Digimag 47 - September 2009 - Net Art, Hacktivism, Software Art, Video Art, Electronica, Audiovideo, A.I., Design, Performing Art, New Media

digimag

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

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Editing / Photo Editing:
Marco Mancuso

Cover: Toys"R"Us wall shop, New York City

Contents:
Giulia Baldi, Francesco Bertocco, Antonio Caronia, Silvia Casini, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Luigi Ghezzi, Elena Granulla, Jeremy Levine, Marco Mancuso, Donata Marletta, Valeria Merlini, Alessandra Migani, Marvin Milanese, Monica Ponzini, Penelope.d.pixel, Barbara Sansone, Max Schiavoni, Silvia Scaravaggi

Traduzioni: Monica Fontana, Luisa Bertolatti, Valeria Merlini, Philippa Barr, Emanuela Cassol, Giulia Tiddens, Sara Cavagna

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NETWORKING
//Marco Mancuso

NETWORKING
//Jeremy Levine

OUR RIGHT TO INTERNET:
INTERVIEW WITH ALESSANDRO GILIOLI

Txt: Marco Mancuso / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Networking

I would say that it was almost inevitable. To live and work in a country, as democratic as it seems, where the interdependent rapport between politics and mass media is much tighter than in any other country in the world (excluding those openly totalitarian regimes that we mentioned for example in last month’s Persepolis 2.0 article, of course) and does not allow for libertarian utopias of any sort if they discuss any subject that is a fundamental part of democracy, like the freedom of the Press, the right to an opinion, the freedom of thought. To think that the Internet, Blogs, P2P and Social Networks could be exempt from censorship and restrictions from the government, to hope that they would continue to be completely free territories forever, was absolutely naive in my opinion: there are many negative accounts of this, on a national and international level, some of which have been discussed in Digimag during the past few years...

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NON-LOCALITY: MYTHS AND METAPHORS
IN NETWORKED ART, QUANTUM SYSTEMS

Txt: Jeremy Levine
Area: Networking

Quantum particle systems seem to possess the ability to communicate instantaneously with each other, defying our classical understanding of space and distance. This feature of the quantum world, known as non-locality, is often used to describe the World Wide Web, and particularly interactive networked art, which seems to collapses space into mouse clicks and links. But is it really applicable? According to Newtonian mechanics no two objects can communicate faster than the speed of light. This fact has been elevated to the gospel of law, like the law of gravity or the second law of thermodynamics. So naturally it comes as a shock to learn that there is experimental evidence that suggests quantum systems violate this law of locality- a law that is central to our understanding of space as an objective medium. Locality imparts uniqueness and individuality to things by fixing them with a unique location in space/time...

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HACKTIVISM
//Penelope.di.pixel

HACKTIVISM
//Antonio Caronia

FAKEPRESS. UBIQUITOUS PUBLISHING
AND DISTRIBUTED STORYTELLING

Txt: Penelope.di.pixel / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Hacktivism

The scenario described by a timless flaneur as Baudelaire has been significantly modified during the last one hundred and fifty years, but the image of those "mysteries that flow like saps in the mighty giant" belongs to us. An information layer in multiple levels and distributed over the space, as well as objects, people and architecture, determines the possibility to change the world into a hybrid reality generated by a great variety of viewpoints, voices, shapes, gestures and sounds. SPIMEs (1), location based media, augmented realities, a distributed interaction, sensors that capture changes and distribute them, emotional and experiencing design: these are the main tools that enable the transition and help the transformation process. Enormous implications, anthropological, philosophical, political, economic and relational: reconsidering the way we communicate, exchange, share, distribute and disseminate knowledge...

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ART, ACTIVISM
SUBJECTIVITY, SABOTAGE

Txt: Antonio Caronia / Eng: Giulia Tiddens
Area: Hacktivism

Who said that books dealing with the proceeding of a congress are boring? First of all it depends on the congress and the speakers, secondly on the way the book is conceived. The reading of L'arte della sovversione. Multiversity: pratiche artistiche contemporanee e attivismo politico (The art of overthrow. Multiversity: artistic contemporary practices and political activism) edited by Marco Baravalle for “Manifestolibri/Uninomade”, once you get over the title -a bit over the top- it is very enjoyable because it is composed of many keen and necessary statements (not all of them of course) on a group of quite current issues, that though complicated, are fascinating for those who deal with cultural production in general, and with a political/social tone in particular. I wish I had gone to the seminar on 16th, 17th and 18th of May from which the book has originated (we asked to Marco Baravalle himself to make...

