ana otero
Since 2003
Works in Barcelona Spain

BIO
Ana Otero holds a M.A. in Museum Studies by the New York University, a Postgraduate Degree in Curatorial and Cultural Practices in Art and New Media by MECAD/ESDi and a B.A. in Audiovisual Communication by the Universistat Autonoma of Barcelona.

During seven years Ana was the multimedia art director for the broadcasting company based in Barcelona Media Park (now Teuve). Simultaneously to her professional career, Ana co-founded the collectives J13 (1998-2000) and no_a (2000-05) focus on the experimentation of art and new technologies.

In NYC, Ana worked on art education through new media for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, as part of Rhizome where she curated the online show “Google Art, or How to Hack Google” and participated in the site redesign, collaborated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in the online curatorial-educational project Museum as Hub and as web manager for Art21, a non-profit organization focus on contemporary art.

Jeremy Blake, 35, Artist Who Used Lush-Toned Video, Dies


Jeremy Blake, an up-and-coming artist who sought to bridge the worlds of painting and film in lush, color-saturated, hallucinatory digital video works, has died, the New York City Police said yesterday. He was 35 and lived in the East Village in Manhattan.

[More...]

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Call for Projects VIDA 10.0


VIDA 10.0 is an international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines, such as robotics and Artificial Intelligence.We are looking for artistic projects that address the interaction between "synthetic" and "organic" life". In previous years prizes have been awarded to artistic projects using autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life.

Please find the call for projects here http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/vida/english

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TEXT a::minima Feature on Molleindustria


Download PDF file

Molleindustria is a project that takes aim at starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of the videogames. Using simple but sharp games we hope to give some starting point for a new generation of critical game developer and, above all, to test pratices that can be easly emulated and virally diffused. So far we have published nine games (four of them are available only in italian), some theoretical essays and other web-based project like Mayday NetParade or where-next.com.

A spectre is haunting the net: the spectre of political games. Small and viral online games able to spread dissonant messages. They emerge and disappear in the ever-changing world of the blog, forum and mailing lists. Sometimes they are blended into the undeground gamedesign scene, sometimes they pop in the glossy pages of popular magazines, sometimes they are disguised as works of art.

I’m talking about a spectre because political games don’t exist, or better, they have always existed: every video game - as every cultural product - reflect author’s ideas, visions and ideologies. Every video game is essentially political.

Why super Mario is a plunder? Has anybody ever seen him fixing a pipe? He probably fit better into the shoes of a rampant Wall Street broker, a social climber who attack every being that comes across his path. His eternal dissatisfaction, his continuous run, his orderliness in killing enemies sounds suspicious. In the typical level-based structure of arcade games we can recognize some qualities of the yuppie ideology: success is like a ladder that gets harder and harder to climb. There are many partial achievements but the whole plan is often difficult to understand. Individualism, competition an accumulation of useless points are constant. It's the neo-liberal short-sightedness, the means that becomes the ...

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Philip Ross, nature networks


Philip Ross was one of the artists featured in Rhizome’s Networked Nature exhibition earlier this year. His work consists of designed and constructed controlled environmental spaces which:

nurture, transform, and refine a variety of sculptural artifacts much as one might train the growth of a Bonsai tree.

Two works which look particularly spectacular on his website and employ ideas of networks are Junior Return and Jarred In.

Junior Return

Junior Return (image above) is:

a self-contained survival capsule for one living plant. Four blown glass enclosures provide a controlled hydroponic environment; one holds the plant, another the water reservoir for the plant, the third holds the electronics and pump that control the plant's resources, and the last for the rechargeable battery that gives the energy required to keep the plant alive in this container. An air pump goes off for a few seconds every minute, supplying air to the plant and to the water reservoir. A digital timer counts down from sixty to zero, displaying the time left until the pump will activate. Then, with little notice, a few bubbles appear in the water, the only indication that anything is actually going on.

The latest 'version' of Junior Return is titled Clone Army which consists of ighteen of the small hydroponic units networked together in different formations.

Jarred In

Jarred In (image above) is a sixteen feet tall and twelve feet wide hanging garden installation.

In this garden pairs of plants are housed in life support pods suspended from a chandelier like armature. The roots of the plants swim in illuminated, water filled boxes. Water is pumped up from tall Plexiglas reservoirs resting on the ground. The reservoirs are attached to a central pod on the ground, referred to by the folks at The Exploratorium as "mother ship" and housing six Dwarf ...

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Discussions (26) Opportunities (30) Events (90) Jobs (2)
EVENT

CALL FOR PROPOSALS - The second international Opensource: {Videodance} symposium.


Dates:
Mon Jul 30, 2007 00:00 - Tue Apr 24, 2007

:: The second international Opensource: {Videodance} symposium.
:: Universal Hall Arts Centre, Findhorn Foundation Community, Morayshire, Scotland
:: 21st - 25th November 2007.

