Digimag 48 - October 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

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

Editing / Photo Editing:
Marco Mancuso

Cover:
Zoetrope - Museo del Cinema in Turin

Contents:
Francesco Bertocco, Massimo Botta, Loretta Borrelli, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo, Alex Foti, Alessio Galbiati, Tiziana Gemin, Luigi Ghezzi, Jeremy Levine, Donata Marletta, Annamaria Monteverdi, Alessandra Migani, Matteo Milani, Enrico Pitozzi, Marco Riciputi, Barbara Sansone,

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

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NETWORKING
//Donata Marletta

GEERT LOVINK: LIST CULTURE
AND THE ART OF MODERATION

Txt: Donata Marletta / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Networking

Geert Lovink is one of the most influential cultures of the net worldwide. He is a critic and a theorist, he has been interested for years in texts and essays about the new media and network culture, and among his most recent projects the creation of the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam is worth to be mentioned. This institute works on critical analysis of the Internet, and its aim is to help actively the development and the divulgation of studies and discussions on network topics, even through the organisation of conferences, and publications whose aim is to stimulate dialogue and online sharing. Geert Lovink has already been widely presented in the past in Digimag pages and namely both in Francesca Valsecchi - Digimag 13 April 2006 at a meeting of the Meet the Media Guru, and during the interview with Maresa Lippolis at a meeting of Video Vortex organized by the Institute for Networked Cultures last March 2008 in Amsterdam. No use mention again all the projects, texts, publications, debates on which Geert Lovink has worked during the past 20 years, but we simply point out to the few readers who do not know him yet the link to the interviewcontained in Digimag 32 March 2008. And finally we mention the interview that he himself made to the anthropologist Jeffrey S. Juris, and that was published in Digimag issue 40 December 2008-January 2009 . In short, an old friend. This interview is in the PhD thesis I'm writing on the topic of new media art festivals and the link these events set (or don't set) with the idea of the network connected with digital culture. That is why last August I got in touch with Geert and I had a enlightening conversation via email on mailing lists, the art of moderation and sociopolitical situation in the age of Network Culture. The result of this conversation is the friendly chat that follows, also published on Geert's blog at the address, and enriched by an overview on what is Geert Lovink's education background, his cultural and political path, his radical and activists experiences, that made him, for sure, one of the most influential voices listened in the new media culture.

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HACKTIVISM
//Loretta Borrelli

ECO HACKING
//Alex Foti

FACEBOOK'S SLACKERS

Txt: Loretta Borrelli / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Hacktivism

Imagine you have a Facebook account. It isn’t difficult at all. Imagine you are Danish and live in Copenhagen and someone asks you to share a cause aiming to defend the Stork Fountain, the city symbol, which is going to be knocked down. If you were a citizien who belives in the historical identity of the city where you live, you would probably share the cause without problems and maybe you would also widespread the idea among your friends. There is only one thing: this piece of news is totally false. Nobody has ever thought to knock down the most important sightseing of the Danish capital. If we were talking about fake or prank, it would be logic to make a parallel – of course with all the differences of the case – with the Nike Ground on 01.org which refers to the Karlsplatz in Wien. But the author of this action on the Net was the Danish psychologist Anders Colding-Jørgensen who decided to interrupt the experiment after seeing the number of supporters going up and reach 28.000 people in few days.

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CLIMATE JUSTICE ACTION: PRECARIOUS UNITED FOR CLIMATE ACTION

Txt: Alex Foti
Area: Eco Hacking

The economic crisis has heavily hit the precariat -- the sum of those working non-standard, temporary, part-time contracts in services and industry -- worse than any other social class. Millions of precarious youth, women, immigrants are being made redundant by the Great Recession. Unemployment has skyrocketed from the US to the EU, from Iceland to Japan. Those responsible for the crisis -- big banks, investment funds, free-market economists and policy-makers -- whitewash and greenwash without shame as if nothing happened and go on with business as usual. Governments are giving trillions to the bankers and peanuts to the permatemps. Riots and protests are spreading as a result, also targeting a new wave of racism and xenophobia, but the pressure against political and economic power hasn't yet been enough, although an Autumn of Rage lies in store and this could change the equation...