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FREE SOFTWARES
//Barbara Sansone

HANGAR + LABORAL = SUMMERLAB

Txt: Barbara Sansone / Eng: Philippa Barr
Area: Free Softwares

In this epoch, we are witnessing the rapid evolution of technology, which facilitates scientific research and improves our lives. But technology is also captured, manipulated and used for novel purposes in the arts. Experimental practice with technology in the arts is increasingly visible in exhibitions and museums around the world and on the Internet, while there is always a strong compulsion to create spaces where experimentation is possible. The objective of these centres is the public diffusion of this mix of discìpines, to invite people to experiment, understand and express their creativity in unison with others and in this way to create culture. This process is not straightforward. We are in the midst of a period of strong contradictions, where the institutions and society are not sufficiently developed and it is necessary find teachers. One of a few centers in Europe concerned with this problem is the the art center Laboral de Gijón, directed by Rosina Gomez-Baeza. Among the various activities of this courageous lady is the establishment and management of the Arco Foundation, the association Friends of Arco, and the publication of the quarterly ARCO, Arte Contemporáneo, as well as the directorship of the contemporary art fair of Madrid from 1986-2006. The art center Laboral de Gijón has been established two years, and is already a very active centre with beautiful spaces that continue to grow. Her team consists of ten full time staff and eight assistants, who support an exhibition center dedicated to arts, science, technology and advanced visual industries. It also deals with research, training and production, and thanks to a permanent call aims to help artists to fit into the channels of festivals and exhibitions. The center aims to offer support to local artists to find contacts, grants, residences. As the director explained, this is a remarkable effort, especially in the territory of Asturias. The main objective of Laboral is now the foundation of an extensive media library, which will open December 18 with an exhibition curated by José Luis de Vicente. Among the summer activities, the center hosted the week of SummerLab organized with the Hangar Center in Barcelona, a meeting of digital arts enthusiasts who work with software and hardware to produce free electronic art projects of all kinds. The activities of the summer workshop were grafted in different research areas of the center, including sustainability, ecology, free media, collaboration, distribution, security, electronics and the art of inventing. The head of the educational programs of the Laboral, Mónica Bello, with the help of other team members of the center, was keen to assist participants by providing help and tools, as well as accompany them to visit the center and the current exhibitions.

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EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA
//Francesco Bertocco

VIDEO ART
//Silvia Casini

DEREK JARMAN'S
VISUAL PAINTING

Txt: Francesco Bertocco / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Experimental Cinema

The incredibile influence of Derek Jarman’s cinema is considered as an unavoidable background for every research on the new visual languages from the end of the ’70s. His ability to survive and fall always on his feet in a vogue of indipendent cinematographers, outside the main channels of cinematographic production made him a kind of living god (Holy Derek). He is a survivor in a generation which spent all its energies and attention in the visual research and representation methods. His films are the example of a perseverance which ended only with the artist’s premature death, at the begninning of the ‘90s. The first films came relatively late in his artistic production, which was moving towards painting also with a quite good success (remember the Lisson gallery). When he was 28, after an experience as scenographer for the visionary director Ken Russel, Jarman produced his first film...

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WODICZKO'S VIDEO SHADOWS
BETWEEN VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

Txt: Silvia Casini / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Video Art

Despite all promises of more attention to figurative arts and above all to painting, the 53° Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Biennale di Venezia (International Art Exhibition in Venice) focuses again on video installations and expanded cinema, which does not necessary mean experimental. In most cases it is a revisit of the exposition space after the typical experience within the cinematographic field. The screen becomes a wall or a plasma TV and the installation assumes the features of a real projection in which all typical cinematographic devices are deconstructed - think only to the loop movement enphatized by Douglas Gordon or to the decomposition of film into monitors dispayed in a row (Chantal Akerman). The cinema meant as “dark space” in which moving images are projected welcome the public when it enters the hall dedicated to Poland. However the result is quite different from the experience of a cinema...

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CLUBBING
//Giulia Baldi

SOUND ART
//Valeria Merlini

SONAR, ENDURING RESEARCH
INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIA TAGLIETTI

Txt: Giulia Baldi / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Clubbing

This is the beginning of a new season of night music in clubs. This means that the day music festivals have just come to an end. And peace, of course. At the least we must accept life cycles, at the most we may even learn to love them. Yet, although an elaboration and an analysis on the experience that is being lived are possible thanks to the prolonged times of the clubs, we cannot forget that the profound elaboration and the analysis of the festivals represent the explosion and the synthesis of it. And in that sense no festival in Europe (maybe in the world?) is so important for electronic music as the Sonar in Barcelona: 16 years of continuing research, characterized by a rare ability to make some steady progress (although a wrong move may be inevitable along the way). And the 2009 edition was the umpteenth proof of that. Especially during the day (but also during the night, making the right choices and leaving oneself)....

