One of my favorite peices from Siggraph this year was Wearable Forrest by Hiroki Kobayashi, Ryoko Ueoka and Michitaka Hirose, University of Tokyo, Japan.

This dress has LED lights embedded throughout that are audio responsive; they glow in response to the loudness of audio piped in from a remote forrest in Japan. There is a speaker in the dress where you can hear the sound of the forrest, and particularly the sound of the birds. There is also a button on the dress that plays a recording of a bird call in the forrest so that the birds will respond to it, and thus activate the dress.

There are some nice concepts in this work about connecting you to the environment, and feeling at one with nature, but I really just like the idea of there being a microphone and speaker just standing somewhere in the middle of a forrest. Even if you came across it, which would be an amazing enough visual in itself, the ignorance you would have of not knowing what was on the other end is a pretty powerful thing for me. Just so happens, its a dress.

overlap.org presents

OVERLAP LONDON
22 OCT 2008 @ 8 PM
18-22 Ashwin St | Dalston
London | E8 3DL | info@cafeoto.co.uk
£6/5

SEBASTIEN ROUX (room40 / optical sound / 12k)
DOUGLAS BENFORD (12×50 / Bip_hop / si-cut.db)
BEDDOES (overlap)

My friend Luke DuBois has a fantastic lightbox version of his piece Hind Sight is Always 20/20 up at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week. The work creates eye charts out of the State of the Union speeches from every President. The most frequently used words are at the top of the chart in large type, progressing down to the less frequent. A good indicator of the attitudes and pressing issues of the time can be seen in the patterns of the words.

This is one of the better examples of data visualization artwork I have seen lately. Luke is wise enough not to turn the frequency of the words into abstract blips or scrolling 3d letters, and he has found a good metaphor for the presentation in the eye chart. I saw him at Maker Faire a few months back, and he was lamenting that it was “impossible to find a mid range light box…they are either crap, or obscenely expensive”. It looks great though..If anyone is in Denver this week, they should definitely check it out.

Here is an overview of the work and an interview with Luke.

Overlap.org and Sound Arts Host : Overlap Salon 02 - Max/MSP/Jitter

Wednesday night July 30th, 2008 from 7-9 pm @ Sound Arts Recording Studio 520 Hampshire street, suite #206 SF, CA 94110

Overlap Salon 02 event brings together users of Cycling 74′s legendary “build-it-yourself” software universe Max/MSP/Jitter, and it will focus on interfaces that can be used in tandem with Max/MSP/Jitter. We will meet, exchange knowledge, advice, and software patches. Max/MSP/Jitter patches covered in the Salon will also be shared on Overlap.org following the event. All participants are required to bring your their own laptop, beer (if u want) and thinking cap. WIFI provided.

This event is free but donations are *greatly* appreciated to keep this series running !!

(more…)

Creative Commons Case Studies, Metrics Project, and CC Integration Tools at ISEA 2008 Singapore

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Read this document on Scribd: Creative Commons Case Studies, Metrics Project, and CC Integration Tools at ISEA 2008 Singapore

I’ve been here with my new media art homies of yester and today at ISEA 2008 in Singapore. I had the pleasure as well to speak at the CC Singapore launch yesterday and whipped up my feeder slide deck for this coming week’s conference in Sapporo on Commons Research, CC Metrics and CC Case Studies. It is going to be a lot of fun. I just have to remember to sleep a bunch today on my flights from Singapore to Sapporo, Japan.

I will then be heading to the BETA location in Guangzhou again for most of August. More news on that shortly and what I will be doing with most of my time.

Time to sort through my thoughts on this flight…the need for downtime will never come! Just get used to it Jon!

Hi all, welcome to a new project which is a collaboration between Fabricatorz and Garage Biennale. Here are two levels of scale about the project:

“Art show in Guangzhou, China in September 2008 and then in San Francisco November 2008.”

And, a few more sentences…

“Garage Biennale and the Fabricatorz are bringing you Cantocore, a research project investigating contemporary art and culture between Canton (Guangdong) and cities around the world. The initial focus is a contemporary art exhibition with two versions of the same show in San Francisco and Guangzhou, China.”

There is a solid line-up of artists working on projects at present for both shows with the main concept being the ideas of import and export where projects in both locations are the same, but different versions.

Lu re-blogged the Cantocore Home Concert Preview we are doing next WED in SF, and so, I’m pushing out this post about the Cantocore project which is a contemporary art show that Lu, myself and Justin Hoover are pushing out this early September and November. The first instance of Cantocore is to generate some funds to help in production of the artwork. No one is getting paid from the raising of monies to support art production, so we are putting on a concert to preview the artwork for the show.

