Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Repercussion by Carla Diana


Here's an interactive audio piece by Carla Diana I thought was pretty
groovy: http://www.carladiana.com/repercussion . The sound itself is well ok
whatever but the interface into the sound is dramatic in its relation to the
sound, conceives of the sound in interesting ways, as object. I particularly
liked the melody section.

There's other interactive audio work at http://www.carladiana.com .

Repercussion, by the way, is done in Flash.

ja

OPPORTUNITY

FW: INTERACTIVE FUTURES (Victoria, BC, Canada) (12/12/03; 1/30/04-1/31/04)


Deadline:
Tue Nov 18, 2003 03:10

CFP: INTERACTIVE FUTURES (Victoria, BC, Canada) (12/12
INTERACTIVE FUTURES: New Media Crossing Boundaries
Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival - http://www.vifvf.com
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
January 30th - January 31st, 2004.

CALL FOR PAPERS, PERFORMANCES, & INSTALLATIONS

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is a forum for showing recent tendencies in time-based
new media art. The theme of this year's event is New Media Crossing
Boundaries. The crossbreeding between film, sound artists and interactive
media forms is now becoming standard practice. With increasing frequency
artists are stepping out of their traditional media and applying new media
tools and concepts to other media. Such cross-pollination is evident in the
work of one of our special guests this year, Jean Piche. Originally trained
as an electro-acoustic composer, Piche is now working as a digital filmmaker
and sound artist. Similarly, Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky) works across a
dazzling array of media - from dance-based sound to digital installation to
pure text works - imparting a voice of wit and intelligence to these media
forms. New Media Crossing Boundaries will explore how new media is becoming
genuinely "multimedia" and how new media technology and production is
changing the face of traditional media.

Scholars and artists working in new media arts, theory, and criticism are
encouraged to submit proposals to present their work at the conference.
Presentations must be at least in part demonstrative, incorporating digital
technologies, interactive or digital video, sound, or network-based
elements. Conference sessions may combine academic presentations with
presentations; we encourage proposals that push the boundaries of the
traditional conference paper in form and content.

INVITED SPEAKERS / ARTISTS (to be confirmed)

* Paul D. Miller (USA) - Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky) is a conceptual
artist, writer, and musician working in NYC. His written work has appeared
in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Rap Pages, Paper
Magazine, and a host of other periodicals. He is a co-Publisher along with
the legendary African American downtown poet Steve Canon of the magazine "A
Gathering of the Tribes" - a periodical dedicated to new works by writers
from a multi-cultural context, and he was the first Editor-At-Large of
Artbyte: the Magazine of Digital Culture. His work as an artist has appeared
in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial, The Venice
Biennial for Architecture (year 2000), the prestigious Ludwig Museum in
Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
and many other museums and galleries. Miller has recorded a huge volume of
music as "DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid" and has collaborated a wide variety
of pre-emininet musicians and composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi
Sakamoto, Butch Morris, Kool Keith a.k.a. Doctor Octagon, Killa Priest from
Wu-Tang Clan, Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth amongst many
others. He also did the music score for the Cannes and Sundance award
winning film "Slam" starring critically acclaimed poet Saul Williams.

* Jean Piche (Canada) - Jean Piche is a composer and video artist living in
Montreal, Canada. Since 1988, he has been teaching composition and video at
the Universite de Montreal. His creative output over the past 20 years has
explored the more adventurous edges of high technologies applied to music
and moving images, including live electronics, fixed electronic media and
performance. He has received numerous international awards and his work has
been shown and heard in Europe, Asia and North America. After active
collaborations with video artists like Tom Sherman and Marina Abramovic, he
now directs and produces his own video work, focusing on parallel
compositional paradigms for abstracted visuals and music. His first opera "
Yo Soy la Disentegracion " was produced in 1997 by the Montreal company
Chants Libres. For the past few years, he has been involved in software
design to facilitate the specification of control vectors for digital sound
synthesis and processing. These activities have led to the creation of the
program Cecilia that was awarded First Prize at the International
competition for musical software in Bourges. Since 2000 he has developed a
synchronized video projection system for three large screens and an image
acquisition system with three digital cameras. This system is used for his
productions and was shown over the last three years in Montreal and in
France.