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SOMMERCAMP + WORKSTATION TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS CULTURE

Txt: Valeria Merlini / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Sound Art

On the 16th of August Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin hosted the presentation of works created during the course of six days of intensive workshops within the Sommercamp Workstation project, an event conceived as a mobile laboratory for art and media, which came about from the very important experience of the ex-research centre Tesla Medialab, a project that lasted four months and was situated in various places in the heart of Berlin. The workshops of the first part of the project, Sommercamp, were developed on three themes: simulation and representation systems; the development of musical instruments and the procedures to create and organise cultural projects. The first, managed by Martin Howse, showed some examples of simulation: from the graphical work by Jessica Rylan, to the botanical work by FOaM/Nik Gaffney and Dave Griffiths, to the urban work, sensitive to electromagnetic landscapes...

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LIVE MEDIA
//Alessandra Migani

AUDIOVIDEO
//Lucrezia Cippitelli

LOSING YOURSELF IN THE WHITETREE
ROBERT LIPPOK AND LUDOVICO EINAUDI

Txt: Alessandra Migani / Eng: Philippa Barr
Area: Live Media

The first time I heard Cloudland, the first album from Whitetree, I thought about one of my friends traveling, sitting in front of a waterfall at the foot of the Himalayas, in contemplation of the height and depth of the universe. The song was Mercury sand. Whitetree is a collaboration between the Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi, and brothers Robert Lippok (software) and Ronald Lippok (drums), formerly part of German post-rock trio, To Rococo Rot, along with Stefan Schneider on bass. Cloudland, like the story of African writer Amos Tutuola titled 'Faithful Hands', The Palm-Wine Drinkard (a drink from palm wine) – was one inspiration for this project. It has taken and carried we without my realising, to a hidden place where I had never been but which appeared to me in my mind. On each musical journey, the mind has in fact this wonderful ability to visit places hidden inside a space that does not necessaril...

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CONTOUR 2009:
VIDEO AND HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION

Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Audiovideo

For its fourth edition the Biennial of Video Art in Mechelen (Belgium) Contour has opened the doors to a curator and to internationally renowned artists. The Biennale was inaugurated on August 15 under the title Hidden In Remembrance Is The Silent Memory Of Our Future: a complicated concept, whose aim is to show history and the present in our collective thought, and where the past is a key element to understand the future. The curator, Katerina Gregos, who had been directing the Argos exhibitions in Brussels until 2007, has managed to give an international dimension to an event which has occurred only in the local surroundings up to the last edition, and whose general aim has been to give space to video projects connected to the search for new generations merely in the Belgian/Flemish area. Instead, thanks to Katerina Gregos, who lives in Brussels but has got Greek origins and has been working in the field...

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TECHNOLOGY
//Silvia Scaravaggi

BALINT BOLYGO'
AND THE MAGICAL MACHINES

Txt: Silvia Scaravaggi / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Technology

Bálint Bolygó, born in 1976, of Hungarian origin but a London resident, appears to be an artist who works with science. His family history confirms this: both his parents are scientists, and Boligò himself declares that this field was his initial means of inspiration for his own experiments and his own cultural growth. But when talking with Balint you realise that, despite maths, Physics and chemistry being significant reference points for the development of a personal poetical scheme, during the course of his artistic activity he does not want to create objects and sculptures that are scientifically significant, but instead wants to explore that thought-provoking space that brings art and science close together and has always made them unique and united. Science, therefore, reveals itself in artistic activity, creating objects, sculptures, installations and visions that are rich with charm and mystery, where light, colour and shapes win over the spectators’ mistrustful nature, giving them the chance to delve into a magical and dream-like reality that investigates processing, the passage of time and the emergence of natural forces behind the hands and minds of man. The first works, such as Pendulum (2001) or Lissajou Light Drawings (2001-2004), are machines/pendulums built to generate drawings and writing with a harmonious movement, A work like Ekka JP2000 (2001) on the other hand is a machine that conceptually develops a more complex process: a tire that has an engine and sprays paint in great concentric circles without continuity and following the laws of the most absurd randomness: a machine for unlikely road signs and a device for the urban evolution of action painting. In Bálint Bolygó’s machines there are different scientific and artistic theories; the imaginary locations that he creates gain extra visual and emotional strength when in contact with the action of the spectator who can activate the pendulums, ropes and pulleys, thus partially determining the movement and product of the works that each time give back a new interpretation of shapes, colours and lights. More recently, Mappings (2005), creates a world of spheres and cartographies that are different every time, and Trace (2008) investigates the meaning of human representation generated by technology, reinterpreting it through a mechanical process

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GRAPHIC DESIGN
//Marvin Milanese

DESIGN
//Elena Granulla

ARCHITECTURES, VISIONS AND
APPARATI EFFIMERI

Txt: Marvin Milanese / Eng: Emanuela Cassol
Area: Graphic Design

Long gone are the times when the first Vjs entered the scene in the clubs brightening up the dance-floor. Over the last few years live video has stretched its borders merging with parallel visual and artistic disciplines to become an out-and-out communication tool that allows to range from artistic projects, mainly performances and video installations, to purely commercial projects, down to the world of advertising with creative and innovating ideas. The increasing number of softwares that have been developed to meet the most diverse needs have allowed all the enthusiasts to have a blast creating video sets that appeared to be unthinkable until only a decade ago. The introduction of mapping has certainly been one of the most interesting aspects in the field of live video over the last decade. It is not uncommon nowadays to see performances and video installations boasting remarkable architectural elements with base supports...

