NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Indeterminate Hikes+

Cool project from the folks at ecoarttech:

Indeterminate Hikes+ (2011/2012)

[Artworks]

Indeterminate Hikes+ is a mobile media app that transforms everyday landscapes into sites of bio-cultural diversity and wild happenings. Generally devices of rapid communication and consumerism, smartphones are re-appropriated by IH+ as tools of environmental imagination and meditative wonder, renewing awareness of intertwining biological, cultural, and media ecologies and slowing us down at the same time. The app works by importing the rhetoric of wilderness into virtually any place accessible by Google Maps and encouraging its users to treat these locales as spaces worthy of the attention accorded to sublime landscapes, such as canyons and gorges.

IH+ can be experienced in two ways: as a participatory public event led by ecoarttech-guides alongside our basecamp.exe installation or as a self-guided excursion taken by a hiker equipped with an IH+-enabled smartphone. Read participants’ responses to Indeterminate Hikes here.

 

...

Indeterminate Hikes+ (IH+) was part of a project originally conceived for the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition, “Undercurrents: Experimental Ecosystems in Recent Art,” curated by Independent Studies Program Curatorial Fellows Anik Fournier, Michelle Lim, Amanda Parmer, and Robert Wuilfe, in 2010. The IH+ Android app was released in 2011 and the iOS version in 2012. Since then, IH+ has been enjoyed by hikers with smartphones all over the world and by groups of hikers lead by ecoarttech at the following venues: Museo y Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; MIT Media Lab, as part of Upgrade! Boston, curated by Jo-Ann Green; “L.A.Re.Play,” at U.C.L.A. Design Media Arts Gallery, curated by Hana Iverson and Mimi Sheller; the Conflux Festival in NYC; 319 Scholes, in Brooklyn, during Bushwick Open Studios, curated by Igal Nassima and Lindsay Howard; and the Woodstock Digital Media Festival, curated by Joe McKay.

Upcoming performances in fall 2012 include “Art, Environment, Action!,” curated by Radhika Subramaniam, at the Parsons the New School for Design, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center NYC; “Wildernes 24/7,” our solo show at Syracuse University’s Warehouse Gallery, curated by Anja Chavez; re-new Digital Arts Festival 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark; “Tactile Media” Hondakin Festival, at Alhóndiga Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain; the International Symposium on Electronic Art on “Machine Wilderness,” Albuquerque, New Mexico; and the Feast, where we are collaborating with renowned physicist Geoffrey West.

An article by ecoarttech about Indeterminate Hikes+ is forthcoming in a 2013 issue of Leonardo. More info TBA.

Software development: Polina Koronkevich / Created with funding from: New York State Council on the Arts (Media Art Distribution Funds), New York Foundation for the Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the University of Rochester.

Art's New Media: ARTFORUM Takes On the Last 50 Years (and Technology)

Letter from Philip Leider to Matthew Baigell, October 30, 1967.

ARTFORUM is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an issue dedicated to technology and the arts. You heard me. As ARTFORUM Editor-in-Chief Michelle Kuo points out in her Letter from the Editor: this is pretty freaking weird:

THE MESSAGE WAS BRIEF. Typed as if for telex, a 1967 memo from this magazine’s editor, Philip Leider, responded to a writer’s pitch with characteristically lapidary concision: “I can’t imagine Artforum ever doing a special issue on electronics or computers in art, but one never knows.” And, really, how could one know? The contingency of the moment is right there in black and white. Leider’s skeptical words said one thing, but the memo’s blocky, futuristic design, as if auguring a world defined by computer terminals and communications media, said another.

