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...]

READ ON »


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 ...

READ ON »



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: video works for OVNI 2008


Dates:
Sun Jul 01, 2007 00:00 - Sun May 13, 2007

:: Call for entries
:: Deadline: July 1, 2007
:: OVNI 2008 - The Observatory Archives

The Observatory Archives
The Observatory Archives are intentional in nature and organized around specific themes, bringing together material that supports a critique of contemporary culture through different approaches such as video art, independent documentary and mass media archeology.

OVNI 2008 will take place from the 29th January to the 3rd of February 2008, at the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona in Spain. Dead Line for submissions is: 1st July 2007. Please forward this information to any other film and videomakers you know who may be interested.

ovni 2008 : http://desorg.org/submit.php
Dead Line: 1st July 2007.
ovni online: http://www.desorg.org/media.php

OVNI - Arxius de l’Observatori
Montalegre, 5
08001 Barcelona- Spain
www.desorg.org
ovni (at) desorg.org

---------
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Ovni 2008 - Archivos del Observatorio

Los Archivos del Observatorio tienen un caracter intencional y tematico: facilitar una Critica de la Cultura Contemporanea, utilizando diversas estrategias: video arte, documental independiente, arqueologia de los mass media. Los Archivos recogen todo una constelacion de trabajos dispares, cuyo denominador comun es la libre expresion y reflexion sobre los miedos y placeres individuales y colectivos, construyendo en su conjunto una vision multifacetada, miles de pequenos ojos, que ahondan y exploran nuestro mundo, o anuncian otros posibles. Un discurso cuyos principales valores son la heterogeneidad, la pluralidad, la contradiccion y la subjetividad desde la que se realiza. Por si solo un revulsivo a la clonacion y repeticion de los mass media corporativos. En sus 14 anos de existencia, OVNI ha incorporado a los Archivos mas de 1.400 documentos y obras. [dvd, subtitulado en castellano].

La convocatoria es tematicamente abierta, dentro de los campos de documental independiente, video arte, arqueologia mediatica, e incluye tambien la recepcion de material sin editar o de found footage.

Algunos de los programas tematicos de OVNI han sido:

-/ Heterodoxias y Zonas Autonomas (TAZ) - Diferentes formas de pensar, vivir, comunidades... Otros mundos alejados del pensamiento unico, heterotopias...
-/ La Experiencia Interior y otras visiones misticas.
-/ Muerte - Cultura y experiencia. Rituales. Obras audiovisuales y found footage.
-/ Trance rituales - Religion - videos ya editados, grabaciones de camara, found footage, que documenten rituales de trance (dikr, haddras, santeria, vudu, animismo, predicadores... etc).
-/ Globalizacion y Resistencia: Argentina, Palestina, Sudafrica, Irak, Chechenia, Sudan, Movimiento AntiGlobalizacion, Movimiento de los Sin Tierra.
-/ Perdidos en Babilon: aventuras y desventuras de los supervivientes del Imperio.
-/ El Rayo Catodico - Guerrilla Mediatica - television, critica de los media, informacion secuestrada y contrainformacion, media attack, found footage, arqueologia mediatica, deconstruccion mediatica, arqueologia cientifica...
-/ Identidad y MassMedia.
-/ Turismo Colonial - fenomeno turistico (saqueo de imagenes, secuestro de territorios, teletransportacion, don de la ubicuidad, parques tematicos...).
-/ Fronteras - Migraciones, transcultura, aculturizacion, nomadismo y globalizacion. Militarizacion de las fronteras. Ilegales en el paraiso. Europa-Maghreb, USA-Latinoamerica.
-/ Trabajo e ideologia - Trabajo y capital, politica y realidad, el imaginario del progreso, el lugar de trabajo como representacion prohibida.
-/ Especulacion urbanistica - parquetematizacion de la ciudad, perdida del espacio publico, reapropiacion ciudadana.
-/ Post September 11 2001 - trabajos en soporte video o digital que reflexione sobre esos hechos, bien sea material sin editar, cobertura mediatica o trabajos de creacion.
-/ Archivos Babilonia - arqueologia mediatica, documentos que reflejan algunos de los valores mas agresivos e intolerantes de la cultura occidental contemporanea y de su genesis: documentales educativos e industriales, primera publicidad televisiva, programas de tele predicadores, marketing, videos de promocion turistica, castings para publicidad, etc...
-/ Visiones del Otro - otras imagenes, otra informacion de culturas cuya representacion ha sido casi exclusivamente producida por Occidente.
-/ Rizoma Indigena. Cultura indigena: comunidades, especificidades, conflictos. Representaciones ajenas: a traves de la antropologia colonial, etnografia, etc...
-/ Ciudades - Retratos de ciudades: escenas de la vida cotidiana, el hogar, lugares de trabajo, recuerdos...
-/ Mundo Maquina - Deconstruccion tecnologica, conspiracion de la maquina, euforia digital, vandalismo corporativo: industria genetica, farmaceutica, transgenica, biotecnologia...
-/ Dream Archives - Archivo de Suenos: Relatos de suenos, el imaginario de una epoca, los deseos, conflictos, delirios, placeres... etc.
-/ Trabajos relacionados directa o indirectamente con la obra de estos autores y otros de su galaxia: Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, Edward Said, Hakim Bey, George Bataille, William Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze, Noam Chomsky.

