[spectre] CALL FOR ARTISTS: PIXXELPOINT2008: FOR GOD'S SAKE!
Call for Artists: *PIXXELPOINT 2008 – International New Media Art Festival* Nova Gorica (Slovenia), 5th – 12th December 2008 *FOR GOD'S SAKE!* Curator: Domenico Quaranta, Italy *Deadline for applications: November 3rd 2008* Direct link to entry form: http://www.pixxelpoint.org/entryform2008.pdf More information: W: http://www.pixxelpoint.org/ E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] You are invited to participate! For God's Sake! How the media change the way we imagine / represent / honour / curse the divinity Whether we like it or not, spirituality has shaped the evolution of the media, and in turn has been amply influenced by it. Two of the most effective technological brand identities, the Big Brother symbol and the Second Life logo, are blatantly inspired by the divine eye. “God games” are among the most popular videogames, and our passion for high tech gadgets is akin to idolatry. The total absorption commanded by videogame playing, right down to the position adopted by players, is our new form of prayer. Search engines have come to acquire the status of modern-day oracles. It’s true, I read it on Google, is an everyday assertion that sounds like an act of faith. If religion is (or was) the opium of the people, in the 90s it was a banality to say the same of television – just as it is today of Youtube. And satellite vision, made popular by GPS systems and Google Earth, on the one hand imitates the divine viewpoint, while on the other allows everyone to adopt it. Technology violates our privacy like only God used to be able to. And while computers are not yet powerful enough to follow in the footsteps of HAL 9000, the overbearing superbrain of 2001 A Space Odyssey, we get the impression that they are not far off it. From another perspective, churches of all levels and denominations are themselves exploiting the potential of the media to the full. As one Christian website reads, God Always Uses the Latest Technology. Holy wars are being waged in virtual worlds. We want technology to give us proof of myths and miracles, and the Catholic backing for Mel Gibson’s blockbuster is common knowledge. Contemporary artistic projects have raised these issues on many occasions, exploring technological fetishism, the oracular nature of the internet, the fideistic attitude we have towards the media and the evangelizing bent of those who produce them. This art often takes a critical approach, but also looks for an authentic vehicle of spirituality in the media. Taking this as its theme, Pixxelpoint 2008 addresses saints and heretics alike, looking for projects which explore the relationship between media and spirituality at a key point in human history, a time of civilization clashes and neocon upsurges, apocalyptic nightmares and hopes for a new enlightenment. Domenico Quaranta, curator -- Domenico Quaranta mob. +39 340 2392478 email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS) web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ __ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
[spectre] Gazira Babeli: [Collateral Damage]
PRESS RELEASE April 12, 2007 For Immediate Release: Gazira Babeli: Collateral Damage - a comprehensive survey of works from 2006-2007 location: Odyssey (38,30,23) Gaz', Queen of the Desert. Text by Domenico Quaranta. http://gazirababeli.com/SHOW/CollateralDamage/Queen-of-the-Desert.htm On April 16th 2007, the ExhibitA gallery on the Odyssey simulator within the online virtual world called Second LifeT, will present the first comprehensive look at the pioneering work of Gazira Babeli. Gazira Babeli is an artist creating works within Second Life and a member of Second Front - the first performance art group in Second Life. Gazira labels herself a code performer and indeed the code is at the heart of her work, tying it to the system at a deep level and reaching out to the viewer in ways that inherent to the SL platform. Her pieces are alive with scripts created using the Linden scripting language - a core component of Second Life. A Campbells soup can that is a trap, and a self proclaimed menace disguised as pop art, encases the viewer and takes him on a ride proclaiming you love pop art, pop art hates you until the unsuspecting avatar manages to run fast enough to escape. The sky filled with question marks, a vengeful tornado, these are a few of Gaz's signature works that can be seen on her site: gazirababeli.com. In the spirit of opensource - Gazira has licensed much of her code via creative commons, and you can download it for your own use on her site: gazirababeli.com. Please join us for the opening of this exhibit. Press are invited to attend at 1pm SL time. The general opening is at 6pm SL time. Inquiries may be directed to Beavis Palowakski: [EMAIL PROTECTED], or to Sugar Seville: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Following are some press excerpts regarding Gazira Babeli. Born in Second Life on 31st March 2006, *Gazira Babeli* (http://www.gazirababeli.com/) is an artist who turns the performativity of the