getawayexperiment.net has thus far been spotted on NEWSgrist, netart.review and mediatrips.
Come on y’all. Get your getaway game on and post your own signs! There’re already tons of solidarity images out there that would add nicely to the mix, and we’re waiting to see just how much you can do to fox, google, joburg and turbulence as well….
Announcing the long-awaited launch of getawayexperiment.net! Please contribute!
A turbulence.org commission, getawayexperiment.net proposes a dialogue between the virtual and physical processes of sign and site design and perception. Stern and Neustetter have transformed several information-based web pages into collaboratively constructed communication sites. Initially, they commissioned local sign-makers in Johannesburg, South Africa to "re-mix" five websites (Fox News, Google Images, joburg.org.za, Solidarity and Turbulence) by painting stylized versions of each image on their main pages. The hand-painted signs were then scanned, prepared for the web, and uploaded.
Each of the five sites can be seen in three ways: 1) the original site (on its original server); 2) the "getaway" site in edit mode; and 3) the "getaway" site in non-edit mode. In edit mode, participants from anywhere in the world can click on an image in any one of the "getaway" pages and upload their own replacement images. In non-edit mode each individual image is randomly pulled from the site’s database thereby transforming the "getaways" into dynamic collages that signify something completely new.
link: Apple unveils CD-sized mini Mac, one ounce iPod
Man that Mac Mini looks hot – the perfect installation art machine!!!! . Also on the apple site you can find out more about their new iPod shuffle (your picks of the day for under $100), iWork 05 – competing with MS Word! – and iLife 05, with updated features. Looks like their might be an updated Final Cut Express, too.
I want! (Thanks to Angus for the link)
Shown is Portrait M2370, a collaboration between Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, as seen at Artinthedark_ in Melville last Thursday. The event was really brilliant. It had the vibe of a drive-in, but with 90% of the people really paying attention to video art, rather than Hollywood, as little kids ran around and their folks drank beer and wine. The way the screen blew in the wind as a backdrop to some of our most prolific artists of the day made for a stunning exhibit, and fun night. I really hope that Trasi does this again, as the response has been extraordinary. Well done, girl!
Some very recognizable names asking for simple interactions in order to help… from networked_performance: Thank You – posted by Jo-Anne Greene, but originally from Mary Flanagan on grandtextauto.
altruism, interaction and exchange
Please visit the exhibition Thank You’Äîan activist art project conceived by Danish/Australian/U.S. group Wooloo Productions (I’Äôm in it!). It launched yesterday on World AIDS day, December 1st, 2004. Thank You “confronts its audience with the relationship of exchange between Africa and the West. Dealing specifically with issues of exploitation and disease, the project utilizes possibilities afforded by online technology to illustrate the absurdity of today’Äôs co-existing economic reality.” [blogged by Mary Flanagan on grandtextauto.]
The show is meant to be a platform to critique altruism and exchange while at the same time help real people (this contradictory stance of critical activism is driving me to read a lot of Negri, by the way’Äìand much of his writing is liberated!!).
Wooloo Productions invited one American (mary) and four South African artists to create interactive artworks. Each viewer interaction with the works results in the release of one South African Rand (approx. US$ 0.15) towards the cost of setting up an HIV Education Center in Khayelitsha. So when visitors click on projects they help raise $$’Äì we can collect quite a large sum from donors to help build the center if people visit our works. So click away!! The Thank You show takes place simultaneously in two physical locations’ÄîArtists Space and a public stage in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa’Äîas well as online. If you’Äôre in nyc, visit Artists Space (38 Greene st, 3rd Floor). In Khayelitsha, its on the center stage area at Site B, where Wooloo member Sixten is acting as host for the show . The works are presented on computer monitors in the two project locations from Dec 1 – 11 2004. There is a video hook up linking the sites.
I made the game [six.circles] specifically for this show. Players connect triangles to form shapes, but while playing, must introduce illness into the community. Players have to negotiate and sacrifice to cooperatively prevent the spread of the disease or cure pieces while still attempting to win the game by creating ’Äúsix circles’Äù out of the shapes. A circle cannot be “closed,” however, unless it is 1/2 infected, showing that communities must work together and embrace problems as a whole.
Right now [six.circles] is functioning as a game for two players on a local machine, with cross-net gameplay coming this weekend and single player mode soon to follow. Lots of people to thank for inspiration and help, including Ruth Catlow, Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Sebastian. I’Äôm also working with the amazing Chris Egert, an old friend. He is technical engineer on the project and he’Äôs faculty in RIT’Äôs Information Technology Dept (where there are ruminations of gaming program afoot). You can also visit the project from my website, which has more writing about the [six.circles] game.
Nice work, impressive lineup, surfing donates money….
Yesterday was the above event, organized by myself, AT.joburg and the JAG (johannesburg art gallery), and sponsored by the JAG and the American Consulate of South Africa.
There was a a great turnout and a fantastic vibe around the work, what is possible in “the digital revolution” (can you smell the irony?), where it always already had begun, what we place value on, and how to locate various technologies, and the potentials they explore (literally and conceptually), in a Southern African context.
The walkabout raised some interesting questions from the participants, who asked about things from the devaluation of time spent on art when using software, to the pretense of narcissism in explorations of “self”, and “the promise of something new” inside and outside of interactive spaces. It set the stage for our panel discussion, bravely led by journalist Sean O’Toole, current editor of Art South Africa.
Above, left is video artist Thando Mama, next choreographer/journalist Zingi Mkefa making a point about where and how bodies can be further implicated, even explicated, in the new generation of interactive arts – if only it only weren’t so “wink, wink, nudge, nudge”. On the right is a full view of our panelists, from far left: Sean O’Toole, Thando Mama, Zingi Mkefa, media artist Franci Cronje, artist/curator/innovator Marcus Neustetter (of The Trinity Session, digi-arts Africa and the Southern African New Media Art Network), artist/lecturer Marc Edwards, video artist Churchill Madikida and Prof. Christo Doherty, Head of Digital Arts at Wits School Of the Arts.
We started at noon, and went straight on until five – what a great start of dialogue! More plans for future AT.joburg events are in the works….