* Ron Wakkary (Canada) - Ron Wakkary is associate professor in Information
Technology & Interactive Arts at Simon Fraser University in British
Columbia. Previously, he has been faculty in Interactive Arts and the
academic dean at the Technical University of British Columbia, and the
Digital Design Department at Parsons School of Design, in New York. He was
cofounder of Stadium@Dia in New York where he collaborated and co-developed
pioneering projects in art and the Internet. He has lead digital arts
technology projects for the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the
Dia Center for the Arts, and Electronic Arts Intermix. Also while in New
York, he was principal in OO-Design, a Web development firm. He has
presented and published widely, including Computer Human Interaction ACM,
Siggraph, Interact and Consciousness Reframed. He graduated with a BFA from
the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and an MFA from the State
University of New York at Stony Brook. His current research projects include
a recently completed project with Nokia Research Centre at Tampere, Finland,
on gossip, games and mobile communities, and new projects on audio-based
interaction and pattern language.

PRESENTATION SUBMISSIONS

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is generally interested in artistic and theoretical work
that advances ideas about the integration of new media technologies in
traditional media, and more particularly in electronic art in which the old
boundaries between media are no longer valid. INTERACTIVE FUTURES encourages
artists and theorists to present their work in the form of DVDs, video
tapes, games, and anything in-between. Presentations should be 45-minutes in
length.

Proposals should not exceed 500 words in length. If your presentation
requires specific media or technical support (computer or network access, 35
MM slides, videotape, etc.), describe your needs in detail, including
specific OS or hardware requirements (Mac OS or Windows), if appropriate.

Proposals should be submitted to electronically to:

sgibson@finearts.uvic.ca

All proposals *must* be submitted in text only format either as attachments
to email correspondence or within the body of the email message. If you
would like to present examples of your work please submit a URL for a
web-site with your proposal.

Please be aware that INTERACTIVE FUTURES has no budget for equipment rental.

The following equipment will be made available for all presenters:

Mac and/or PC computer with Monitor, keyboard and CD-ROM drive.
1400 ANSI lumens Data/Video Projector.
VHS Player
Portable DVD Player
Audio CD Player

Please be aware that there will no be internet access in the presentation
venue and therefore all presentation material must be brought on removable
devices.

DEADLINE FOR ALL PROPOSALS: Friday, December 12, 2003.

Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out by December 31,
2003.

CONTACTS:

Festival Director:
Kathy Kay director@vifvf.com

INTERACTIVE FUTURES Curator:
Steve Gibson sgibson@finearts.uvic.ca

INTERACTIVE FUTURES Co-producers:
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker kroker@uvic.ca

Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival:
Mailing Address - PO Box 8419, Victoria, BC, V8W3S1, Canada.
Office Address - 808 View Street, Victoria, BC, V8W1K2, Canada.
Tel: (250)389.0444. Fax: (250)389.0406
festival@vifvf.com

__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Steve Gibson, Associate Professor, Digital Media
Visual Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria
Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2 Canada

Voice: +1-250-721-8017 or +1-250-920-7722
Fax: +1-250-721-6595
E mail: sgibson@uvic.ca or room101studio@yahoo.ca
Telebody: http://telebody.ws
Virtual DJ: http://www.telebody.ws/VirtualDJ
__________________________________________________________________


DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: No Web Art in the Whitney Biennial?


> > > ...the artist
> > > has no power unless there is some form of recognition by the
> > > establishment
> > > (the domains of knowledge, and the relations with truth...).
> >
> > I distinguished between two types of power, Eduardo: power that can be
> > bestowed on one by the 'establishment' or any person or
> organization; and
> > one's own power as an artist, a person, a moral agent. Does this
> distinction
> > make no sense to you?
>
> Fair enough. If a person is going to be recognized with some
> form of power,
> this has to be a cultural acknowledgment.

People can have their own power whether it's recognized by others or not.
Much is unseen.

Literature and art is full of stories about the value of individual
experience, Eduardo. It's the death of art to accept that institutions are
the ultimate arbiters of what's valuable in art and life. It's about making
up your own mind, freeing your own mind from false authority.

> In terms of the
> artist, from the
> very moment the term "art" is used one is implicating the
> narratives that I
> already explained. Of course people have the power of personal choice --
> or at least one can fight for it if nothing else; but we are talking about
> why some are "in" and why some are "out." This is specific to the art
> institution and its basis for recognition. Of course power
> shifts and this
> is where progress happens, hence all the different bifurcations that have
> developed in the history of art, which give me hope for the practice, no
> matter how disparate it might seem at times. I would say that if there is
> interest in one's own power, then the term "artist" be ommited from the
> statement, because unfortunately this term is directly pointing to the
> previously explained problematics. "Moral agent" may be more appropriate
> for the individual position that you propose.

I remember a conversation with a publisher from a few years ago. We were
talking about the state of literary criticism in Canada. We both agreed it
was pretty shitty. He blamed the Canada Council. 'Why?', I asked him. 'They
don't fund enough criticism,' he said.

But the Canada Council can't create interesting, consequential criticism by
funding more criticism. It has to come from critics whose passion it is to
write consequential criticism. If they aren't out there, throwing a bit of
money in the direction of criticism isn't going to change the situation.

