Greg has presented work at venues and institutions including EYEO Festival (Minneapolis), the Western Front (Vancouver), DIY Citizenship (Toronto), Medialab-Prado (Madrid) and Postopolis! LA. He is an adjunct instructor in the CCIT program (University of Toronto/Sheridan College) and has taught courses for CSMM (McMaster University) and OCAD University.
Greg has presented work at venues and institutions including EYEO Festival (Minneapolis), the Western Front (Vancouver), DIY Citizenship (Toronto), Medialab-Prado (Madrid) and Postopolis! LA. He is an adjunct instructor in the CCIT program (University of Toronto/Sheridan College) and has taught courses for CSMM (McMaster University) and OCAD University.
parsing the state of the union
a collection of simple but effective data visualizations that compare different textual features within the State of the Union speeches of various US presidents. Users can visually compare sentence length or word count, & interactively explore 'word incidence' of specific keywords: graphs show the relative positions & the amount of times specific keywords (such as 'freedom', 'war', 'liberty', 'tax', 'economy' & so on) appear within all the important speeches of George W. Bush, or within the historical speeches of past US presidents.
see also the interactive geographical maps representing the elections in Iraq from the same great developer, Jonathan Corum. [style.org & style.org]
history of programming languages
an intruiging 39" x 17" visualization diagram of 50 years of programming history, which plots over 50 programming languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline. [oreilly.com & levenez.com]
playboy centerfold averaging
originating from a conceptually similar idea as the google project, Jason Salavon created 'Figure 1. Every Playboy Centerfold, 1988-1997' by digitally averaging the visual pixels from every Playboy centerfold fold-out image for the 10 years beginning January 1988 through December 1997. the shroud-like image is yielded by a simple, custom process: point-by-point mathematical averaging. [salavon.com & salavon.com]
maeda exhibition @ cartier
the brilliant John Maeda ("world-renowned graphic designer, artist, computer scientist & professor at the MIT Media Laboratory") recently opened a new exhibition at the fully glazed, modern Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris, France. the exhibition includes 'The Nature': a series of 7 motion paintings representing aesthetic & sensual abstract forms in movement that recall natural phenomena, & 'Eye'm Hungry': 6 interactive stations designed for children that uses basic interfaces (keyboard, microphone & mouse) to enable visitors to create different sorts of food.
anyone based in Paris willing to share some visuals? see also colorcalm ambient music visualization & maeda's simplicity weblog. [maedastudio.com & mit.edu|via generatorx.no]
radical cartography
a large set of geographical maps conveying & visually exploring different unusual data sources, such as suicide rates, counties, area codes, animal densities, time zones, rail roads, map projections & so on. [radicalcartography.net|via futurefeeder.com]
Vague Terrain 19: Schematic as Score
The current issue of Vague Terrain, curated and edited by Derek Holzer, features an eclectic range of young, contemporary artists who have revisited and expanded upon the philosophies and works of this earlier generation. Operating at the extreme edges of the DIY electronics scene, builder-composers such as Peter Blasser, Jason R. Butcher, Moritz Ellerich, Lesley Flanigan, Martin Howse, the Loud Objects (Kunal Gupta, Tristan Perich and Katie Shima), Jessica Rylan and Synchronator (Bas van Koolwijk & Geert-Jan Prins) all represent some of the most radical and idiosyncratic artistic approaches to creative circuitry of the moment. Their compositions take the form of systems which provide a map of what is possible, but lack a prescribed route on how to get there. The discovery—-and the risk—-is left to the moment of the performance.
Ongoing Call for Guest Curators
Journal Format: The best way to get a sense of our project is to browse the archives. Each issue is a mix of essays, interviews, in-depth documentation of multimedia projects, broader surveys of art practices and EP-length audio art and experimental music releases. We aren't locked to a specific formula and have featured issues almost entirely dedicated to article-length essays or music. Each issue should feature 8-15 contributors.
Schedule: We are looking for guest curators for issues to be published in January 2011 and onward. A curator will need about 90 days of lead time to organize an issue and establishing communication with the invited artists at the beginning of the process is one of the most involved tasks. The guest curator will work with the Vague Terrain team to set up a timeline for participating artists to follow.
Responsibilities - A guest curator is responsible for the following:
*Writing an initial statement and using it to invite artists to participate in the issue
Ensuring that participating artists understand our submission guidelines (we provide documentation)
*Ensuring that incoming submissions are approximately on schedule and complete
*Writing a forward to frame the issue theme and contextualize included work
Support - Vague Terrain offers the following assistance with the above duties of the curator:
*Provide documentation regarding submission guidelines
*Arrange for the proofreading and editing of content
*Organizing and publishing all the content that the curator has solicited
*An FTP account for the issue through which contributors can upload their work
*Once the issue is launched we will promote the material through various online art/media networks
Interested curators and digital artists should email us with the following:
*a brief abstract describing their proposed theme and how it relates to their research
*An artistic or scholarly CV or a link to a personal website
*Optional: a list of artists whose work would be representative of the proposed topic
Deadline: This is an open, ongoing call. However curators interested in the January slot should contact us ASAP as we'll be selecting the curator for that issue in early September.
Submissions and inquires should be sent to submit@vagueterrain.net
Required Reading
@Thomas - the video sounds fascinating. I'm downloading it now.
Thanks for posting this Ceci!
Untitled (2008) - Igor Eskinja
Vague Terrain 16: Architecture/Action
The latest of edition of Vague Terrain presents a timely and nuanced consideration of ubiquitous computing. Guest curated by the American artist/programmer Joshua Noble, the issue provides a window into the practices of several leading researchers. Given the arrival of gestural interfaces and preliminary deployments of augmented reality technology and "intelligent" architecture, it is an important moment for thinking about the relationship between technology and the body. Noble on this current milieu: "All technologies reshape the body and the space around the body, from the bow and arrow to the steam engine to the telephone. It may be that we are beginning to truly see how computing and ubiquitous devices will once again reshape our bodies and our conceptions of ourselves in space."
The issue features text, interview and project contributions from: Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Golan Levin, Pierre Proske, Mark Shepard and Marilena Skvara.
To view the issue please visit: http://vagueterrain.net/journal16