‘Variety’ is inspired by the fact that several art forms – sound, animation, graphic compositions – are transformed easily in both appearance and being. During the evening local performers share the stage with the Wojciech Kosma, Vladimir Nikolic, Tao Lin, Kristin Lucas, Adrian Piper, Pierre Bismuth and Claire Fontaine. With dictions, videos, dance and music performances, ‘Variety’ ties together in a way that they are experienced as performances, and thus allow original interpretations to emerge.

Tickets cost €5 (student fee is €2,50), you can reserve seats by e-mail (reservations@nimk.nl) or phone (020 6237101). Also, tickets can be bought (in advance) starting at July 8th, at the NIMk institute (starting 6pm) or at De Brakke Grond (starting 7pm). The show starts at 8.30pm at the Rode Zaal in De Brakke Grond. Official press release (Dutch) can be found here. (While the press release says local artists will join the performance, I’m not sure in what language it will be. I’ll keep you posted on that.)

Additionally, at the same night, there’s another edition of Test_Lab will be held V2_ (Rotterdam) called ‘The Invisible City’, here’s a copy of the press release:

Opening: Theo Deutinger (AT/NL), TD Architects

Demonstrations: Selena Savic (SRB), Piet Zwart Institute | David Benque (FR), Royal College of Art | Michael Dotolo (US), Frank Mohr Institute | Renee Hulshoff (NL), Royal Art Academy | Gabriel Vanegas (CO), Academy of Media Arts Cologne | Oliver Goodhall (UK), Royal College of Art

Performance: Joram Kroon, a.k.a. Prace (NL), Utrecht School of the Arts

As Italo Calvino illustrates in his classic novel Invisible Cities, the notion of ‘city’ extends far beyond its visible physical architecture. A city is characterized as much by the ways in which its urban life is organized, the problems and threats it faces and the memories, desires and fears of its inhabitants, as by the buildings and spaces that define its physical form. Due to the rapid and ongoing process of urbanization – resulting in half of humanity now living in urban environments – we are forced to radically rethink our cities. While we can see our physical urban environments transforming at a rapid pace however, who is rethinking the ‘invisible’ counterparts that Calvino wrote about almost forty years ago?

Artists, architects, and designers play an important role in revealing ‘invisible’ aspects of cities, often providing new insights into how our cities function and develop. To rethink the ‘invisible city’ under the pressure of rapid urbanization, this edition of Test_Lab will feature a selection of freshly graduated artists, architects, and designers from European art and design academies whose projects explore the invisible aspects of our contemporary urban environments. The selected projects range from artistic representations of invisible cities, to simulations of urban economy and concrete scenarios for urban production and energy development. As it is custom to the Test_Lab event series, the audience will form the critical test panel for the demonstrated works and will be invited to examine each graduation project ‘hands-on’.

The evening kicks off with an introduction by the Rotterdam-based urban mapping expert Theo Deutinger, features a special opening of Disrupting Systems (see inset), and closes with a live music set about one of the world’s most conflict-ridden places.

Although both events look good, without being aware that they’re held simultaneously, I registered for Variety. Test_Lab’s line-up seems solid as ever, and it’s likely to be less abstract than Variety, I would also highly recommend it. Cheers.

The film has been released today and will be screened this week througout The Netherlands (Utrecht, Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Den Haag, Amsterdam) along with Q&A with the director afterwards. Judging from the trailer, the film tells a story of virtual immersion, relationships and escapism, here’s the synopsis coming from the official site:

Jitze, a young Dutch professional gamer, travels the world to compete in video game tournaments. During a stay in Taipei his arm starts to hurt and he’s forced to take a few days rest. A night in his hotel, Jitze meets a girl and starts realizing what it means to be human in the age of the virtual worlds.

While there have been interesting cinematographic explorations of the (full) disembodiment in for example Submarine’s My Second Life or the online performance I’m Garrett Lynch (IRL), it’s good to come across a narrative in which material and virtuality characteristics intertwine as a part of the plot. As a side-note, it’s also ironic to see that Second Life is turning into a tool for film-makers and artists (treating the environment as one that has never actually existed), now that it’s largely abandoned by commercial parties.