The magazine Leider helmed—which, with this issue, marks its fiftieth anniversary—was committed to the most advanced art of the day. In that sense, Artforum was very much dedicated to writing the future, whatever that might look like. So it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t a discomfort with the likes of punch cards that gave Leider pause. Rather, he was rightfully loath to pin art too closely to any one kind of media or technology—just as we are loath to do now, whether to avoid lapsing into a retrograde medium specificity, on the one hand, or technological determinism, on the other. Today we still cringe at manufactured genres like “computer art,” even if art as we know it could barely exist without computers. Technophilia and technophobia alike pervade museums, galleries, and art-fair booths; the language of new media and social media—platform, network, algorithm, sharing—abounds in press releases and exhibition titles, slaking our thirst for 1960s-cum-1990s cyber-euphoria. At the same time, Leider’s doubt echoes in the distance, a critical reminder that art’s affair with media is always prone to historical amnesia, to lazy conflations of vastly different positions and practices, to abrupt shifts from the faddish embrace of progress to a pining for the obsolete. We are nostalgic; we want to move on.

This special issue of Artforum aims to move on but not forget. In the following pages, we’ll take stock of five decades of conversation and contestation that helped forge art’s manifold possibilities and that now stand as a vital record of history. More broadly, we’ll reflect on the past fifty years of media, technology, and art, from the Plexiglas and Porta-Paks of the ’60s to the networked art of the present. For the story of media is, in many ways, the story of contemporary art—both its history and its future.

Shock value aside, the issue is chock full of things I want to read right away, not to mention to assign to my graduate students. Did I mention that it's really thick? Yes, art advertizing is up, friends: you can prop open your studio fire door with the thing.

Also: no reviews.

 

SOPA's Evil Twin Sister – CISPA

Via Lumen Consulting:

In the hopes of creating awareness of what CISPA actually is and how it could effect the lives of every day people, we created this infographic. Feel free to share the graphic on your site (embed code below). You can find quotes from Fortune 500 CEO’s who are endorsing the bill here. You can also write a letter to your local representative to protest CISPA here.

Full Infographic and CISP definition is here.

Artists opposing the PROTECT-IP / SOPA Act

Artists opposing the PROTECT-IP / SOPA Act [petition link at bottom]

Congress needs to hear from Artists!

The PROTECT-IP act would censor the net, in the name of protecting "creativity" (read: copyright). The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites-- they just have to convince a judge that the site is "dedicated to copyright infringement."

The law could definitely pass, but it's close.

• * Artists (musicians, actors, writers, media-makers, etc) need to speak out against the law. Your statement is powerful because the corporate music and film lobbies push these laws in your name.
• * The copyright lobby say that this bill is written in your name to protect "creativity". If you're an artist that believes the government and corporations should not have the power to censor the internet in your name, you need to sign.

GO to the PETITION....

TO members of the United States Congress

We, the undersigned artists, have all been empowered by the Internet. Today, artists can reach large audiences and make a living because the Internet and digital tools have democratized the means to create, distribute, and promote our work.

We write to you today because we are concerned with S.968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Copyright law exists to promote the arts, but the new penalties in PIPA could be used against the new social media channels we depend on to make a living, and endanger freedom of expression.

PIPA creates new penalties against sites dedicated to infringing activity, but we worry it will be abused to attack legitimate sites we rely on. Many trailblazing social media websites could look like piracy havens to judges unfamiliar with the Internet. In the past, music and film companies have attacked many new technologies - like the VCR and MP3 player - claiming that they were tools for piracy. Recently, these same companies have sued video hosting platforms like Veoh and YouTube.

We use online video sites, file hosts like Dropbox and Mediafire, and online music communities like Soundcloud to host our work, collaborate with others, and build a community. We fund our work with services like Kickstarter and Flattr. We publish our work on sites like Tumblr, Wordpress, and Blogger. Any one of these services could be sued under PIPA.

SOPA: Where We're At (via @Techdirt)

Via Techdirt, 1/12/2012:

SOPA/PIPA: How Far We've Come; How Far We Need To Go

from the not-over-yet dept

On October 26th, I was flying from San Francisco to Washington DC to meet with folks in the House of Representatives to explain why they should be careful about making the same mistakes as the Senate with its anti-piracy bill, PROTECT IP (PIPA). We had been assured by Rep. Bob Goodlatte that Congress had heard the myriad complaints about PIPA and that the House version would take them into account. Instead, as the plane I was on flew over the Rocky Mountains, I started getting a flood of emails from people sending me the first release of the House's version of the bill, now known as SOPA (originally, the E-PARASITE bill, a name they dropped immediately when everyone started mocking it). Thanks to the wonderful innovation of WiFi-in-the-sky, I was able to sit in my cramped seat, read the bill, and write up my horrified post explaining just how much worse SOPA was than PIPA (an already disastrous bill).

