Please distribute!

README 100: Temporary software art factory
http://readme.runme.org

Call for proposals: Deadline August 8, 2005

What:
Readme festival in the year 2005 aims at supporting the production of software art projects and texts critically engaging with software art. Readme 100 will support up to 6 projects and up to 6 articles on the competition basis. Each project will get a budget from 500 to 3000 euros (depending on the project complexity) and each article - 500 euros. The completed or close to completion works and texts will be presented at the off-line event scheduled for November 4-5, 2005 in the State and City Library of Dortmund, Germany. Completed works will be honorably published at Runme.org repository.

How:
Proposals for projects and texts should be sent to og {at} dxlab.org and inke.arns {at} hmkv.de no later than August 8. Readme 100 only supports new projects and texts. The decision will be publicly announced on August 15, 2005. Please prepare the material in whatever format you see fit. Make sure you include the concept / outline (around 1 page of text -approx. 1.800 characters), a short CV, links to your previous projects, the estimate budget, and any material you find appropriate.

Focus:
Different ways of software art production, including self-employing, hiring, using open source solutions, interfacing with IT economy sector and educational/cultural institutions.

Outsourcing:
Besides ways of production common for art and open source, we suggest to consider outsourcing solutions (more details on Readme website) as they are proven to be efficient and adequate for the modern globalized economy.

Factory - idea and location:
Readme 100 wishes to use the potential of the idea of production. Software art is often produced using conventional software production models; sometimes pragmatic software tools get regarded in terms of software art and vice versa: software art projects get used and sold as tools. One could hire an Indian programmer to code a piece of software art; one could get rich from selling well-advertised unconventional software, one could discover that an author of a conventional software piece always felt it was something “different”. Readme temporary software art factory would like to focus not only on the product itself, but on the way of its production, and experiment with different models of production in relation to art, including outsourcing, work within IT companies or self-production.

Readme 100 regards texts as essential parts of the production process; critical texts are welcome to be produced at the temporary software art factory.

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For those who weren’t aware, PixelACHE 2005 was host to a fierce dance competition amongst Glaswegian crew Pointless Creations (plus special guest Patrick Watson from Day on earth).

The video entries are recorded on:
http://www.thesoundsurgery.co.uk/pointless/pixelache/dance.html

you can vote for your favorites at:
winner@pointlesscreations.co.uk

Enjoy!

Dav+Pointless Crew.

hi,

finally i cut a short movie from my performance TEMPEST at Pixelache05

http://plot.bek.no/~erich/tempest-live.mp4

cheers

erich

Announcing: Generator.x conference
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23-24 September 2005, Atelier Nord, Oslo, Norway
http://www.generatorx.no/

Intrigued by the power of computation and the realization that all digital media are in fact software, a new generation of artists and designers are turning to code as a means of new expression and a way to better control their medium. Software is not the transparent interface it has traditionally been thought to be. Instead, it is a material that both limits and permits personal expression.

True literacy means being able to both read and write. If to use pre-existing software is to “read” digital media, then programming is the equivalent to writing. The Generator.x project focuses on artists and designers who embrace this new literacy not as a technical obstacle, but as a way to redefine the tools and the media they work in.

Through a conference, an exhibition and a blog, Generator.x examines the role of software and generative strategies in current digital art and design. Subjects to be covered include:

* Generative aesthetics
* Computational design: Designing processes
* Performative software
* Software by creatives for creatives

The project is a co-production between Atelier Nord and the National Touring exhibitions of Norway.

Confirmed speakers
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Erich Berger (NO / AT)
Pablo Miranda Carranza (SE / SP)
Gisle Frøysland (NO)
Hans Christian Gilje (NO)
Susanne Jaschko (DE)
Golan Levin (US)
Sebastian Oschatz (DE)
Casey Reas (US)
Amanda Steggell (NO)
Marius Watz (NO)

The conference is hosted by Atelier Nord, and will be accompanied by the opening of the Generator.x exhibition at the National Museum of Art, Architecture of Design, as well as a club event with live performances. For details about the exhibition, please see http://www.generatorx.no/generatorx-exhibition/.

Registration for the conference will be available soon, for more information please visit http://www.generatorx.no/ or email info@generatorx.no.

Credits and support
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Generator.x is a co-production between Atelier Nord and Riksutstillinger (the National Touring Exhibitions of Norway), as a result of an initiative by Marius Watz. Generator.x is supported by the Norwegian Cultural Council, PNEK, the Goethe-Institut Oslo and the Austrian Embassy in Norway.

For more information, please visit http://www.generatorx.no/.

Piksel05 and PixelACHE06 are planning to collaborate, again… Everyone interested in open source audiovisual software should pack their bags and head to Bergen in October 2005… Application deadline 15. August!!!
- juhuu

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- Piksel05 - october 16-23. 2005
- call for participation
- deadline 15. august 2005

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Piksel[1] is an annual event for artists and developers working with open
source audiovisual software tools. Part workshop, part festival, it is
organised in Bergen, Norway, by the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK)
[2] and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging
ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops,
performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of open source.
Piksel05 will take place in Bergen october 16. - 23. 2005.