Finally, here are this week’s screening dates, and the film’s trailer:

Thursday evening at 19.30, the 10th of June at ’t Hoogt, Utrecht

Wednesday evening at 19.30, the 16th of June at Eindhoven Plaza

Thursday evening at 20.30, the 17th of June at Kriterion Amsterdam

Friday evening at 20.00, the 18th of June at Nijmegen LUX

Saterday evening at 19.30, the 19th of June at Filmhuis Den Haag

Sunday evening at 19.30, the 20th of June at EYE Amsterdam

Anyhow, although UvA professor Jan Simmons is involved in the first session, I have really no clue of what to expect from this workgroup’s aims and/or findings, more or less the same goes for the rest of the program with exception for Karen Lancel’s ‘Tele_Trust‘ project which I’ve been following since it first (?) appearance at V2_’s Test_Lab.

Here’s a copy of the official press release:

An evening conversation on interface studies.
Location: NIMk
Date: Friday June 18, 2010
doors open 8:00 p.m., program begins 8:30 p.m.
Entrance free
Please make reservations (elena@salto.nl)
(English spoken)

At this evening session, the Interface Studies Group will present the ‘interface’ as the centre of technology mediated experience and will reveal trends, notions and tangible prototypes that stretch and challenge the still predominant screen – spectator arrangement.
In contrast with traditional cinema and TV, in what may be called the ‘post-PC’ era, mobile and haptic interfaces and Reactive Environments are putting the embodied presence of the user back on stage. By engaging other senses and modalities such as touch, voice, movement and mobility and by taking into account the user’s sensorial and affective dimensions, new forms of interaction, knowledge production, and forms of sociality are made possible.

Program:

20:00 Doors open with DJ/VJ Emile Zile. Artist and Performer.

20:30 Welcome by Heiner Holtappels, Director of NIMk.

20.35 hrs Jan Simons – Beyond the desktop’. Presentation of the Interface Studies research group and lecture.
Media Theory author and researcher, Associate Professor ASCA/UvA.
20.55 hrs Ben Salem – ‘Designing reactive environments’.
Architect, Assistant Professor TU/e. Going beyond Ambient Intelligence into enhanced environment. (http://bsalem.info/)

Break

21.30 hrs Lilia Pérez, – ‘Just Touch’. An overview on touch as a paradigm for human-computer interaction. (http://liliaperez.net/)
Digital Artist, Interaction Designer and Researcher, PhD Candidate
21.45 hrs Jorge Alves Lino, ‘Responsive environments in the context of public space and large scale installation’ (http://jorgelino.com/)
Concept Designer, PhD Candidate TU/e
22.00 hrs Noam Knoller, ‘Interface Visions of Storytelling’ (http://www.knoller.com/)
Interaction designer/artist, filmmaker, PhD Candidate ASCA/UvA
22:15 hrs Karen Lancel, ‘TELE_TRUST in the context of artistic interfaces’
Digital artist, PhD Candidate ASCA/UvA. (http://lancelmaat.nl/)

22:30 Feel the bodily turn! – Drinks, Music and Interaction!

After the lectures, works in progress and interesting prototypes will be presented by guest artists and designers and made available for the public to try.

Special guest Installation: Social Soundmachine – feeling the music!
by Ramon Schreuder (Lewis & Davis – studio for experience design)
“Social Soundmachine is an interactive tabletop, on which people can create electronic music together. It uses a special multi-touch surface with a number of tangible game pieces.” URL: http://socialsoundmachine.com

Hope to see you all there!

Update: I just couldn’t resist to create this playlist:

Uploaded by Makz on Flickr.com, Some Rights Reserved.

Later this month an extraordinary evening will be hosted at the Waag Society by Rob van Kranenburg. While you might know him from his recent publication The Internet of Things (which covers the society of control and hacktivistic approaches), I’ve come to meet him a couple of times during discussion groups organized by a fellow student, Ramses Petronia. In these multidisciplinary discussions groups, topics like distributed, open networks, and appropriate democracies for the digital age have been covered a lot, and were overall quite exciting. (Let me know if you’d like to join these discussions sometime).

