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

READ ON »


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 ...

READ ON »



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

CALL FOR PAPERS - Virtual Reality & Museums


Dates:
Fri Apr 27, 2007 00:00 - Sun Mar 18, 2007

:: Virtual Reality & Museums
:: Call for Papers
:: Deadline: Friday April 27, 2007

Contributions are welcomed for a new book addressing the construction and interpretation of virtual artefacts within virtual world museums and within physical museum spaces. Particular emphasis is placed on theories of spatiality and strategies of interpretation.

The editors seek papers that intervene in critical discourses surrounding virtual reality and virtual artefacts, to explore the rapidly changing temporal, spatial and theoretical boundaries of contemporary museum display practice. We are especially interested in spatiality as it is employed in the construction of virtual artefacts, as well as the roles these spaces enact as signifiers of historical narrative and sites of social interaction.

We are also interested in the relationship between real-world museums and virtual world museums, with a view to interrogating the construction of meaning within, across and between both. We welcome original scholarly contributions on the topic of new cultural practices and communities related to virtual reality in the context of museum display practice. Papers might address, but are in no way limited to, the following:

* Authenticity and artificiality
* Exploration and discovery
* Physical vs virtual
* Representation/interpretation of virtual reality artefacts - as 3D spaces on screen or in a physical gallery
* Museum visiting in virtual space
* Representation of physical museum spaces in virtual worlds and their relationship to cultural definitions of museum spaces.

Please send a proposal of 500-750 words and a contributor's bio by Friday April 27, 2007.
Authors will be notified by Thursday May 31, 2007.
Final drafts of papers are due by Monday October 1, 2007.

Please send your proposal to:

Tara Chittenden
Room 201
Strategic Research Unit
113 Chancery Lane
London WC2A 1PL

Or via email: tara.chittenden[at]lawsociety.org.uk


OPPORTUNITY

Banff New Media Institute - Co-production Residency for Developing Researchers


Deadline:
Mon Apr 09, 2007 00:00

Reference Check: A Co-production Residency for Developing Researchers
Residency dates: June 24 to July 21, 2007
Application deadline: April 9, 2007

The Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) invites researchers working with new media at the masters, doctorate or post-doctorate level to spend four weeks at The Banff Centre this summer.

Join BNMI for its first independent research-based Co-production Residency program, bringing together a select group of researchers.

Individuals and small networks who are working with art and new media as a research strategy are invited to explore the broader social contexts of technology and digital culture.

Participants will be supported to pursue their self-directed research. They will also be given the opportunity to reflect on the field of new media and contemporary issues such as creative pluralism and multiple modes of knowledge production.

Participants will have the opportunity to develop their research with a peer group of ten participants and the support and mentorship of BNMI alumni and Reference Check peer advisors. These advisors will work with participants individually and as a group to help focus their ideas, and suggest methodologies, collaborative and multidisciplinary forms, and ways of enhancing their work and impact in the world.

Peer Advisors:

Andreas Broeckmann (DE)

Andreas has recently finished his seven-year tenure as director of transmediale, the Berlin-based festival for art and digital culture. He brings extensive curatorial experience in the field of art and media with regard to the development, realization, and documentation of new research projects, and their presentation in exhibitions, workshops, and other event formats.

Anne Galloway (CA)

Anne brings a strong background in critical social and cultural studies of new technologies. Her research in sociology and anthropology concentrates on people's local and global mobility experiences and how they relate to a variety of technologies including cell phones, RFID, and biometrics.

Sarat Maharaj (UK)

Sarat Maharaj is a research professor at Goldsmith's College London and professor of visual art and knowledge systems in Lund, Sweden. His research covers cultural translation and differences, textiles, sonics, and visual art as knowledge production.

The total cost for this intensive, four-week residency program will be $1,369.80, (CND) plus applicable taxes. Nearly $7500 of additional in-kind support for each project will be provided by BNMI staff and the dedicated studio and production facilities at The Banff Centre's Creative Electronic Environment.

BNMI is engaged in leading and supporting research related to the field of new media including art, science, technology, education, studio, and future network practice. We attract world-class research partners, institutions, and artists who develop and share knowledge throughoutnBNMI.