code into performance itself. Weedy and flexuous in her long black dress which covers fashionably her polygonal haunches, Gazira radiates a strange charm that makes her somebody in between a Voodoo witch and an X-men heroine. Her charm that becomes even more evident during her masterful performances, in which she activates scripts as if they were spells, makes earthquakes happens, provokes natural fatalities and invasions of pop icons (in the place of the biblical locusts). Gazira Babeli is NOT the project of an artist who works in Second Life. She IS an artist, who makes, records and signs performances based on code. She is real, like you and me, even if her action platform is a world of bits. - Domenico Quaranta, 2006-12-02 Linden Labs is a Fluxus-Project, jokes Gazira Babeli, the pizza-throwing Second-Life-Artist and makes a reference to the Slogan of Linden Labs. Your World. Your Imagination. This is a indication for the fact, that in the metaverse art and life are connected as far like the fluxus-artist would have wanted to, she remarks ironically. [...] Gazira Babeli is one of the few artists, who has created works, which are subversively inflitrating the friendly environment of cyber-suburbia SL. - Tilman Baumgärtel, Kunstzeitung, March 2007 We keep forgetting that what we call Real Life has been a virtual frame for a long time. Second Life offers the chance to build and deconstruct this space in the form of a theatre performance. What's the difference? I'm trying to find out. For the moment I like to say: my body can walk barefoot, but my avatar needs Prada shoes. - March 23, 2007 - Interview with Gazira Babeli by Tilman Baumgärtel http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/003987.html Gazira: To realize an artistic or aesthetic experience, it requires a frame-space that is contemporarily physical and conceptual; it could be a frame, a museum, a computer network, a bedroom... or just a plain box 'dressed' like a RL art-galley. This referential cube gallery reminds me of the ironical artwork made by Marcel Duchamp called Box in a valise (Boîte-en-valise, 1942) Although the box gallery could be a valid expression, I prefer thinking the whole SL environment as (a kind of) frame-space. It means that scripted and built objects, avatar-people and their behaviors become essentially parts of the artwork...a world in a valise, in this case. :) - Interview with Jeremy Turner (Wirxli Flimflam) for Slatenight magazine http://www.slatenight.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=143 -- Domenico Quaranta mob. +39 340 2392478 email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS) web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ __ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
[spectre] EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG): LOL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The Fabio Paris Art Gallery presents Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL January 20 - March 3, 2007 OPENING: Saturday, January 20, 6 pm Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, Italy Show curated and catalogue edited by Domenico Quaranta On occasion of their second solo exhibition at Fabio Paris Art Gallery, and for the first time in Italy, EVA AND FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) are to exhibit the project for which they have been awarded the Premio New York 2006. For over a year Eva and Franco Mattes lived in the virtual world of Second Life, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar inhabitants. The result of this video game flânerie is a series of portraits characterized by the bright colors, artificial lighting, polygonal shapes and surreal perspectives typical of virtual worlds. Overall, the series draws on the technological developments which allow the creation of alternate identities within simulated worlds. LOL carries on the work that began with 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, an exhibition project that involved the physical space of the Italian Academy in New York and the virtual space of Ars Virtua Gallery (curated by Rhizome.org), and is set to continue in February with the Mattes’ second solo exhibition at Postmasters Gallery in New York. LOL features five portraits and a triptych, all dedicated to female avatars. The title of the show is an expression much used by the online community to express amusement or jollity (Laugh Out Loud or Lots Of Laughs) or as a closing greeting (Lots Of Love). The fact that the Mattes duo refuse to explain the meaning of this ready-made of web communications leaves it open for interpretation: an artificial language for artificial life forms? A touch of sarcasm towards attempts to interpret a work that should be assessed primarily from the aesthetic point of view? Or rather the revelation that behind the display of apparent high spirits virtual worlds conceal a profound sense of anxiety, an underlying tragedy that at times emerges from these dazzlingly beautiful faces? On occasion of the exhibition the gallery is to publish the book Portraits, which explores all the stages of this work. -- Fabioparisartgallery http://www.fabioparisartgallery.com Eva e Franco Mattes (a.k.a 0100101110101101.ORG) http://www.0100101110101101.org/ Domenico Quaranta http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/english.html -- Domenico Quaranta mob. +39 340 2392478 email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS) web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ __ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