Screen dance is a rapidly expanding area of artistic, academic and curatorial activity worldwide. Inherent in screen dance practice is
the interface and collaboration between dance artists and media arts
practitioners. Opensource: {Videodance} 2007 is an open symposium for video dance-makers and dance artists, academics, curators and
producers coming together, to share ideas and work, network and
debate, and provide a valuable platform for current issues in the
area of screen dance practice to come to the surface.

Building on the strengths of the 2006 event, this symposium expressly aims to place current screen dance practice in a wider theoretical
and critical context and to bring people from the collaborating
disciplines together in a way that rarely happens, in order to impact significantly and positively on the lives and work of the
participating individuals. The vision is to create an exciting and
supportive place for people to engage, talk, hang out, relax, think,
and listen, and to enable the spontaneous and dynamic unfolding of
events. The programme for the four days will be a mixture of pre-
arranged presentations and open forums initiated by the participants.

Whilst the greater part of the timetable will be dedicated to
allowing the participants to initiate and following though
discussion, we will again approach a select few artists/academics to
give special presentations/lectures designed to inspire and provoke
thought beyond the direct concerns of the participants. In addition,
this year we are inviting proposals for limited number of presentations.

:: Call for proposals:

Seminar and Paper proposals are invited for presentation from authors
(Academics and practitioners) of investigations into the interfaces
of screen dance to one of the following formats:
Academic research paper, Reports on practice-based work, Essay,
Curated screening of work.

We encourage contributions that are related to all aspects of screen
dance practice including interdisciplinary approaches in performance,

architecture, music, literature, visual arts, and new media but
particular preference will be given to those exploring the outcomes
of the first Opensource {Videodance} symposium in 2006, notably the


EVENT

CALL FOR PAPERS - Invisible Culture


Dates:
Sun Jun 10, 2007 00:00 - Wed Apr 18, 2007

Invisible Culture, Issue 11, Fall 2007
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/
Deadline for Papers: June 10, 2007
Issue 11: Curator and Context

In his 1965 book Museum Without Walls , Andre Malraux critiques museum
conventions of display that deaden art of the past. In fact, over time
the artworks have morphed, affected by their surroundings, and taken on
new lives as different kinds of aesthetic objects. Three years later,
Roland Barthes would identify the death of the author and the emergence
of the reader in the making of meaning. These writers' prescient
articulations of the fusions - and confusions - of art object, context,
artist, and viewer foresaw today's hyper-interaction of art media and
the overlapping of roles in the museum and beyond.
What these texts leave out is the seemingly unmarked presence of an
intermediary between the artwork and the viewer ╜ the curator ╜ and the
world she has traditionally inhabited ╜ the museum. ⌠The gallery space
is no longer neutral,wrote Brian O'Doherty in 1976, at a time when
artistic practice turned the ideology of the gallery space upon its
head. While underlining the pertinence of the museum's physical and
contextual impact on the reception of art, he too neglects the curator.
Douglas Crimp's seminal text On the Museum's Ruins laid bare the
changing state of the museum by examining shifts in art practice and the
rising significance of photography as challenges to the institution. To
continue rethinking the museum as a site for art display and the
interlinked roles of the artist, artwork, curator, and viewer follows in
the steps of these theorists and their peers, to say the least of the
decades of artists who have interrupted conventional modes of display in
museums through strategic creative applications. As globalization gives
way to new cosmopolitanisms, and new media art transforms the site of
the museum into the virtual realm, what has become of the curator? By
some accounts the role of the curator may be in decline as alternative
art spaces, tactical art interventions, and virtual museums refute her
role and the institutional power it implies. The other side might see
instead a curatorial practice that takes on a multiplicity of roles ╜ as
artist, as architect, as nation - and has increased significance in the
frenzied world of the international art fair.
Invisible Culture invites papers and projects concerned with
contemporary (post-1960s) curatorial and museum practice. Submissions in
the form of 2,500-6,000 word papers from all disciplines, as well as
digital projects (virtual museums, online art exhibitions, and
internet-based endeavors, for example) are welcome. Entries may include
but are not limited to investigations of the following topics:
∙ the relevance and changing role of the curator
∙ artist as curator
∙ curator as translator
∙ criticism and interpretation of exhibitions
∙ models of curating and display
∙ new media projects, the virtual museum
∙ ethics of display
∙ histories of curating
∙ visual anthropology
∙ sense studies, anthropologies of the senses
∙ changes in culture and science museums, museums of natural history
∙ curator as mediator of cultural exchange
∙ architecture and context
∙ global visual culture
∙ problems of cultural translation
∙ alternative exhibition sites
∙ challenges to exhibition display: performance, video and installation
art
∙ the interactive exhibit
∙ hybrid art forms and multimedia displays
∙ museum studies
∙ communication/audience studies
∙ cultivation of art audiences
∙ curating and the expansion of global art markets
∙ collections, collectors and curators
∙ curating the biennial/international art fair
∙ cosmopolitanism, diasporas of artists and curators at home and abroad
∙ display and the politics of identity
∙ authorship
∙ emerging area and regional curatorial networks
∙ developments in institutional critique
∙ the location of the frame

Submissions and inquiries should be directed to Mara Gladstone, Graduate
Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester at
mgladstone@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission is June 10, 2007.

*Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture* is a
peer-reviewed journal dedicated to explorations of the material and
political dimensions of cultural practices: the means by which cultural
objects and communities are produced, the historical contexts in which
they emerge, and the regimes of knowledge or modes of social interaction
to which they contribute.

http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/


OPPORTUNITY

JOB OPPORTUNITY - new media art professor


Deadline:
Fri Jun 01, 2007 00:00

:: Academy of Fine Arts Position: new media art
:: Job Opportunity
:: Deadline: June 1, 2007.

The New media department (nmedia.avu.cz) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech republic (www.avu.cz) is seeking professor for at least one year, beginning October 2007. The New media department seeks candidates with an interdisciplinary approach to the role played by new technologies in artistic, social, and political fields. Prior art teaching experience or knowledge of new media art practices and procedures is strongly preferred. We invite applications from artists working in such areas as: video art, interactive art, data visualization, digital motion capture, web art, etc.

The school is situated very close to the city center, in a cubistic villa facing the biggest park in Prague. The New Media department was founded in 1991 as part of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague as one of the first schools of this kind in Easter Europe. The Academy offers housing and a salary in accordance with the Academy of Fine Arts pay scales. Please send cover letters, works samples (catalogues, publications) and resumes to chisa@avu.cz. The deadline for the applications is June the 1st, 2007.

Academy of Fine Arts
New Media I
http://nmedia.avu.cz
U akademie 4
17022 Praha 7
Czech republic

tel.: +420 220408201
e-mail: chisa@avu.cz


EVENT

*call for projects* - MEDIALAB MADRID


Dates:
Tue Apr 24, 2007 00:00 - Wed Apr 04, 2007

:: MEDIALAB MADRID
:: call for projects
:: Deadline: April 24

MEDIALAB MADRID issues a *call for projects* to be developed in a
collaborative way during the new edition of *Interactivos?*, that this
year tackles the relationship between *magic and technology*. The
production workshop will be held by Daniel Canogar, Simone Jones and
Zachary Lieberman.

*Interactivos? Magic and Technology*

"Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke.

Magic and illusion have always gone hand in hand with technology; from mechanical illusions, optical and mirror tricks, through the incorporation of electricity and the filmed image, to digital technology: augmented reality, reactive objects, reality hacking and immersive spaces.

This new edition of Interactivos? in Medialab Madrid is inspired by the strategies of magic and illusion, in order to harness some of the old and new technological resources to collectively build software pieces and interactive installations which can propose a rethinking of the usual scenario in magic tricks, marked by a very clear separation between the wizard and the spectators.

More info>> http://www.interactivos.org/


EVENT

THE VIDA WORKSHOP SERIES - NEW APPLICATIONS DEADLINE


Dates:
Mon Apr 09, 2007 00:00 - Tue Apr 03, 2007

NEW APPLICATIONS DEADLINE - UNTIL 9TH OF APRIL

FUNDACION TELEFONICA PRESENTS THE VIDA WORKSHOP SERIES
Art, Robotics and Artificial Life

The VIDA WORKSHOP series has been created to promote the production of artwork that addresses the concept of Artificial Life. These workshops will be given by some of VIDA's award-winning artists. Through discussion and hands-on explorations using technological tools participants will further develop their appreciation of artificial life from an artistic perspective.

The first workshop will be given by France Cadet, first-prize winner of VIDA 6.0 for "Dog (Lab) 01". She will explain how she performed behaviour-changing modifications on I-Cybies robotic dogs. Participants will have the opportunity to create their own dog by dismantling and hacking into default features with C programming, and soldering new electronic components into robot dogs. These new creations will all be displayed on the last day of the workshop.

This workshop is open to artists, technophiles, inventors or anyone interested in the intersection of art, technology and cognitive sciences.

Dates
12th, 13th y 14th Abril 2007

Timetable
10.30 a.m. - 2.00p.m. and 4.00p.m. - 6.00 p.m.

Participants number
12

Requirements for the application
name, background and interests in the workshop

Application's contact
e-mail to angeles.perezmuela@telefonica.es
Phone: +34 91 584 23 05

Deadline for applications
9th April 2007

Location
Exhibition rooms of Fundacion Telefonica
Gran Via 28, Madrid

Language of the workshop
English

Coordination and selection of participants
Monica Bello Bugallo

Free of charge workshop