. I don't believe however that RIP: A remix manifesto (USA/2008) falls into this category, probably because they share the view of the bottom. A by Marx and Engels to define a true Weltanschauung, the creation of a common front to share cultural and political claims. To paraphrase the famous beginning of of the manifesto of the communist party, one could say about the documentary directed by Brett Gaylor: "There is a spectre haunting thenetwork." Overall, the documentary of Canadian Gaylor is an instructive overview of some of the key issues and opportunities in the culture of the 'copyleft', an investigation into the changing paradigm of cultural products that most political and legal institutions still struggle to assimilate, but which have become commonplace and vital tools of expression for millions...

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THE ETHICS OF GAZE:
RAY DEPARDON & WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

Txt: Silvia Casini / Eng: Emanuela Cassol
Area: Video Art

A photographer and a filmmaker, Raymond Depardon, author of what can be described as documentary fiction, was awarded the Pulitzer prize. He is the author of several reportages in countries such as Biafra, Chad, Venezuela. He is also renowned because he spent some time in 1976 at the former psychiatric hospital in San Servolo, Venice. In 1996 he shot a sort of documentary-fiction on a trip in Africa that lasted three years and on the filmmaking profession. William Kentridge was born in South Africa, an artist, whose artistic matrix is drawing, but who ranges from sculptures to animation and video installation and constantly interrogates himself on the social role of art and the responsibility of the artist. This brief article does not aim to draw a comparison between two artists, whose languages and biographies differ, despite their common interest for Africa...

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ELECTRONICA
//Giulia Baldi

CLUBBING
//Silvia Bianchi

SOUNDCLUSTERS:
ROBOTIC ELECTRONICA

Txt: Giulia Baldi / Eng: Philippa Barr
Area: Electronica

Soundclusters is 'an ensemble of four robots (violin, viola, cello and percussion) created by the multidisciplinary artist Roland Olbeter, that you 'play' through a midi controller. Through a commission by the festival Faster than Sound (UK) and Sonar (ES), the two 'sonic adventurers' Tim Exile (Warp) and Jon Hopkins (Domino) have collaborated with Olbeter (already active in the past as a set designer for some works of interactive theater for an important performance by Marcel Antúnez Roca, including aphasia from which the instrumentation of Soundclaster was created). Together the group have made a new work for this mechanical band, creating the conditions for a unique experience of co-operation between live music, man and machine, and for an exciting spectacle. This is certainly not the first experiment in this sense. From orchestras to futuristic mechanical music, the latest generation of robotic...

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SONAR 2009:
THE QUEEN MARY ANNE HOBBS

Txt: Silvia Bianchi / Eng: Giulia Tiddens
Area: Clubbing

Mary Anne Hobbs is the undisputed queen of BBC Radio 1. Every Tuesday night from 2:00 to 4:00 in the morning, during her “Experimental Shows” Mary Anne proposes a selection among the best new releases, ranging from dubstep to grim, from drum&bass to hip-hop up to techno and dark dancefloor. Over the last years her show has had guest artists as Flying Lotus, The Beastie Boys, Kode 9 & The Spacecape, Bjork, Burial, Matt Groening, Squarepusher, Skream, The Mighty Boosh, Richie Hawtin, Digital Mystiks, Ricardo Villalobos, Oris Jay, Amon Tobin, Shackleton, Skepta, Jeff Mills, Benga, LFO, Breakage, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Trentmoller, Vex’d, The Bug & Warrior Queen, Klute, Remarc, Rustie, Rhythm & Sound and has redrawn the borders of the world electronic to dance and to listen to. In January 2006 her show “Dustep Warz”, brought to light the phenomenon of dubstep at a global level, giving visibility...

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AUDIOVIDEO
//Valeria Merlini

LIVE MEDIA
//Claudia D'Alonzo

PAOLO INVERNI:
PATHS INTO PLACES OF MEMORY

Txt: Valeria Merlini / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Audiovideo

On the 5th of June at the Mario Mazzoli Gallery in Berlin, the “Paths” exhibition - the most recent project by the Piedmontese audiovisual artist Paolo Inverni - was inaugurated. The “Paths” exhibition, curated by Daniela Cascella and produced by the freshly opened Berlin Gallery, will be open until the 18th of July. The exhibition, very delicate in its atmosphere, is a journey through time, a dive into intimacy, a backward path into memory. Even if it begins with autobiographical material this does not create a distance between the visitors but on the other hand, thanks to different methods of approach, a mechanism of recognition and closeness is triggered, leaving the exhibition open to different avenues for interpretation. In the entrance hall of the gallery there is a sequence of 6 photographs of close ups of places that introduces us to Inverni’s paths: four exhibitions situated in distinct environments. Paths is in two parts: Recollection...