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MACHINIMA
//Marco Riciputi

SOFTWARE ART
//Jeremy Levine

VOLAVOLA / FLY ME
PREVIEW MACHINIMA IN PARIS

Txt: Marco Riciputi / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Machinima

New on YouTube: the interesting preview of VolaVola/FlyMe by Berardo Carboni. A small 3-minutes sample which mixes the machinima filming technique with a cartoon effect which got the attention of famed cyber-futurologist Bruce Sterling, who defines it on Wired blog "disorienting". Let's see what it is about, with the help of its creator, machinima-operator Evo Szuyuan. On Imax screen in ParisOn Digimag 41 - February 09 we had presented this project. Its creation implies only one script but 1 identical movies, filmed in Rome and on Second Life. The script - a love story describing the aspects of contemporary life through the eyes of three couples grown in different years - was written in collaboration with virtual-worlds guru Mario Gerosa, and for its realization an open method was used: a MySpace website and a Facebook group, to invite people to cohoperate. Musics were written by Abruzzo-born...

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THE UNCERTAIN HUMAN
QUANTUM MECHANICS

Txt: Jeremy Levine
Area: Software Art

Werner Heisenberg's famous “Uncertainty Principle” articulates the idea that we cannever completely eliminate the influence of the subject from any description of quantumparticles. The reason is simple: because we are part of the very system beingdescribed. It is impossible to accurately predict exactly how an electron will behavewhen we measure it because of the sensitivity of its wave function to our presence orthe presence of a detection device, which we put into place. The act of measurement causes an uncertain change in the thing being measured. The entanglement of our wave function with the wave function of a moving electronconstitutes a complex system; and all complex systems behave with an unknown levelof uncertainty. “It is not enough to know the micro-architecture. We also have to understand the network properties that arise from the micro-architecture, and so farthat's not at all obvious...

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VIDEO ART
//Francesco Bertocco

VIDEO ART
//Alessandra Migani

VOOM, BY ROBERT WILSON:
THE SURFACE OF A MYTH

Txt: Francesco Bertocco / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Video Art

There is a figure which seems to stop the time, move with care along its borders, fly above it, go through it but then sit outside it. It is a man who wears only his slips and stand in front of us, fixing us. Above us the rain begins to fall. The light is steered by a blinding intense blue which looks like a chemical color lent by Klein’s imagination or by the fluorescent lamp of a sleazy club. We sight his face, the clean cut of his chin, his opened and selfconfident eyes. It seems that we know him. That face is Brad Pitt’s one. Just a few seconds and we see a man of the same age with the neck wrapped in a sort of fox-fur. The man is very elegant and wears a hat which hides most of his face. But we immediatly recognize him: he is Johnny Depp. Robert Wilson created a portrait gallery between agiography, irony and glamour, titled Voom, where very famous celebrities are represented in a minimal and dreamlike space. Robert Wilson is one of th

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KEMPINSKI: MISTERIOSE PREDIZIONI
AFRICANE SUL FUTURO

Txt: Alessandra Migani
Area: Experimental Cinema

Queste sono le parole che accompagnavano Kempinski, il cortometraggio del giovanissimo videomaker, Neil Beloufa, presentato in anteprima lo scorso anno, al 52nd London Film Festival (LFF). Il video era proiettato in loop, all’interno dello Studio del BFI - British Film Institute, il magnifico centro sulla riva del Tamigi, la "Southbank". Non sapevo bene cosa aspettarmi da questo cortometraggio, ovviamente mi sono immaginata che avrei assistito ad un filmato surreale, con astronavi volanti ed alieni in Africa. Ero sicura che avrei trovato elementi comuni alla maggior parte dei film di fantascienza e che, a mio avviso, dovevano essere contenuti anche in questo lavoro. Ma Kempinski sorprende, affascina e fa pensare. Infatti, a distanza di quasi un anno, l'opera è ancora nella mia memoria, nelle riflessioni e parole mai scritte, che, sin da allora, non aspettano altro che materializzarsi su carta (virtuale, in questo caso)...