With this upcoming event, an international panel will discuss the micro-politics that emerged in the Pakistani city, Karachi, where organisation and intellectual property are constantly reinvented by local parties. Geert Lovink will also join the discussion by elaborating on his notion of ‘organized networks’ as a political structure.

Here’s some more information on the event coming from the mailing-list:

Rumana Husain, author of Karachiwala will launch her book in the Netherlands
Mukhtar Husain, author of ‘100+1 Pakistani Architects and their Own Houses‘
Atteqa Malik, from Mauj Collective Karachi skyping in
Geert Lovink, from Institute of Network Cultures on Organized Networks

(Rumana Husain) Karachiwala describes the diversity and change within Karachi, as a microcosm not only of Pakistan but of the entire south Asian region. A Subcontinent within a City : “I have always been curious about different peoples: who they are, where they come from, the languages they speak, the clothes they wear, the food they eat, what their beliefs are, the varied customs and traditions they observe, and what they do for a living.

This book is a study of — and a tribute to — that diverse mix of people who inhabit Karachi.”

A noted architect and interior designer, Mukhtar Husain did something unusual cataloguing and presenting the houses architects have designed for their own living. The pictorial volume shows the personality, design philosophy and lifestyle of each architect.

(Atteqa Malik) Mauj Collective for Open Technology, Art & Culture. Mauj Collective is conducting a study on e-Culture and New Media practices in Pakistan. It covers the arts, social development, business and nonprofits.

Geert Lovink will discuss ‘Organized Networks‘. The celebration of network cultures as open, decentralized, and horizontal all too easily forgets the political dimensions of labour and life in informational times. Why have radical social-technical networks so often collapsed after the party? What are the key resources common to critical network cultures?

Host: Rob van Kranenburg
This evening is made possible by the Prince Claus Fund and Waag Society.

See you the 24th.

While I therefore missed the interview with photographer Robert Overweg, luckily, his work will be exhibited at Amsterdam’s Concrete Image Gallery starting later this month! Below’s a copy of the press release:

On friday the 18th of june, TAG opens the new exposition Robert Overweg: photographer in the virtual world at the Concrete image gallery in Amsterdam. Overweg ends his successful artist in residence period at TAG with an exhibition where he shows the results of this residence.

Overweg dwells through the virtual worlds of first and third person shooter games. He looks into the similarities, differences and borders between the virtual and the physical world. Borders which are being tested and stretched by Overweg.

He sees the virtual world as a direct expansion of the “real” world, the virtual places where players come together in multiplayer maps are for Overweg the new public spaces of contemporary society. For him it is logical to document his experiences and research through his photography. While making use of the new possibilities the virtual world give him.

Link to Robert’s invitation.

As I wrote in a previous blog-post, Yuri supervised the Info-Visualisation course at the UvA in which a conference was organized by the students to present their products.

'The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook', an interactive data-visualisation by Matt McKeon

Apart from the interesting concepts, developed by multidisciplinary teams, presentations were held by various keynote speakers. I took the following notes from the keynote of researcher, designer, and founder of VisualComplexity.com, Manuel Lima about the uprise of both the blog and the field of data-visualisations in general.

Lima started off by what has inspired him to theorize and write about data visualisation practices (one of them was ’The Understanding Spectrum‘ by Nathan Shedroff) and quickly proceeded with a historiography of visual culture. While people throughout the centuries have sought new ways to present data, described in for example the Alfred Crosby’s in ‘The measure of reality‘, by “quantifying the unquantifiable” (Lima, 2010), collecting and organizing this data – with today’s technologies these processes has seem to become much more mathematically precise and efficient.

Lima continued by pinpointing five aspects that caused the visualisation techniques to emerge so rapidly. First there is the capabilities of data storage. Following Moore’s law of storage and computer chip research growing exponentially, also Kryder’s law – of “everything that can be digital, will be – applies here. Furthermore, software tends to follow along the lines of these ‘laws’; where the most largest encyclopedia – the French Encyclopedia – consisted of 17.000 articles, published in 53 volumes, the English version of Wikipedia surpassed 3 million articles, and would consist of 1.300 volumes (of text-only).