The next day, October 27th, a small group of entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and creators spent the day meeting with members of Congress to express our concerns about the bill (which we'd just seen the afternoon before), as well as the whole approach to the crafting of both bills. The one thing we heard over and over again that day: "well this is the first time we've heard anything about this from the internet community."

I think it's safe to say that's no longer the case.

As I type this, I'm taking that same flight, preparing for my debate tomorrow over these bills against an MPAA representative and a US Chamber of Commerce representative, I'm sitting in that same cramped seat (actually, I think I'm on the opposite side of the plane), and thinking just how far we've come in just three and a half months.

Make no mistake: when the Senate introduced PIPA in May, it was widely assumed that this bill, and any companion bill would sail through Congress easily. Sure, some "tech-friendly" officials may express some concerns, but, as one lobbyist told me directly, "no one takes you people seriously anyway." It was this kind of hubris that we saw throughout the year with these bills. We were told repeatedly to shut up and take it, because the bills were going to pass, Obama would sign them, and piracy would magically disappear.

Instead, a funny thing happened on the way to the death of the internet: the internet woke up. While folks online may be political, it's not often that they truly get activated over internet-related issues. But in an era of bottom-up movements facilitated online, the timing was absolutely right for the massive groundswell of support from all corners of the internet to suddenly speak out in near unison to say of these bills: DO NOT WANT.

Still more to do:

At this point, it's impossible to deny that we, as a group, have had an impact. Contrary to the claims of some of the bill's supporters, we showed that this isn't just a "Google" issue. This is an internet issue. And we care about the internet and we care about innovation, and we're not going to take it lightly when elected officials, who admit they don't understand the technology, come along to say they're going to mess with it, just because their biggest campaign donors don't want to adapt to these wonderful new innovations.

But, not everyone in Congress has an understanding of what's happening online. Even with Reps. and Senators backing away from the bills, and asking leadership to slow things down... and even with Rep. Smith and Senator Leahy trying to "delay" the DNS implementation in order to get the bills passed... some in Congress still think that the outcry is minor or limited or that it's all Google.

That's why Harry Reid intends to move forward with the bill, pretending that the complaints only come from Google and Facebook... and that they're minor and easily fixed with a couple of amendments. I believe he's misjudged the internet, just as many others in Congress have misjudged the internet over the last few months. The people speaking out are not just "Google and Facebook," and they're not just speaking out for the hell of it. They're seriously pissed off at Congress for even thinking of going down this path in the first place, and simply killing the bills is unlikely to get the people online back on their side.

But there's a bigger point in the "more to do" section of this post. This isn't about one bill. This isn't about one issue. This is about an entire process. This is about the public -- not the big corporations -- finally saying "enough is enough" and making Congress recognize that crony capitalism, where subsidies and protectionism are doled out willy nilly to favorite campaign contributors, is not acceptable to the people they're supposed to represent.

This is about recognizing that the internet and the massive amount new innovation and services -- and the worldwide ability to communicate with others -- is a game changing innovation for everyone. And we're going to work damn hard to make sure that it remains open and free.

But, to do that right, this is going to take much more than stopping one bill. This is going to take prolonged effort. This is going to take an ongoing effort to make it clear that no elected official can ever again feel comfortable bragging that they don't understand the internet, as they seek to regulate it. This is about making it 100% crystal clear to those who seek to clamp down on the true engine of free expression -- the internet -- that we, the people, aren't going to be fooled with bogus claims and bogus stats in an effort to limit this wonderful platform.

This isn't over yet -- not by a long shot. But just look at how far we've come in just three and a half months, and think what we'll do in the next few months -- and years -- ahead. These bills tried to kill the "internet as we know it." But, in some ways, these bills helped birth a new kind of internet: one that doesn't let Congress screw it up without taking action.