Criticism is usually more like art spam these days. Ads in praise of the
product. That's the main problem. Not the Canada Council funding or not
funding it.

But the publisher was so heavily institutionalized that this made no sense
to him. Fund a few more units of criticism and there you go, you got your
criticism. Approve it. Recognize it. That'll do it.

The power to create consequential work is something somebody can acquire not
from someone else, but from consciousness of and exercise of their own
powers as an artist, a person, and a moral agent. The power to recognize
that work is something that those who recognize it have. The power to give
it a prize is something that a committee can organize. But that is far from
the power I was describing.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: No Web Art in the Whitney Biennial?


> ...the artist
> has no power unless there is some form of recognition by the
> establishment
> (the domains of knowledge, and the relations with truth...).

I distinguished between two types of power, Eduardo: power that can be
bestowed on one by the 'establishment' or any person or organization; and
one's own power as an artist, a person, a moral agent. Does this distinction
make no sense to you?

I don't mean to deny that we are dependent on each other for even a reason
to go on. Who would choose to live if everyone else were dead, for instance?
One doesn't need to take the point to this length; we are dependent on one
another in the creation of a life worth living. We are also dependent on one
another to help each other find our own way, and the strength to pursue it.
The power to pursue it. Not that we shouldn't listen to what other people
say about what we do. But it's in the nature of things to get lots of
resistance to creating something different from what's normally recognized.

One of the beautiful things I've read in a few books, and experienced in my
own life, is that our greatest victories are of the spirit. Not worldly
ones. Sometimes the greatest victory of a life can be shrouded in worldly
defeat, or dealing with it. There's winning and there's losing. But which is
which is sometimes confusing.

'Recognition and reversal'. A poetics of tragedy. The annals of great
literature have a few works involving 'beautiful losers'; losers in the
worldly sense, but characters who find their way to their own type of
'recognition'. And we are all worldly losers in the end, in the sense that
'in the end, what you don't surrender, the world just strips away.'

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: No Web Art in the Whitney Biennial?


Yes, I know most of the URLs you mention, Curt. But I was thinking of print
publishers who have evolved toward a significant involvement in net.art. The
URLs you cite were never print publishers. There's a venture led by Philippe
Castellin (aka Akenaton) in France called DOC(K)S at
http://www.sitec.fr/users/akenatondocks . They publish a book once a year.
And have done so since the early eighties, if not earlier. They also publish
CDs with the book. This book and its CDs are the most engaging and
integrated synthesis of print and digital work I've encountered. DOC(K)S has
been billed as a 'world poetry revue' for many years. And it actually lives
up to its name. The books are extrordinarily well put together.
Intelligently graphical. As in visual poetry. Well published. Excellent page
design. And the writing is from all over the world, in various languages.
Essays. Visual poems. Mail-art-like contributions. Adaptations of Web work.
The books are perhaps more impressive than the Web site; the main effort
seems to go into the books and CD. The Web site is pretty impressive,
however. The books are done in gray-scale. Not glossy. But well-printed, and
the design ranges pretty completely over what can be done with gray-scale
print. Interestingly, the gray scale (or more likely the way Castellin
thinks) results in a kind of intelligent but explosive energy that I think
would be hard to capture in glossy color.

One of the longest-lived exclusively digital literature ventures I know of
is Alire done by Philippe Bootz in France. It was started in 1989 (see
http://www.uoc.edu/humfil/articles/eng/bootz0302/bootz0302.html ). They
publish CD's now but started out publishing on floppy.

> In Rennaissance Italian painting, if the Pope hired you, you had
> arrived. In 70s disco music, if your new single went tripple
> platinum, you had arrived. In mid-90s net art, if you got some
> hits and the odd email from a confused but amused visitor, you
> had arrived. But now, net artists are "real" artists, subject to
> the same funky, academically-derived arbitration machinations as
> every other gallery-desirous contemporary artists. Or are we?

I think that if an artist is able to do the work that they want to do, is
able to create a situation where that is possible, and is able to get the
work out there, then the rest is gravy. Aspirations to 'make it', if they're
not centred around the work itself, or all that the work stands for, can
easily be quite disappointing. The idea that 'an artist is nothing without a
gallery' is as fatuous as the notion that a writer is nothing without a
publisher. Waiting on the approval of others is not the way to one's own
power. There are basically two types of power. There's power that can be
bestowed on you by others. And then there's your own power. As an artist. As
a person. As a moral agent. To my way of thinking, its finding and
exercising the latter that the practice and production of art is all about.
The power of the fundamentally human amidst the machines (and machinations).

ja
http://vispo.com