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EXPERIMENTAL
//Matteo Milani

SOUND ART
//Enrico Pitozzi

PETER CHILVERS:
VISUAL AND TACTICAL MUSIC

Txt: Matteo Milani / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Experimental

Generative music is a term coined by Brian Eno years ago to describe music generated by a system, that is ever changing and varied, and that follows some rules. Ambient music - whose founding father is Eno - is "music created to fill a given space, that can either be listened to carefully or as easily ignored". "Up to 20 years ago or maybe more, I got interested in those processes that can produce music without a specific purpose" Eno asserts. "The first example of this concept are the Aeolian bells. If you build a set of eolian bells, you can determine the packaging in which music can 'happen', but you can't precisely define the way in which music will be programmed through time. It's only a way to produce music not entirely defined." - Brian Eno. I've recently had the opportunity to interview the musician and software designer Peter Chilvers, co-founder of the Burning Shed record label. He has composed various generative music...

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SEISMOGRAPHS OF TIME
CONVERSATION WITH ROBERTO PACI DALO'

Txt: Enrico Pitozzi / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Sound Art

Among the main figures of contemporary experimentation, Roberto Paci Dalò is a director, multimedia artist and composer/performer. He is director and creator of the Giardini Pensili group. His research develops within an area that goes from the development of radio interventions to sound installations; from the development of plays to the building of virtual stages like the Itaca project commissioned by the Teatro di Roma and directed by Mario Martone (1999-2000), passing through the development of the film that, as in the case of Petròleo México (2004) was presented at the Locarno International film festival. Through his interest in the contamination of languages, Paci Dalò put the intersection between different disciplinary territories at the centre of his artistic attention, which vary from the organisation of telecommunication systems applied to artistic processes to the semantic-dramatic redefinition of new technologies...

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AUDIOVIDEO
//Alessio Galbiati

AUDIOVIDEO
//Claudia D'Alonzo

MADDEN 12X A SECOND
WHEN THE EYE FLICKERS IN MILAN

Txt: Alessio Galbiati / Eng: Sara Cavagna
Area: Audiovideo

From the 17th to the 26th September at the DOCVA (Documentation Center for Visual Arts) in Milan, via Procaccini 4, took place the exhibition “Quando l’occhio trema. Il flicker fra cinema, video e digitale” (When the eye shakes. A flicker between cinema, video and digital world”. It is a videoscreening created by Claudia D’Alonzo (Digicult) and Mario Gorni (Careof DOCVA) and made of15 works of art which play the so called “flicker” effect. The cinematographic world, and more generally the moving images, is based on a progression of still-shoot with a speedy of 24 shoots a second. This updating frequency allows the perception of movement. Changing the number of still-shoots – let’s say halving it – the so called flickering effect is created. That’s all. Using Laura Mulvey ‘s words (1) we could say: Madden 12x a Second! The works of art based on this principle are quite disturbing..

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TONY OURSLER: ROUND-NOSED
WHISTILING-JACK-OFF-DUMB-FUCK

Txt: Claudia D'Alonzo / Eng: Monica Fontana
Area: Audiovideo

Tony Oursler is one of the most internationally renowned multimedia artists, born in 1957 in New York City, where he lives and works. In the eighties he began to make short videos, and later he began to design installations where he set sound and video. Since the nineties the use of mannequins became a constant feature of his work, puppets and dolls were the stars of his installations. He was member of a rock group, The Poetics, with colleagues and artists like Mike Kelley and John Miller. During his career he has worked with Constance DeJong, Tony Conrad and Dan Graham and Sonic Youth. The multimedia works that made him famous are projected in three dimensions, often on spherical surfaces, which emphasize the emotional charge of the object, a face speaking, staring at something or yelling. The video material Oursler often uses is a kind of footage of human faces, whose result is that the three-dimensional...