OVNI 2008 tendra lugar del 29 de Enero al 3 de Febrero de 2008, en el CCCB, donde se proyectaran una seleccion de las nuevas obras adquiridas para los Archivos y paralelamente se podra consultar la totalidad de sus fondos.

Fecha limite de inscripcion: 1 de Julio de 2007

No hay gastos de inscripcion.

OVNI se compromete a:

- Al pago de 200 E ( de 30') en concepto de adquisicion de una copia master de consulta individual en Archivo y dos exhibiciones publicas en concepto de presentacion de la obra.

Ficha de Inscripcion:
http://www.desorg.org/E2008.php

OVNI
www.desorg.org
ovni@desorg.org
Montalgre, 5
08001 Barcelona
Tel. 933 064 100
m. 600 770 988


EVENT

CALL FOR PROPOSALS - Glocal & Outsiders Conference


Dates:
Wed May 30, 2007 00:00 - Fri May 11, 2007

:: Call for proposals
:: Glocal & Outsiders Conference
:: Deadline: May 30, 2007

Center for Global Studies (Academy of Sciences and Charles University) http://cgs.flu.cas.cz/
International Centre for Art and New Technologies (CIANT)
http://www.ciant.cz
and Prague Biennale 3
http://www.flashartonline.com/pg\_PRAGUE\_BIENNALE3.htm
invite you to send proposals for the conference on the interplay between art, culture and technology and issues of globalization and international cooperation:

Glocal & Outsiders (part of the Prague Biennale 3)
Prague, 13. and 14. July 2007

Since the mid 1990's biennial exhibits in cities such as Johannesburg,Istanbul, Melbourne, Havana, Sao Paulo and other expanded the art world's institutional context beyond any imagination. Art became a new global spectacle which exposes various cultures and nations to an international audience. Asian contemporary art has become something like a fashion and museums are being built at an increasing rate in Asia as well as throughout South America with new collectors popping up all over the world. Parallel to this, art also incorporated emerging technologies and developed various interdisciplinary relations to science and industry. Technological innovations and artistic creativity joined forces in various new media festivals and events which brought new and very diverse groups and interests into play. Technology and globalization also changed the economic infrastructure of the art world. Internet services such as artprice.com allow artists to showcase their work to a very broad audience of international collectors which fund the contemporary art boom. On the other hand, many artists use the distributive and peer to peer properties of the internet to experiment with new economic models. Artists, critics, curators but also buyers are part of these global and technological exchanges and it is not clear yet whether these interdependences, integrations and interactions lead to reduction in diversity, to assimilation or to hybridization:
What are the challenges artworld is facing in the time of globalization and increasing technologization? How to balance cultural interests and local scenes with global opportunities and art with technological innovations? How to view the interplay of art and globalization in the context of complex economic, trade, social, technological, cultural and political interrelationships? How does art reflect upon globalization: does it support intercultural and transnational ideals or it is
indifferent to claims of geography, history, and identity? How does it
resist and how does it support globalization? Do new institutions and technologies allow us to enjoy and experience art from different
cultures or they unify them? What new forms of artistic and technical
exchanges are taking place? How does international cooperation help
emerging fields of art? How can new technologies expand the social,
economical, cultural and artistic aspects? What are the limits or
possibilities on the technological level to build art projects that
improve international cooperation? Do emerging technologies and art
institutions support cultural diversity or they level it?

We are calling for proposals by cultural theorists, cultural historians,
museum experts, art historians, art curators and experts of other
disciplines. Any program formats (papers, roundtable discussions, media
presentations etc.) are welcomed.

Proposals should include the following items:
1. Preliminary abstract, 150-300 words.
2. CV with e-mail address, phone and fax numbers.