[spectre] Second Life / Real Life @ Peam 2K6 - The Diamond
*The Diamond* Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting 2k6 6 - 10 December 2006 Pescara, Ecoteca, Via Caboto 19 The fourth edition of the Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting, amongst the most important events concerning contemporary electronic/digital based arts, will take place from the 6th to the 10th of December. Organized by the Artificialia network, the P.E.A.M. is conceived to be an international meeting and confrontation point for those artists, intellectuals, experts, and others who work in an electronic context or make use of electronics as a basic means of expression. This edition will showcase a large and refined selection of visual artists, performers, musicians amongst the most innovative of the field. The leit-motiv of the whole event will be the Diamond, an attempt to gather artists and experts coming from as many disciplines as possible (sculpture, dance, theater, literature, music, visual arts, etc.), all with a marked high-tech approach, and to extraordinarily have them converge to the stimulating location of Ecoteca, in Pescara. Therefore, the idea is to let many intellectuals (critics and curators) converge and present one (inimitable) or two (dichotomy) artists in a single place (the diamond), and, as a consequence, the whole Peam2006 edition will be centered onto unicity and dichotomy - such as war and peace, big and small, good and bad, love and hate, cleverness and stupidity, beauty and ugliness, close and far away, fear and comfort, real and virtual, and so on - and onto their sense of existence. In other words, the meaning itself of the concept of opposites, defining different representations of an unique symbolic system, will be put to a test, artistically. Info: www.artificialia.com/peam2006/english.html Press Conference: Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 11.30 AM, Sala dei Marmi, Provincia di Pescara, Piazza Italia 30 - Pescara Contacts: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In this context, curator and critic *Domenico Quaranta* (www.domenicoquaranta.com/english.html) will introduce the work of Gazira Babeli and Damiano Colacito, two artists who, in pretty different ways, declare the reality of our experience of virtual worlds. Born in Second Life on 31st March 2006, *Gazira Babeli* (http://www.gazirababeli.com/) is an artist who turns the performativity of the code into performance itself. Weedy and flexuous in her long black dress which covers fashionably her polygonal haunches, Gazira radiates a strange charm that makes her somebody in between a Voodoo witch and an X-men heroine. Her charm that becomes even more evident during her masterful performances, in which she activates scripts as if they were spells, makes earthquakes happens, provokes natural fatalities and invasions of pop icons (in the place of the biblical locusts). Gazira Babeli is NOT the project of an artist who works in Second Life. She IS an artist, who makes, records and signs performances based on code. She is real, like you and me, even if her action platform is a world of bits. Born in Atri (TE) in 1973, *Damiano Colacito* (http://www.videoludica.com/news.php?news=434) focuses his work on the basic elements of the contemporary media landscape and the complex relationship between the virtual and the real. In the last few years he devoted himself to the creation of wooden sculptures that portray objects coming from the FPS, such as med-kits, power-ups, weapons, and etc. The Scotchprint skins he puts on the sculptures allows the author to work on details so to obtain a pretty refined reproduction of the texture of those virtual objects, and the use of sound effects, every now and then, makes the realism of the reproduction even finer. As a Pino Pascali of the Doom generation, Colacito creates conceptual sculptures that result to be amazing for both the gamer and the people who don't play videogames: the former comes across familiar objects in the wrong context,while the second has to deal with unfamiliar objects seemingly coming from another world and culture. Somehow, Colacito orchestrates a kind of mental teletransport, and materializes the insubstantial nature of the electric energy. More infos, critical text (in italian) and press images: http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/peam2006.html -- Domenico Quaranta mob. +39 340 2392478 email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS) web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ __ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