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TECHNOLOGY
//Barbara Sansone

TECHNOLOGY
//Luigi Ghezzi

RAUL MARTINEZ:
THE TENDERNESS OF METAL

Txt: Barbara Sansone / Eng: Emanuela Cassol
Area: Technology

Although Digimag deals with digital culture, this month we want to devote a well-deserved space to an artist, whose work does not exactly fall within this category, but it perfectly places itself within that field of research that our magazine carries out in the framework of (applied and reused) technology, mechanics and art. The general trend does no longer lie in the celebration of technology in itself, but aims to grant priority to the concept and the tangibility, also when, in order to obtain them, the artist uses techniques and materials that are not exactly the latest fad. We met Raúl Martinez at the summer edition of Dorkbot in Barcelona and, like everyone else, we fell for the cuteness and simplicity of his creatures. Raul, with a Classical Art and Industrial Engineering background, creates robotized, mechanic, pneumatic, kinetic sculptures through the use recycled material. Such sculptures have a lively, organic aspect...

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TO EVALUATE DIGITAL CREATIVITY:
HOW AND WHAT INSTRUMENTS TO USE

Txt: Luigi Ghezzi / Eng: Giulia Tiddens
Area: Technology

The “Digital Creativity” review (september 2009, Vol. 20) has recently published a special issue dedicated to the speeches to the Completing The Circle conference organized by the Lansdown Centre for Eletronic Arts in London (supported by the BCS Computer Arts Society and by the Design Research Society) which took place in January 2009. The symposium gathered artists, designers, computer scientists, developers and academicians; the goal was to collect contributions directed towards the research of effective means for the evaluation of the creative job, as regards the way they are “used” as well as the way they are perceived, especially in the light of the variations introduced by the interactive digital technologies. “Completing The Circle”, that gave the name to the symposium, intends to stress the element of evaluation which is often missed in the creative process. The call of paper for the conference which...

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INTERACTION DESIGN
//Barbara Sansone

INTERACTION DESIGN
//Massimo Botta

CARLA DIANA: FROM REAL TO VIRTUAL
AND BACK AGAIN

Txt: Barbara Sansone / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: Interaction Design

Some years ago, in the rich panorama of designers and artists that used Flash to express their creativity on the web, there was a very interesting female figure whose work had already achieved international recognition. It was Carla Diana, from New York, but as her surname suggests, not far from her Italian roots. Carla’s work immediately gave off a particular feel. Her environments were almost always abstract and sparse and the objects that populated them were sound toys that the user could manipulate at leisure, thanks to the complex programming behind them. And Carla, with her love for mechanical objects and music, with her capacity to capture through her senses the stimuli of daily life that are generally ignored, with her reflections on the relationship between animals (even humans) and machines, with her attention to feedback of her colleagues and users, with her curiosity that gave her...

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PROJECT CULTURE
AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

Txt: Massimo Botta / Eng: Valeria Grillo
Area: Interaction Design

Cultural and intellectual activities should have practical consequences in the life of people, and among them, projecting disciplines should represent the happy case where "humanistic knowledge" and "technical knowledge" are combined, in order to generate products and services to support mankind. Citing Serges Gagnon, design could be defined as "cultural appropriation of technology", and this statement seems to be more important if we consider the impact technological innovation has on our lives. In particular, interaction design nowadays is the planning discipline which defines relations between men and technological artifacts - in other words which products we will probably need, how they will be done, what functions they will perform and how we will use them. The interaction designer, in a vaster meaning, is the intellectual technician who defines and projects products and services which support and extend....