Please send them by May 30, 2007 via e-mail to: Denisa Kera (kera AT
ff.cuni.cz ) and Aurelie Besson (aurelie AT ciant.cz)


EVENT

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - Inbetween Zone workshop


Dates:
Mon May 14, 2007 00:00 - Fri May 11, 2007

:: call for participation
:: Inbetween Zone workshop
:: Deadline for applications: 14 May 2007

Challenged by the ongoing rapid and substantial transformation of urban environment, IMPEX aims to act as a platform for the critical analysis of urban development, social discourse and collaboration in art and cultural practices. Therefore, with its own location as a starting point, and at the same time encompassing a wider general discourse on the role of cultural potentials in urban development, IMPEX initiates a long-term interdisciplinary research project. This project will include workshops, exhibitions, public interventions, publications and other alternative methods of collecting, generating and organizing ideas and knowledge.

The first stage of the project is the workshop entitled Inbetween Zone, which will take place in Budapest from 16 to 23 June 2007, simultaneously with the 7th Biennial of European Towns and Town Planners.
(http://www.makingplaces.hu)

Themes of the Workshop are:
1. Public art and urban planning
2. Techniques of collective and individual interventions: how inhabitants can use and form their own living-space
3. Grassroots: creative, grassroots initiations vs. urban planning
4. Limits to planning: limitations of urban planning projects
5. Mistake assessment: analysis and planning of errors in city development projects.
6. Urban policy and identity formation: urban legends, local heroes

Workshop structure:
Throughout a one-week workshop 30 selected participants will work out the above listed topics in different groups, with the guidance of tutors. Methods and approaches will be developed collectively within the group. The results of the workshop will be introduced in the form of an exhibition and a public
presentation in IMPEX.
The official language of the workshop is English.

What do we provide?
Maximum 100 EUR traveling cost for the participants, accommodation and production costs of the workshop. Participation in the workshop is free of charge.

Whom do we expect?
Europeans applicants who are engaged in the fields of urban planning, culture or social sciences (artists, architects, sociologists, urbanists, cultural managers, philosophers, designers, economists, communication experts, etc.).

The application has to include:
CV and attached documentation of relevant professional practices in English or Hungarian. We accept applications via email, not larger than 1 MB, to the following address: urbancreativity@gmail.com

Deadline for applications: 14 May 2007

The workshop is realized through the collaboration of IMPEX, Contemporary Art Provider and FKSE, Studio of Young Artists Association.

----------------------------
IMPEX - Contemporary Art Provider is a new art scene in the 8th district of Budapest. The venue, which consists of a gallery, a workshop room and an office, presents experimentally minded and progressive artworks. It also accommodates studio practices, lectures and creative, interdisciplinary initiatives. Its objective is to aid cooperation and permeability between different areas of art, and through its open and receptive structure, create a living connection with various social groups and civilian initiatives.
Due to a mutually beneficial cooperation between a bar (club) and a non-profit cultural institution, IMPEX is presently found in the building of West Balkan (http://www.west-balkan.com) and one of the last, temporarily standing houses in a large territory going through complete architectural and urban metamorphosis.

Further information: contact@impex-info.org, http://www.impex-info.org


DISCUSSION

CDWA-Lite > community review


CDWA-Lite: getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/cdwa/cdwalite.html

CDWA-Lite is a lightweight XML schema that describes core information for cultural materials and their visual surrogates. It is described below.

The Advisory Committee for this standard is seeking broad community review of it from a technical viewpoint as well as for its value in collection cataloging and access/sharing. We encourage completion of the survey (or those parts of it you are comfortable with) at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?ub5603692421 <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?ub5603692421>

While the survey will provide the most useful basis for review, additional comments outside the survey are welcome at cdwalite@getty.edu.

Please respond before 31 May 2007. We anticipate a discussion of the results of this review in conjunction with the MCN meeting in Chicago, 7 - 10 November 2007.

CDWA-Lite Advisory Committee:
Gunter Waibel, OCLC/RLG
Nick Poole, MDA
Erin Coburn, Getty Museum
Nancy Allen, ARTstor
Jenn Riley, Indiana University
Michael Jenkins, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Kenneth Hamma, Getty Trust

Summary:
Over the last two years ARTstor, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and RLG Programs/OCLC have worked together to develop an XML schema to describe cultural materials and their surrogates to provide an easier and more sustainable model for contributing to union resources. This initiative was driven by the absence of a data content standard specifically designed for unique cultural works, and a technical format for expressing this data in a machine-readable format.