The second reason why the field has expanded so greatly is due to the fact more and more parties (institutions, businesses, governments et cetera) tend make their data open and accessible. Also the software to build these datasets, like Swifel or Many Eyes, are used widely. But, as another keynote speaker, Daniel Aguilar from Bestiario, would argue: many of the open platforms that promote themselves as such, are in fact limited or unstructured (for example, a client only offered a collection of flat Acrobat Reader files), which make this ‘openness’ seem more like a buzz-word.

Thirdly, datasets of social platforms have grown immensely, from tagged Flickr photos to workout information (Nike+), and currently with the #hashtags of Twitter (recently, the hashtags of the Dutch political debate, #rtldebat, popped up as first in the worldwide Trending Topics), people are willingly engaging with ongoing trends through different means of producing and sharing.

Fourthly, tools have become available at a great scale, from Adobe Flash to Prefuse or Processing. While some of them require advanced programming knowledge others offer templates level the production field.

Lastly, mainstream media have adopted visualisation methods quickly thus taking it out of the academic sphere. Through publishing these graphics the became popular amongst readers, and gives traditional media the chance to explore communicating through graphics. Common examples are visuals in the New York Times or even NRC.next.

In conclusion, Lima sees there’s still a lot work to do, to finally develop the ‘new science field’, most notably, a “taxonomy is needed to meet the requirements” (Lima, 2010). He tries to cover the existing models (i.e radial or 3d globes) as well as explore some future directions in his upcoming book (unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link anywhere). Also, the exploration of potential interaction techniques still has a long road ahead to eventually make “use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representation of abstract data to amplify cognition” (Voigt, 2002) in empirically effective ways.

Finally, fundamental questions arise from current visualisations. For example, while comparing the mapping projects of ‘Mouse’s neuronal network’ and ‘Millennium simulation’ they tend to behave in striking similar ways. In that sense, data-mapping can give us understanding of both micro- as meso and macro-patterns in nature or culture and draw lines between them, and thus seem to offer us exciting new tools for a broad range of research fields.

• Voigt, Robert (2002), An Extended Scatterplot Matrix and Case Studies in Information Visualization, Master’s thesis, Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, 2002, Classification and Definition of Terms

As we read some excellent theory by i.e Brian Matsumi, Slavoj Zizek and Thomas Boelstorff (last year’s bibliography has some overlapping theory) and weekly wrote blog-posts within a range of themes, finally I decided to start an art project instead of writing an academic paper. Unfortunately this would be in no way the easier alternative, and yes, I would also have to write a paper.

As my group and I read and wrote around the topic of virtual communities and ethics, I wanted to develop something in line of that theme. As my fellow students, Sarah and Marta, had started working quite eagerly on their Cubinator Project (an online performance) and the course length was merely 10 weeks, the pressure to develop something meaningful was rising.

In the end I developed a concept under the title of Pulse.fm, which would be later renamed to The Sonic Aura Project. I will summarize the concept by citing the project paper:

With The Sonic Aura Project  I try to explore the boundaries of representation and manipulation of the virtual identity within an online community that solely relies on a audio-signal as means of self-representation. Such an ecology would indeed eliminate many of the freedoms (..) The Sonic Aura Project seeks to move away from on the one hand the hegemonic online networking models and their role as tools for maintaining social relations and on the other hand the freedom of the individual and the possible unstable factors of virtual identity and identity play.

(..) Every participant’s behavior is mediated through several input types which translate themselves more or less into different sound layers: a ’social media meta layer’ (linked to one’s existing social networks), a ‘physical layer’ and a ‘corporeal layer’. (..) The three types of input represent different instruments (although there are a few grey areas), namely: melody (meta-layer), rhythm (the user’s heart rate) and ambience (the microphone recordings).

Lately, I’ve also stumbled upon the Heart Chamber Orchestra project that also ties together biological data and generative music in an interesting way.

Heart Chamber Orchestra – Pixelache from pure on Vimeo.

Here are the events summed up: the Dutch net.art duo JODI will be interviewed at the Temporary Art Center (Eindhoven), street-photographer (within virtual worlds) Robert Overweg will present his latest work at CrossLab (Den Haag) and finally students from the HKU will present their arty projects at Centrum Beeldende Kunst (Utrecht).