The development, and therefore use, of digital technology today is mainly
controlled by multinational corporations. Despite the prospects of
technology expanding the means of artistic expression, the commercial
demands of the software industries severely limit them instead. Piksel is
focusing on the open source movement as a strategy for regaining artistic
control of the technology, but also a means to bring attention the close
connections between art, politics, technology and economy.

One of the results of the past Piksel events is the initiation of the Piksel
Video Framework for ‘interoperability between various free software
applications dealing with video manipulation techniques’[3].

Piksel05 will also feature the release of the Piksel LiveCD[4], a Linux
distribution containing the software used and developed at Piksel. The
package contains a suite of innovative audiovisual and artistic software,
free video plugins, and documentation from the past Piksel events.

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One of the pioneers of ‘database cinema’ just released a new non-linear DVD of his work, Soft Cinema…It would interest all PixelACHE attendees and artists.. -tim (RESPAM)

Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky

SOFT CINEMA: Navigating the Database

DVD-video with 40 page color booklet

The MIT Press, 2005

ISBN 0-262-13456-X

What kind of cinema is appropriate for the age of Google and blogging?
Automatic surveillance and self-guided missiles? Consumer profiling and CNN?
To investigate answers to this question Lev Manovich - one of today¹s most
influential thinkers in the fields of media arts and digital culture ­ has
paired with award-winning new media artist and designer Andreas Kratky to
create the Soft Cinema project. They have also invited contributions from
leaders in other cultural fields: DJ Spooky, Scanner, George Lewis and
Jóhann Jóhannsson (music), servo and Andreas Angelidakis (architecture),
Schoenerwissen/Office for Computational Design (data visualization), and
Ross Cooper Studios (media design).

SOFT CINEMA: Navigating the Database is the Soft Cinema project¹s first DVD
published and distributed by The MIT Press (2005). Although the three films
presented on the DVD reference the familiar genres of cinema, the process by
which they were created and the resulting aesthetics fully belong to the
software age. They demonstrate the possibilities of soft(ware) cinema - a
‘cinema’ in which human subjectivity and the variable choices made by custom
software combine to create films that can run infinitely without ever
exactly repeating the same image sequences, screen layouts and narratives.

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The MiniPixel event in Paris was the first introduction to MAL au Pixel 2006, the upcoming french edition of PixelACHE… Here are some photos of the event, more coming up later…

The Cause and Effect Heroes arriving in Paris:
 

Mains d’Oeuvres and the Star Trek Theatre:
 

Interactive Cinema in action:
 

Thanks to Mathieu / Mains d’Ouvres for taking good care of us, Stephane / MdO for providing a home and Christina for putting together the PixelACHE DVD material… We will see you soon again!

Brainmirror is an interactive installation for exploring the structure of human brain, created by Adam Somlai-Fischer, Bengt Sjölén and Danil Lundbäck. The interface has been made very simple and natural - brain is visualized on top of a mirror image of the visitor, allowing people to explore different parts of the brain by turning their head.

The brainmirror is a good example of a strand of experimental work which tries integrate audiovisual media in a more natural way to physical space. This type of work was featured extensively at PixelACHE 2004, with projects such as Distributed Projection Structure from aether architecture (Adam Somlai-Fischer & co) and Open Source Architecture Experiment (Usman Haque, Adam Somlai-Fisher, Ophra Wolf, Margot Jacobs, Andrew Paterson), BrandBody (Tuomo Tammenpää) and many others…

Similar work can be seen this weekend in Riga, at Space and Perception international symposium on Mixed Reality.

*The photos have arrived!*

Check out the PixelACHE 2005 photo gallery and also remember the MiniPixel event in Paris on Wed 18th May!

(VJ-BOOK is a project by Timothy Jaeger, who together with Alex Draculescu presented the Respam:inbox performance at PixelACHE 2005 )

**********PRESS RELEASE ***********************

**** please forward to all interested parties ******

5/9/05

VJ-BOOK.COM Launched

IT’S OFFICIAL. VJ-BOOK is one of the first books to be published on VJ culture,
and potentially the first to theorize VJing in a way that breaks down the
practice and reception of live visuals in a systematic, structured way.

VJ-BOOK: Jockeying and Post-Cinema (tentative title) begins its inquiry where
Godard and Peter Greenaway leave theirs in proclaiming that ‘cinema is dead’.
The cinematic language is a rich, engrossing one that remains unexplored in
traditional Hollywood-style narratives. Contemporary VJs (video-jockeys) are
the first group in the 21st century to seriously engage and question the
potentials and limitations of the cinematic medium in a wide variety of formats
and contexts.

The central claim in VJ-BOOK is that ‘jockeying’ is a behavior, role, and
activity that facilitates a radically new kind of post-cinematic experience.
This experience can only be articulated in relation to traditional film syntax.
In doing some, the similarities and differences between this new type of cinema
and the older one flesh out new possibilities for producers of the moving
image, the audience, and the spaces in which cinema can not only be seen, but happen as events.

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