The result of this effort is CDWA Lite, an XML schema based on the core elements from Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA), a framework for documenting and organizing information on cultural works and images. CDWA Lite is intentionally *lightweight,* to encourage and facilitate its use even by small institutions in cataloging, online publishing, and exposing metadata.

The schema recommends using Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), a data content standard for unique cultural works that provides guidelines for selecting, ordering, and formatting data used to populate elements. It is designed to promote good descriptive cataloging, shared documentation, and enhanced end-user access. CDWA Lite was specifically designed for use with the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI/PMH), which is a standard for delivering, sharing, and disseminating metadata records expressed in XML syntax.

CDWA Lite is made up of 22 descriptive and administrative elements, of which only 9 are required; it is not meant to be a comprehensive element set for describing or cataloging works in a collection. Instead, a CDWA Lite record contains the minimal amount of relevant and critical information needed for facilitating ease of access to unique cultural works in the online environment. CDWA Lite reflects the core descriptive documentation traditionally captured about works in collections, which makes adoption of this model for contributing records to union resources all the more attainable.

CDWA Lite intends to meet the following objectives:

- To provide a simple, low-barrier model for capturing the
essential amount of information about unique cultural works in order to facilitate a high return on accessibility and resource discovery. The minimal set of information needed to facilitate ease of access to collections.

- To reduce the overhead and labor involved in contributing to aggregated resources and digital repositories. Format and export data one time only in a standards-based way for contribution to a variety of
*venues* in the online environment.

- To ensure a method for being able to provide updated, accurate information about works of art that are accessible in the online environment. Data integrity and accuracy occurs at the source of the collection.

- To provide a mechanism for bringing users back to a resource in its native environment. Learn more about a work in the context of its larger collection.

The Advisory Committee will organize a public meeting to discuss responses to the CDWA Lite survey and other feedback received from the community during the MCN conference in November 2007, which will take place in Chicago.

CDWA-Lite: getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/cdwa/cdwalite.html

EVENT

OPEN CALL - ctrl_alt_del


Dates:
Fri Jun 29, 2007 00:00 - Fri May 04, 2007

:: Open Call sound art project
:: ctrl_alt_del
:: Deadline: June 29, 2007

For the third ctrl_alt_del sound-art festival to be held in September 2007, we are now looking for interesting, provocative, subversive, experimental and sophisticated works. 5 pieces will be selected by the jury and will be presented during ctrl_alt_del 2007. This year, ctrl_alt_del will include Opening Concert, Performance Series (live), Workshops, Panels, Presentations, Open Call, Field Studies/Workshops, Exhibition, Radio Programmes, Publication and CD release by rendering the theme “remote orienteering”.

JURY
Georg Dietzler
Paul Devens
Murat Ertel
Hassan Khan
Scanner
Eran Sachs
Istanbul Technical University - MIAM (Pieter Snapper and Can Karadogan)
NOMAD (Emre Erkal, Erhan Muratoglu, Basak Senova)

THEME
The practice of “remote orienteering” suggests generating content and schematics in our conduct. Equally applicable for radical means of urban subversion, “remote orienteering” is the key process which the entries of ctrl-alt-del should be directed.

The pieces are asked to be compliant with the following subjects in order to create an intellectual climate of comprehension and discussion:

1. sounds for orientation, or sound as orientation.
2. distant sounds or sound in spatial contexts
3. sound and cultural subversion

SUBMISSION MATERIALS
1. Two audio CD’s (original and a copy) of only ONE piece is the format of the submission. Piece will not be more than 4 minutes long. Projects which rely on specific visual documentation can be submitted on a DVD, but in any case clip should not be longer than 4 minutes.
2. The name of the participant and the name of the piece(s) should be written on this CD with a permanent marker.
3. An A4 size page with name, address, e-mail and telephone number of the participant, and the names of the piece will be submitted.
4. An optional, separate A4 size page with a description, clarification or reflection could be submitted depending completely on the desire of the participant. These optional documents will not be used for evaluation, but they could be used in later stages.

The works should be at the below mailing address before the 29th of June, 2007:
Basak Senova PK 16 Suadiye 34741 Istanbul, Turkey

ANNOUNCEMENT
Selected works and their owners will be announced in August 2007 on the NOMAD website:
http://www.nomad-tv.net/

All of the submitted material will be kept in NOMAD archive.

-----------------------------------------------------
http://project-ctrl-alt-del.com/opencall_07.htm
http://project-ctrl-alt-del.com
http://nomad-tv.net
info@nomad-tv.net