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Techno Theatre
//Silvana Vassallo

OLTRE LA VISTA DEL MONDO
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Tx: SIlvana Vassallo
Area: Techno Theatre

In occasione della prima edizione della Festa della Marineria, tenutasi a la Spezia dall’11 al 16 giugno, Xlabfactory ha presentato Oltre la vista del mondo - Message in a bottle. Recital multimediale per il golfo dei poeti. Non ci poteva essere tema più appropriato di quello affrontato nello spettacolo per celebrare il fascino incantatorio che emana dal Golfo di La Spezia: il testo drammaturgico di Andrea Balzola, che ha curato anche la regia dello spettacolo, narra di visioni estatiche, di esperienze epifaniche, ma anche tragiche, scaturite dalla frequentazione dei suggestivi luoghi che rendono unico il Golfo spezzino. Così come non ci poteva essere spazio più evocativo per ospitare il recital dell’Officina dei Carpentieri e Calafati, un enorme capannone situato nell’Arsenale militare. Attualmente al suo interno si trova in restauro il Leudo Felice Manin - uno dei più antichi velieri liguri (1891), utilizzato un tempo per trasportare merci e viveri alle isole dell’Arcipelago toscano –, che per l’occasione si è trasformato in una presenza scenica dal forte impatto visivo. Attorno all’imponente veliero ruota la prima parte dello spettacolo, La vista del mondo, basata sull’omonimo testo dello scrittore spezzino Ettore Cozzani, pubblicato nel 1921 nella raccolta di racconti Leggende della Lunigiana. La genesi del racconto è interessante perché ispirata ad un evento realmente accaduto ad uno scienziato naturalista inglese, F.W.C. Trafford, che nel 1869, nel corso di un Grand Tour in Italia, ebbe un’esperienza mistico-onirica sul Monte Castellana, di cui lasciò un resoconto dal titolo Amphiorama ou la vue du monde des montagne de La Spezia. Fenomène inconnu, pour la première fois observè et decrit avec une carte du Continent polaire, pubblicato nel 1874 a Zurigo. Nella rielaborazione effettuata da Cozzani, la storia assume una dimensione più mistica e atemporale. Con toni lirici viene descritta l’esperienza vissuta da “un vecchio e nobile pellegrino”, che dopo essere approdato nel Golfo di Spezia giunge sulla vetta del Monte Castellana, dove è sopraffatto da una serie di allucinazioni visive. Dalla vetta del monte è come se riuscisse a vedere tutti i luoghi che aveva attraversato nei suoi innumerevoli viaggi per mare, dal Mediterraneo alla Groenlandia, dall'Australia all'Africa: una visione estatica che dura diverse ore lasciandolo in preda ad un estremo turbamento, che lo induce a confidarsi con un sacerdote incontrato durante il suo tragitto di discesa dal monte.

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NEW MEDIA
//Tiziana Gemin

NEW MEDIA
//Lucrezia Cippitelli

THIRTY YEARS OF ARS ELECTRONICA:
THE FUTURE OF MAN AND NATURE

Txt: Tiziana Gemin / Eng: Luisa Bertolatti
Area: New Media

The 2009 Ars Electronica will surely be an edition to remember. The festival, which takes place in Linz the first week of September, celebrated its 30th year. Much attention was focused on the little Austrian town for the fact that Linz was chosen as European Culture Capital for 2009, and so it has experienced an intense year, dense with launches and cultural events. For the director of Ars Electronica Gerfried Stocker, it must have been a difficult task having to program an event that was to be stimulating for those people who have known the fair for some time and are not shy of certain subjects, but also for a more vast and heterogeneous audience that is curious about technology. Like every year, the famous festival dedicated to art, technology and society, has had an important theme relating to certain aspects of the era in which we live. The title Human Nature was inspired by a definition expressed by the scientist...

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THE CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL
PASS THROUGH ITS MODERNITY

Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli / Eng: Giulia Tiddens
Area: New Media

A large exhibition dedicated to the current Brazil, distributed over the three major expositive areas in Rotterdam, ended at the close of last summer. We are talking about Brazil Contemporary, the point of arrival of a demanding research project on the visual, social and architectural culture of this country. The exhibition was planned to be divided in three main sections: the Nederlands Fotomuseum housed a large part on the Brazilian visual culture of the last decades, concentrating on experimental photography, photojournalism, graphic videos and design. The art museum of the town, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum focused instead on visual arts and on contemporary art. The last one, the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut wished to give a survey on the architecture and the town planning of Brazil, dwelling in particular upon the contrasts of San Paolo. A catalogue published by Nai Publisher follows step by step the vast research...