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FLUID FORMS: FLUID, DIGITAL
AND PERSONALIZED OBJECTS

Txt: Elena Granulla / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Design

3D printers are machines which allow us to "print" a physical object starting from a digital model. The name "3D printer" is explicit enough to let us imagine what it is about, but also unknown enough to allow our imagination to travel towards sci-fi-like scenarios. There are several technologies of this kind, which usually are grouped under the name "numeric-controlled machines" or "digital fabricators"; numeric-controlled mills and lathes, for example, use a tip (similar to a drill) which carves a block of material and outlines the shape of the desired object; other machines instead use heads or lasers able to fuse, sinter or stick dusts of various materials (ceramics, metals, plastic). The "numeric-control" definition means that these machines are controlled by a software which takes care of "translating" the 3D model created by the designer, into commands. Initially these technologies were used for quickly prototyping, but today, also thanks...

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Performing Art
//Massimo Schiavoni

Performing Art
//Donata Marletta

THE SENSIBLE SCENE

Tx: Massimo Schiavoni / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Performing Art

Alessandro Sciarroni from San Benedetto del Tronto already has a long-lasting and refined artistic history, and above all is appreciated in the European panorama of experimental theatre, and he turned out to be a "sensitive interpreter of the contemporary artistic scene". This young actor and director from the Marche region, grew as an intense and impeccable actor with the Compagnia Lenz Rifrazioni from Parma, and then went back to his native region, where he conceived the idea of the Corpoceleste laboratory, and organized seminars and theatric productions. His first artistic creation, If I was your girlfriend - inspired by La Bovary c'est moi, collection of poetry by Giovanni Giudici, and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - was showed in the athletic track in Porto d'Ascoli, a non-conventional place and a demanding adaptation. Desires are explored in the Prince song, where adolescent dreams are revealed in music...

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MARINA ABRAMOVIC PRESENTS:
EXPERIMENT AND TENSION

Txt: Donata Marletta / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Performing Art

For about 2 weeks, between last July 3 & 19, the Manchester International Festival commissioned and produced the performance Marina Abramovic presents..., created by the Serbian artists especially for the festival. For the performance, the spaces of Whitworth Gallery in Manchester were completely emptied of all arts pieces, and put at the performance artist's disposal, event almost unique in the contemporary art's world. Born in 1946 in Belgrade, Marina Abramovic started her career in the 1960's as a painter, and later, by the beginning of 1970's, transitions to performance art. From her debut it was evident the desire she had to communicate directly with the audience by creating a synergy, which is a fundamental element to the success of her performances. Her early works were characterized by extreme dangerous and violent rehearsals, through which Abramovic pushes to the extreme her mental...

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SOCIAL MEDIA
//Luigi Ghezzi

NEW MEDIA
//Monica Ponzini

E-PARTECIPATION:
PARADOXES AND NEW WAYS TO DISCOVER

Txt: Luigi Ghezzi / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Social Media

The Directorate of Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe organized in March 2009 a seminary reserved to young researcher, policy-makers, youth organizations and young people coming from 47 European countries. This seminary had as topic the new partecipation methods based on Information and Communication Technology (e-participation). The results were collected in a document, which can be consulted online and fitness an open structure of encounter, where all partecipants had the opportunity to live a practical experience of cooperation in an important field within the Council of Europe. During the organization the Directorate of Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe developed a clear thought: if public partecipation is a foundamental element for “human rights, democracy and rule of law”, then everywhere there is a general trend toward the decreasing of partecipation to the traditional events...

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SPUTINK OBSERVATORY

Txt: Monica Ponzini / Img: Giulia Tiddens
Area: New Media

“Ideas are energy. Your brain is a satellite. Your mind is out there.” These are the basis of The Sputnik Observatory, an ambitious documentation project and representation of contemporary culture. Sputnik- literally “fellow traveler”- was born from the idea that all the knowledge and arguments are in some way connected to each other, that the “six degrees of separation”, connecting all human beings on earth, are applicable also to their mental elaborations, and that also the most radical concepts, considered as marginal, are fertile matter of investigation and can contribute in a critical way to our cultural landscape. The Sputnik Observatory was born from the Sputnik. Inc., a cultural organization based in New York, dedicated to the exploration and documentation of contemporary culture. Sputnik uses as “launching pad” a dedicated web site, where through interviews to thinkers and experts in the most different fields...