Banff New Media Institute

The Banff Centre
Box 1020, Station 40
Banff, Alberta T1L 1H5
Canada
Email: bnmi\_info@banffcentre.ca
www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi


EVENT

NOW. Meetings in the Present Continuous


Dates:
Thu Mar 22, 2007 00:00 - Wed Mar 14, 2007

NOW. Meetings in the Present Continuous

Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (CCCB)
From 22 to 24 March 2007

NOW is a reflection on the present based on the scientific, technological, artistic, social and spiritual transformations that are taking place at the start of the 21st century. It is a process of research, creation and dissemination that aims to bring together different local and international agents involved in the actions that are promoting a change of paradigm in the information and knowledge society and in globalised cultures.

NOW does not adhere to a specific format, although it may be made manifest in different genres and formats. It has been conceived as a work platform with different objectives in the following thematic areas: OPEN SCIENCE, CYBERSPHERE, THE ECO FACTOR, ART NOW, THE PSI PARTICLE, NEW ACTIVISM AND EMERGING CULTURE.

Free admission to all activities
Prior registration for workshop: On tel. +34.933.064.133 or cursos@cccb.org.

http://www.cccb.org/now/ang

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PROGRAMME
-------------------

| NEW ACTIVISM|

A world without copyright? The abolition of copyright and a level playing field for the production and distribution of the arts
Joost Smiers

Presented by Daniel Garcia Andujar
Thursday 22 March, 7 p.m.

The most spectacular aspect of Un mundo sin copyright (A World without Copyright) by Joost Smiers, is maybe in its title. However, there is a broader social, economic and cultural framework within which this eye-catcher should be understood. Do we like living in a world in which the main tools of our cultural communication are controlled by only a few conglomerates (by copyright, and by the ownership of the means of production, distribution and promotion), and where the real existing diversity has been pushed out of our awareness, and where most of the artists cannot make a living from their work? A fundamental change is necessary, and possible.

DR. JOOST SMIERS, PROFESSOR (EM.) OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UTRECHT SCHOOL OF THE ARTS (THE NETHERLANDS), PUTS FORWARD THE STRATEGIES OF THAT CHANGE IN A DIALOGUE WITH AUDIENCE.

| EMERGENT CULTURE |

Speciesism and the moral consideration of animals
Peter Singer and Jesus Mosterin

Presented by Marta Tafalla
Friday 23 March, 7.30 p.m.

The mafia principle demands absolute solidarity and devotion and even willingness for sacrifice by the group itself, combined with a total disdain and lack of consideration towards other groups. The mafia principle, applied to race, leads to racism; applied to the nation, leads to nationalism; and applied to the species, leads to speciesism. Moral anthropocentrism is the speciesism of the human race, which combines noble sentiments towards our peers with an abject lack of respect and moral consideration towards other creatures.

PETER SINGER, ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AUTHORS IN THE BIOETHICS FIELD, TALKS VIA VIDEOCONFERENCE WITH JESUS MOSTERIN, CHAIR PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND HONORARY PRESIDENT OF PROYECTO GRAN SIMIO (GREAT APE PROJECT).

| OPEN SCIENCE|

(in)tangibles: nanoperception and quantum world
David Peat and Victoria Vesna

Coordinated by Raquel Paricio
Saturday 24 March, 7.30 p.m.

Making what happens on a nanometric scale tangible with our senses makes us more aware of an implied order unknown in everyday life. In the art and science sphere, it is perception on different levels that can respond to the controversies between the material and the metaphysical which currently have both cultures trapped. An approach from the most subtle perception in artistic work to the precepts of quantum physics could replace reductionist materialism with a vision that allows a new focus on the art/science binomial, and also spirituality without dogmas for the contemporary world.

DAVID PEAT, ONE OF THE PIONEERS IN CONNECTING QUANTUM PHYSICS AND PSYCHOLOGY, TALKS WITH ARTIST VICTORIA VESNA, WHO IS CONCERNED BY THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION ON THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY.

| THE ECO FACTOR |

Darwin’s nightmare
Hubert Sauper, France, Austria and Belgium, 2004, 107’, ENGLISH WITH SPANISH SUBTITLES.