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FUTURE SOUNDS LIKE PAST TOYS:
INTERVIEW TO APE5 & ERASER

Txt: Claudia D'Alonzo / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Live Media

Ape5 is an old digimag acquaintance that we were pleased to “meet” in various moments during the past few years so that he could tell us about his videomaking and his VJing (Interview “Ape5 and Miki Ry”, by Bertram Niessen, Digimag 02,) as well as his research as a producer with the netlabel Vidaux, that contains many of the more interesting names of the live media scene in Italy (“Vidaux, Netlabels for watching and listening”, by Bertram Niessen, Digimag 08). We interviewed Ape5 again, this time with EraSer, so that they could present their new audiovisual live project Future Sounds Like Past Toys. The project was developed in 2009 with the purpose of establishing a synergy between fluxes of corrupt pixers by Ape5 and the sound art of circuit bending practiced by EraSer on various toys from the past. The live that results from it, which is always different, finds a perfect meeting point between the two authors’ research...

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BIO ART
//Marco Mancuso

THE ART AND THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF GINA CZARNECKI

Txt: Marco Mancuso / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Bio Art

Gina Czarnecki is undoubtedly an conscious and sensitive artist, for the sensitive issues she courageously deals with, for her subjects, for her analysis and research methods she chose to elaborate, and for the aesthetic impact as well as the fascination of her work. This feeling is in her environmental and audiovisual work, and this feelings are even stronger when you have the chance to meet and talk to her. The British woman Gina Czarnecki is represented by Forma, and she works in the installation setting and method. She deals with as much complex as difficult topics, which are damned difficult to translate into a work of art. Epidemiological criticism on the one hand, and the effects that a virus, an external agent, a disease, or a genetic modification may have on body and motion. On this occasion, the human body shows its unfailing insecurity and fragility, its beauty and its decadent and almost rotten spontaneity during the great development of biotechnology. These analyses and critiques do not stop before a mere reflection on the eventual macroscopic and superficial effects of an infection. Yet, through the studies and researches by Francis Galton and Stephen Corbett on texts and through a melting of present and past experiences, memories and emotions (her quarantine in a hospital after a virus contraction in Africa, the stories of her grandfather about his experience with bacteriological tests in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War) they become an excuse and a tool for the analysis "of the similarities and differences of the various biological infections, the cultural, political and economic issues related to studies on these diseases and the economics of R&D used for their treatment" . That is the artist's thought, who goes on saying that "all this has been connected to an investigation still under way, on the reorganization and reaction systems when new entities (for example, new players, mutant organisms, infections, "synthetic" genes, and new species) come to join it, and give rise to wider implications than the technological and biological ones. Finally, we also dealt with the way the community evolves after the arrival of new players, such as asylum seekers or migrant workers.”

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INTERACTION DESIGN
//Marvin Milanese

WEARABLES
//Luigi Ghezzi

MULTITOUCH BARCELONA
HOW "HEAT" TECHNOLOGY

Txt: Marvin Milanese
Area: Interaction Design

"In the last years technology has advanced in giant steps"...this is not a new thing but today it seems to be a reality for everybody. Open source is now an open door that will come into all houses, exponentially speeding up creativity and development possibilities. Next, a short introduction that will analyse the key moments in the last ten years of technology and creative development in the field of interaction and new media, and end with the performance and interview of one of the most interesting artistic collectives in the last few years: Multitouch Barcelona. The web has always proposed dynamics connected to interaction (Action/Reaction) used everyday by all the net users. Flash in the '90s has given colors to this panorama, giving to all interested (including me) the possibility to create funny experiments with...