Here are some excerpts from the press releases:

JODI (excerpt from VirtueelPlatform.nl)

Jodi and Walter van der Cruijsen will discuss their work and influences. Van der Cruijsen, an internationally renown  digital art initiatives pioneer and digital artist himself, is the perfect person to contextualize Jodi’s groundbreaking artistic contributions.

Jodi is 2 internet artists, Joan Heemskerk (NL) and Dirk Paesmans (BE). In the mid 1990s, they established a visual language for artwork created specifically for the web. Their background also includes video and photography, which can clearly be seen in their “Screen Grab” period during the early 2000s. They have since progressed to software art and installations involving web based technologies, such as Google. (..) They are without doubt among the most significant artists working with the internet as their primary medium.

CrossLab:

Robert Overweg is a streetphotographer in the virtual world, he sees the worlds of (first and third person shooter) games as the new public spaces of contemporary society.

Overweg dwells by foot or by air through the outskirts of the virtual world which he dissects through his photography. He documents the similarities and the differences between the virtual and the physical world while making use of the new possibilities the virtual world give him as a photographer.

By looking into how games work and the aesthetics of the virtual world he asks questions about how the system works and the people behind them.

the facade 2010, Robert Overweg, half-life 2

Re:visie:lab:6 (translated excerpt):

During the event, all involved creators will present and discuss their work with the audience and curators. In addition, video presentations from Rnul interactive and Constant Dullaart will be shown, the evening will be moderated by HKU-KMT tutor René Lansink.

One of the participating students, Sander Ter Blaak, will present his projection ‘Augmented anamorphosis’:

Now what  could be the cultural implications of Spotify’s uprise? In the article ‘Spotify: All you can eat‘ (Dutch), Marc Brekelmans draws the line between Spotify’s proposition and ‘all-you-can-eat’ restaurants:

“The content library is vast – more than you’ll be able to consume – yet,  although the right ingredients, the quality is disappointing. The food lacks the refinement that characterizes a decent restaurant which is why the one leaves the venue with an unsatisfied feeling.”

I find Brekelmans’ metaphor of the all-you-can-eat restaurant is a poor one for numerous reasons. First of all, the wide variety of ingredients doesn’t mean the consumer will be have a taste of all what’s available, as a matter of fact: there is no tangible menu except for the featured artists in Spotify’s start-up screen. Exploration of tastes does merely exist through the exchange of dishes within communities (for example: Playlistify let’s the user ‘bake a playlist’), by search and through hyperlinks. There’s obviously a lot of content excluded from a single user.

Furthermore, I don’t believe that musical exploration, consisting of constantly selecting, discarding and reflecting on latest discoveries is much different compared to traditional media. Associating with bands or music and developing a certain taste has always been a qualitative trajectory in which one can only engage in through the critical ear. In my opinion, in this process the medium-specificity (having a record shop or a digital library) is not all that significant and merely a puristic argument.

In closing, cultural surplus is all but new with the introduction of Spotify, I think it’s also safe to say that the application won’t eliminate evaluation as a part of developing a personal taste. In my opinion, Brekelmans’ argument towards this surplus is one that applies to the music industry’s premise for over decades now.

Here’s some information from the FaceBook event webpage (there’s also a Twitter account):

Public Presentations of nine multidisciplinary data visualization projects developed by Master students of UvA (Universiteit van Amsterdam) and maHKU (Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design), with special guest speakers:

MANUEL LIMA from www.visualcomplexity.com
DANIEL AGUILAR from www.bestiario.org
ERIK-JAN VAN DER LINDEN from www.magnaview.nl

FREE ENTRANCE

This event is organized by: MA Information Science (UvA), MA Artificial Intelligence (Uva), MA New Media (UvA) & MA Editorial Design (maHKU).
Sponsored by: MagnaView and CCCT Center for Creation, Content and Technology.

From: 1:00p.m – 6:30p.m
Location: B.C.P. Jansen gebouw (UvA glass building) – Room M1.01, Plantage Muidergracht 12