Saturday 24 March, 5 p.m. > Auditorium

Darwin’s Nightmare denounces the devastating effects that may be caused by the artificial alteration of trophic chains and their influence on the most tragic aspects of globalisation. The clandestine introduction of a predatory fish (Nile perch) into Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world, caused the extinction of more than 200 species and at the same time allowed the flowering of a private fishing industry created exclusively for foreign markets. Hubert Sauper explains the heartrending situation of 25 million people who live near the lake, most of whom have ended up exposed to conditions of extreme poverty, malnutrition, prostitution and violence.

Considered one of the best European documentaries of recent years, Darwin’s Nightmare is not only the horrific tale of a brutal spoliation, but also directly tackles First World responsibility for Africa’s bleak present.

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SPACES
-------------------

| QUERIES AND DOWNLOADS |

Transmit - Distribute - Share
Platoniq Open Office
22, 23 and 24 March, from 5.00 p.m .to 9.30 p.m.

Platoniq is an international collective of cultural producers and software developers. Its work focuses on possible social uses of technology and networking, seeking to develop strategies that generate new forms of communication, training and citizen’s organisation. Since 2003 it has been one of the groups collaborating with the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona and in the last year has obtained two prizes for its project Burn Station at the Transitio Electronic Arts Festival in Mexico City and at the Transmediale digital culture festival in Berlin.

Currently it is running three lines of research and development in the field of culture applied to new media and experimental public formats that relate training, production and dissemination.

1. Open Server: online audio transmission tool and media archive: www.openserver.cccb.org

2. Burn Station: distribution system for music and radio programmes under copyleft licences in public spaces: www.platoniq.net/burnstation

3. Common Knowledge Bank: dynamics of exchange and collective production involving the free transmission of knowledge and mutual education: www.openserver.cccb.org/bcc

DURING NOW, PLATONIQ WILL BE INSTALLING A TEMPORARY OFFICE WHERE VISITORS CAN GET TO KNOW THESE THREE LINES OF WORK IN DEPTH AND JOIN IN ANY OF THE TRAINING AND ORGANISATION ACTIVITIES THAT ARE CARRIED OUT.

http://www.platoniq.net

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WORKSHOPS
-------------------

| WORKSHOP ON COPYLEFT |

Run by publishers Traficantes de suenos

Thursday 22 March, 5 p.m. > Free entrance with prior registration
Registration: Courses Office Tel. 933.064.133 e-mail: cursos@cccb.org

Traficantes de suenos was born with the aim of becoming a meeting point and forum for debate on the different realities of social movements. For this they have created an associative bookstore, a publishing company and they cooperate with alternative distribution networks. The company’s texts are published under a Creative Commons licence and with copyleft.

AT NOW, BASED ON THEIR PUBLICATION COPYLEFT. MANUAL DE USO, THEY WILL BE RUNNING A WORKSHOP FOR CREATORS FROM DIFFERENT SPHERES INTERESTED IN APPLYING THIS LICENCE.

http://www.manualcopyleft.net/

---------------

Place: Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (CCCB)
Montalegre, 5. 08001 Barcelona (SPAIN). Ph. +34.933.064.100. http://www.cccb.org/now/ang

Date: From 22 to 24 March 2007

Opening times of the space:
22 March, opened from 5.00 p.m .to 9.30 p.m.
23 and 24 March, opened from 11 a.m. to 9.30 p.m.

Free admission to all activities
Prior registration for workshop: On tel. +34.933.064.133 or cursos@cccb.org.

The CCCB reserves the right to modify the programme for reasons beyond its control.


EVENT

INMERSO [foro.lounge] - March 14, 2007


Dates:
Sun Mar 14, 2004 00:00 - Tue Mar 13, 2007

Cyberlounge
at
Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico D.F.

INMERSO [foro.lounge]

Opening performance
ELOUT de Kok with Karras (live)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Free admission

Pixel Lab: March 14- June 18, 2007
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/

Curated by Arcangel Constantini

http://museotamayo.org/inmerso

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Elout de Kok lives and works in Amsterdam. With his outstanding work as a programmer, Elout de Kok creates online interactive aesthetic experiences. His work is nourished from historical movements with roots in the Netherlands painting traditions like Impressionism and De Stijl, stimulus that he confronts with fiction-architecture as utopian spaces that expansions ourselves into the digital age.