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ACTIVE IMAGINATION
AND DESIGN PARADOXES

Txt: Luigi Ghezzi / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Wearables

"Weareable technologies" are one of the most heralded examples of coexistence with new technologies in the everyday life. Whether they function as medical or sports aid, or they are used for mobile communication or sensory increase, they are part of the most wide spreaded scenery of planning and technological design. The development of such applications, always straddling between creativity and evolution, fully belongs to the "meta design" examples, according to Elisa Giaccardi’ and Gerhard Fischer's definition (in Creativity and Evolution: a metadesign perspective, Jounal of Digital Creativity, n.1, March 2008). With the term "metadesign" the authors mean a conceptual framework of design which allows - thanks to new cooperative and interdisciplinary forms of design - to create new technical infrastructures that contribute to improve social and economic conditions. However the programmatic...

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Performing Art
//Massimo Schiavoni

TEATRO A CORTE 09.
ART WITHOUT BORDERS

Tx: Massimo Schiavoni
Area: Performing Art

Summer time, Festival time. In this period of the year in Italy we witness an increasing and rising of close encounters with the theatre world. They can be more or less historical but these encounters are always meaningful and relevant. A new and modern Festival, which invested a lot in the contemporary art is the extraordinary “Teatro A Corte” (Court Theatre), this year at its third edition. This festival is well known and qualified from all points of view and has always put the integration of arts and the enhancement of territory in the center of its activity. Directed by Beppe Navello, it is the Festival par excellence, where the best of the European scene – with international shows and various ways of expression – meet in Turin and in seven Savoy residences (Residenze Sabaude) in Piemont from the 10th to the 26th of July 2009. Exactly the relationship between the contemporary theatre and the Savoy residences is the heart of the festival, since it transforms the simple attending to a theatral representation into a unique and unrepeatable experience, fruit of the encounter between artists, architectures and public in a really unusual atmosphere. The Festival was created in fact with the aim of opening a window on the European culture overcoming the borders between arts and presenting theatre, dance, contemporary circus, equestrian, physical and buskers’ theatre, installations, figure theatre, vertical dance and above all in situ performances, with projects planned and realized expressly for the festival and in harmony with the spaces and places hosting them. Among the 6 in situ creations, the absolute first one which best represents the European spirir of the Court Theatre is Flux, an equestrian theatre signed by the French Théâtre du Centaure. Also the contemporary circus troupe 9.81 comes from France and it creates Coléomur, a show which weaves vertical dance with live music and videoprojections in a moving work of art, moving on the red thread of the relationship between man, space and architectures. The Dutch Judith Nab uses new technologies in her environment installation titled All the people I didn't. It is a pathway for 40 spectators immersed in an atmosphere between reality and immagination, through videos, sounds and images reflected on a big mirror creating a visual theatre without actors or script

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NEW MEDIA
//Elena Granulla

NEW MEDIA
//Jeremy Levine

I-REALIZE: ANALYZE THIS
FOR A BETTER FUTURE

Tx: Elena Gianni / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: New Media

Two days to notice unsolved problems, introduce (technological?) solutions and stimulate the creation of new disruptive start-ups in different areas of work." The event-conference I Realize - The Art of Disruption has been presented on its own website and was held on June 9-10 in the fantastic studios Virtuality Media Park in Turin. The stimulating the birth of start-up events in two days is definitely an ambitious goal. And by all appearances the goal was achieved. In two days, everything I have been hearing and speaking about can be summed up in one word: "Disruption" or, at least in two words: "Disruption Wannabe". I'll explain this concept: disruption, or better disruptive innovation, according to economist Clayton M. Christensen, who first introduced this definition, consists in some technological innovations that allow the creation of a new economic model or strategy that has a strong, even revolutionary, impact...

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EPHEMERAL PHYSICALITY:
QUANTUM PARTICLES AND DIGITAL ART

Txt: Jeremy Levine
Area: New Media

Just as a quantum particle has both a virtual and a physical dimension, so does a work of digital art, which exists as both invisible code and visual display. The dual nature of matter in quantum mechanics is mirrored by the dual nature of a work of digital art. Just as a photon is both a particle and a wave, a work of digital art is both a set of
instructions and the execution of those instructions. Digital art, software art, or any work of art that utilizes media as its medium- is both a set of structural relations (a system of process) and a set of discrete objects in space. This is conceptual dualism rather than physical dualism. But how does one make sense of diametriclly opposite models of the same thing without suffering a bit of cognitive dissonance? Neil's Bohr, one of the father's of quantum mechanics, points the way out: embrace the paradox. The infamous "double slit experiment" shows that when a beam of light...