Well, I hope that nobody is under the impression that we are trying to go commercial here! This is about being in love with media arts, and if there’s an organization that deserves your support, it’s rhizome.org! And it’s not about donation, it’s a membership.
“Founded in 1996, Rhizome is dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology. Through open platforms for exchange and collaboration, our website serves to encourage and expand the international communities evolving these practices. Our programs, many of which happen online, include commissions, exhibitions, events, discussion, archives and portfolios. We support artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media. Our organizational voice draws attention to artists, their work, their perspectives and the complex interrelationships between technology, art and culture.”
During the New Cultural Networks Conference in Amsterdam (Friday 2nd of November, organized by Stifo@Sandberg), PIPS:lab presented diespace , the first internet community for people who have passed away!
PIPS:lab are a group of artists from Amsterdam based Sandberg Institute, and what they do is a mixture of new media art projects, theater, performance, (live!) music,…well, it’s really an experience and it really stirred up the audience of the conference!
We Feel Fine is an artwork by Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar, and it is truly worth exploring!
It is a huge database that collects ‘human emotions’, or one could better say expressions of human emotions, from weblogs all over the world. Every time the sentences “I feel” or “I am feeling” appear in a blog entry, the emotion (sad, happy, etc.) is identified by the system and saved along with all sorts of other data, for example the gender of the writer, his or her origin, even the local weather conditions. This is possible because blogs are largely constructed in standard ways.
One Band, One Song, One Shot!
The Take Away Shows are a video blog by Vincent Moon. He meets a band for an our and they record a song onetake. It’s not about shooting a technical perfect music video, but about the authentic atmosphere of the recording. I think it’s a perfect concept for a video blog, it’s short, it’s simple but intelligent, it’s informative but entertaining.
Vincent has done over 70 shows. Some of my favs besides Final Fantasy are Beirut and the Arcade Fire.
Quaterlife, the most expensive exclusive web series up to date, has aired the first two episodes.
In terms of narration and acting it I think it’s really awesome, it’s setting new standards for web fiction formats. I`m agreeing with Karina Longworth from NewTeevee that the basic idea of one of the main characters talking about his flatmates’ lives on his blog seems a little odd. It’s not very interesting to see the main character explaining everything through voice over while you actually see it in the acting yourself. Leaves only little room for your own interpretation and makes the plot very predictable.
But moreover, I think the series will become very popular. As I said, narration and acting are to the point. Especially the male and female protagonist will catch the attention of the mySpace audience. This coming-of-Age theme, struggling between your big dreams becoming an artist and your everyday (love)life has always worked. Why should it fail this time.
See Episode 2 here.
“Based on more than 25 hours of never-before-heard audiotaped interviews conducted by noted journalist Michael Azerrad, the movie KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON is an intimate and moving portrait of the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain, told entirely in his own voice — without celebrity soundbites, news clips, sensational or tabloid angles. It’s who he was from the man himself, with cinematic imagery shot on film of the three cities in Washington State that played a major role in his life (Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle) and set to an evocative score by noted Northwest musician and producer Steve Fisk and Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard, as well as the music of more than 20 artists who influenced or touched Cobain during his life. Kurt Cobain About A Son opens in select markets in October. The soundtrack is out now on Barsuk Records. Visit www.barsuk.com for more information!”
Original VIRB-Source
DOMESTIC SAFARI
Home as a wild place
By Anders Weberg and Robert Willim
Domestic Safari is a journey through three different homes in three different European countries.
The film and it’s soundtrack is based entirely on manipulated recordings from the three places in Finland, Italy and Sweden.
This audiovisual excursion aims to call forth imaginaries and a profane illumination that disorient and estrange the materialities of everyday reality.”
I might be a little late posting this music video by Socalled, but it’s too beautiful to not getting mentioned.
Original YouTube Source.
Live debate at the MUMOK in Vienna’s MuseumQuartier Danube TeleLecture #4: Thursday, Nov 8, 2007 at 19:00 central European Time.
Featuring Lev Manovich (”Language of New Media”, “After Effects or the invisible Revolution”) and Sean Cubitt (”Immersion, Connectivity, Convivilaity”).
You can attend the event life on the net here.
“darkly twisted yet entrancingly beautiful” - Chocolade Haas is a short film by Sander Plug.