Karra, pseudonim of Manrico Montero, is a sound artist based in Mexico City. Karra creates organic sound landscapes, digi-acustic and intimistic microacustic structures.

inmerso [foro.lounge] is a space focus on net.art live performances and author interactive project presentations in a lounge environment at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo.


EVENT

OPENING PROGRAMME - LABORAL Centre for Art and Creative Industries


Dates:
Thu Mar 29, 2007 00:00 - Mon Mar 12, 2007

LABORAL Centre for Art and Creative Industries is an exhibition centre specifically focused on the production and exhibition of art, science, technology and creative industries. This interdisciplinary space pays special attention to workshops for vocational and professional training, and to research into the intersection between creativity and new technologies.

LABORAL is based in Gijon [Asturias] - Spain

http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/

----------------------------------------------
Opening Programme
March 29 to April 1, 2007

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FEEDBACK

An exhibition focusing on art responsive to instructions, input, or its environment and creates one possible narrative of the history of 'new media art'. Featuring historical and current art works that are all based on technology and systems of response, the exhibition traces the history of contemporary artistic practice involving digital technologies.

Curators: Christiane Paul, Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Jemima Rellie, Director of Digital Programmes, Tate Modern, London
Curatorial Advisor: Charlie Gere, Research Professor in New Media, University of Lancaster
Exhibition Design: Leeser Architecture

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GAMEWORLD
Gameworld explores the videogame as a designed experience and cultural force. The exhibition features a selection of historical games recognized for their design innovation, alternative and experimental games that explore the possibilities of the medium, and artworks that demonstrate videogames' influence on modern life.

Curator: Carl Goodman, Deputy Director, Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria (New York)
Associate Curator: Daphne Dragona
Curatorial Advisor: Helen Stuckey
Exhibition Design: Leeser Architecture

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LABcyberspaces
Following an open invitation to artists all over the world to present works with a major component of digital creation and net art. The entries received will be evaluated by a jury and the 10 selected works will be put on show as a snapshot or overview of artistic creation associated with technology and cyberspace as new challenges and new frontiers.

Jury: Alex Adriaansens, Director, V2 and DEAF, Rotterdam; Rosina Gomez-Baeza, Director of laboral Centre for Art and Creative Industries, Gijon (Asturias); Christiane Paul, Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gerfried Stocker, Art Director, Ars Electronica, Linz
Exhibition Design: Quero-Kawamura-Ganjavian

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EXTENSIONS-ANCHORS
This project is an open coordinated network of exhibitions and/or interventions conceived to connect the new Centre for Art and Creative Industries with its surrounding environs and artists, with a goal of recovering the tradition of dialogue between arts and industry. The project will feature work by young artists or those particularly engaged with non-commercial and minority idioms, with a total of fourteen exhibitions or interventions in two phases.

Curator: Francisco Crabiffosse, independent curator, Oviedo

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THE E-IMAGE ERA Seminar
International essayists and thinkers ponder the reach of the electronic image in art today. Pencilled in are Francois Bucher, Jordan Crandall, Pedro A. Cruz, Alexander Galloway, Anna Maria Guasch, Lev Manovich, Juan Martin Prada and Jose Luis Brea, Siegfried Zielinsky

Series Director: Jose Luis Brea

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Other Programmes
------------------------

LED THROWIES WORKSHOP
Collaborators: Graffiti Research Lab at Eyebeam R&D OpenLab

Two members of the Graffiti Research Lab will lead a workshop to instruct monitors in the basic principles of putting together LED Throwies. The workshops will be open to youth organisations to show young people how to make them. The workshop will conclude with a LED throwing session with large numbers of young people throughout the whole of Asturias.

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LEV FESTIVAL (Visual Electronic Lab)
March 23-24, 2007
Organised by Datatron

Contemporary digital art and experimental music show, a first in Asturias, with the participation of precursors of electronic music and up and coming names.

http://www.levfestival.com/