[spectre] [BOOK + SHOW] GAMESCENES / GAMESCAPES
*GAMESCENES / GAMESCAPES* October 7, 2006 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *GAMESCENES: THE BOOK* M. Bittanti, D. Quaranta (editors), GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames, Milan, Johan Levi 2006. Hardcover, 454 pages, 25 x 25 cm, 200+ hi-res illustrations, available from October 2006. GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames is the first volume entirely dedicated to Game Art. Edited by Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta, GameScenes provides a detailed overview of the emerging field of Game Art, examining the complex interaction and intersection of art and videogames. Video and computer game technologies have opened up new possibilities for artistic creation, distribution, and appreciation. In addition to projects that might conventionally be described as Internet Art, Digital Art or New Media Art, there is now a wide spectrum of work by practitioners that crosses the boundaries between various disciplines and practices. The common denominator is that all these practitioners use digital games as their tools or source of inspiration to make art. They are called Game Artists. GameScenes explores the rapidly expanding world of Game Art in the works of over 30 international artists. Included are several milestones in this field, as well as some lesser known works. In addition to the editors' critical texts, the book contains contributions from a variety of international scholars that illustrate, explain, and contextualize the various artifacts. ARTISTS: AES+F, Cory Arcangel, Aram Bartholl, Dave Beck, Tobias Bernstrup, Nick Bertke, John Paul Bichard, Marco Cadioli, Mauro Ceolin, Brody Condon, Joseph DeLappe, Delire (Julian Oliver), Todd Deutsch, Micah Ganske, Beate Geissler − Oliver Sann, Brent Gustafson, Jon Haddock, Margarete Jahrmann − Max Moswitzer, JODI, Joan Leandre, Miltos Manetas, Alison Mealey, Mark McCarthy, Shusha Niederberger, Nullpointer (Tom Betts), Nullsleep (Jeremiah Johnson), Totto Renna, RSG (feat. Alexander Galloway), Anne-Marie Schleiner, Eddo Stern, Palle Torsson, UBERMORGEN.COM. AUTHORS: Matteo Bittanti, Rebecca Cannon, Pierluigi Casolari, Maia Engeli, Henry Lowood, Sally O'Reilly, Domenico Quaranta, Philippa Stalker, Valentina Tanni. Text in English and Italian. The Publisher Johan Levi (http://www.johanandlevi.com/) publishes books in the fields of science, arts, humanities, and culture. Its rapidly expanding catalog includes monographs on key contemporary artists. The Editors Matteo Bittanti's research focuses on the cultural, social, and theoretical aspects of emerging technologies, with an emphasis on the interrelations of popular culture, visual culture, and the arts. He lives in San Francisco. http://www.mattscape.com/ Domenico Quaranta is an art critic, teacher and academic researcher. His primary interests is the intersection of art and digital technologies. His contributions on art and culture have appeared in several publications. He lives in Brescia, Italy. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/ Downloadable texts: Matteo Bittanti: Game Art (Intro): www.gamescenes.org/images/GameArt_eng.pdf Domenico Quaranta: Game Aesthetics (Outro): www.gamescenes.org/images/Game_aesthetics_eng.pdf Valentina Tanni: Geissler – Sann: Shooter: www.gamescenes.org/images/Tanni_shooter_eng.pdf More informations: Gamescenes.org: http://www.gamescenes.org/ Videoludica.game culture: http://www.videoludica.com/news.php?category=9 *GAMESCAPES: THE SHOW* GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists curated by Rosanna Pavoni Monza Civic Gallery Monza, via Camperio 1 October 13 – 29, 2006. Free Entrance From Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 – 13.00 and 15.00 – 19.00. Opening: Thursday October 12 from 6:30 PM email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The release of GameScenes coincides with the launch of GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists, a group show featuring works by some of the most celebrated artists working with digital games: Cory Arcangel, Mauro Ceolin, Jon Haddock, Eddo Stern, and Carlo Zanni. Monza, September 16, 2006 — The Civic Gallery in Monza is pleased to present GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists. Curated by Rosanna Pavoni with the collaboration of Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta, GameScapes investigates the notion of digital games, spaces, and urban environments in in our hyper-mediated age. Comprised of paintings, installations, and projections, the exhibition space will be transformed into a real-life gamespace. Included in the exhibition are a video installation by Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Movie (2004), a series of paintings by Mauro Ceolin from the SolidLandscapes (2004-2006) series, Carlo Zanni’s interactive installation Average Shoeveler (2004), Eddo Stern’s recent urban machinima Landlord Vigilante (2006) and the entire series of Jon Haddock’s seminal Screenshots (1999). Most of these artworks have never been presented in Italy before.