Lu wrote about here:

What it will take to make an art show. You will need three things: Artists, Space and Money! Sometimes these three things don’t come so easy, don’t they?

These are the things we are pushing right now for Cantocore exhibition, a show in both Guangzhou China and San Francisco this fall. There is a home concert preview party coming Wednesday 7/23 to fund the production of the shows. I am not a very good sales woman, but really want to make this one works!

Visit Cantocore site for information about the show, artists, and detail about the preview concert. Performing musicians for the the preview concert are Ma Jie and Christopher Willits.

And then there is a follow-up post on the Cantocore website:

Cantocore Home Concert Preview is coming up next Wednesday July 23rd, 7-9 PM in San Francisco. Right now our RSVP deadline for this event is extended to Monday, July 21st. And tickets are on sale right now for $50 USD! All money goes to the production of the Cantocore exhibition in Guangzhou and San Francisco. And, all contributions will be rewarded with praise, promotion in printed materials and on this website.

This event is a preview of the coming exhibitions, and also a home concert featuring Chinese traditional instrument musician Ma Jie and electronic musician Christopher Willits.

To reserve your tickets please do one of the following:

Call Justin at 415-425-1647
Email: jhoover.charles@gmail.com
Or use Paypal option

We are eager to raise some funds from those interested in the ideas which will gain both a plug on the http://cantocore.com website and then in our printed material. Feel free to ask questions here on this blog post publicly, or send us email about this.

Please participate in this project and if in SF, RSVP by next MONDAY, July 21 to come to the Cantocore Home Concert Preview.

I have cool wife! Check out this documentation of her project on display now at McBean Gallery at SFAI in recently sunny San Francisco. The show is totally free and interesting.

Adam has helped me document the installation in the Walter & McBean Galleries. This is part of the exhibition “We Remember the Sun”, on view from now till Sept 19th. Documentation video-taped by Adam Barczak.

This documentation footage is quite great and feels like some type of 3d model rendering or something. Speaking of which my cousin, Brad Phillips, is here this week working on pulling together his resume, doing some 3d modeling of upcoming projects, and generally hanging out. Great to have him here!

Lu’s art work is taking off. Our friend Josette from Gray Area Gallery contacted me out of the blue because she heard about Lu’s great artwork. The result is that Lu’s artwork is showing all Saturday night during an all female-themed event.

To take it a step further, I said to Lu, you gotta do something new too! Something I have been batting around for ages with Mark Hellar and others is an event where people’s hard drives can be played back. Well, Lu’s hard drive is being played back on 3 screens live for the last half of the night!

More from Lu’s blog:

This coming Saturday, my videos will be screening at Gray Area Gallery from 8PM-4AM. Man, it’s an 8 hours screening! It’s hard to do without some partying! So this is a pride party night with all female DJs from San Francisco and LA.

My videos will be projected on three screens in the main space. From 8-10PM, they will be showing “The Plum in the Golden Vase”, “The Unique Dancers”, “Panda Express”, “Bump’n Grind”, “Don’t Talk About Politics’. After 10PM and the rest of the night, three screens will shuffle through video clips from my hard drives. They are clips of out takes of above videos, videos I have never shown, and old works back to 2001. This become a project itself I call it “Scratch”. Watch out! Dangerous dangerous!!

Text from Gray Area Gallery:

This Saturday night we will be inviting friends and family over for a Female Themed Pride Party. We thought it would be fun to celebrate and are excited to welcome- 3 talented queer female djs from los angeles: ANON, DAISY-O, and KIM ANH that produce Booby Trap.
They will be rocking Pride Saturday alongside San Francisco’s own DJs QZEN, ALONA, and, SIMILAK CHYLD.

BOOBY TRAP
is a weekly boob-friendly dance party in East Hollywood that attracts a crowded floor of hot, sassy, and did we mention hot? Ladies dance to upbeat electro pop and new wave from DJs ANON, DAISY-O, and KIM ANH (http://www.myspace.com/clubboobytrap). While the Hollywood crowds flock to Sunset, the savvy ladies East of Highland head to Booby Trap.

GAB would like to invite you to a special evening dedicated to celebrating women in honor of San Francisco’s pride weekend. We will be showing selected pieces from DEER FANG and an installation in our mezzanine.

DEER FANG

is a video artist working in San Francisco and Guangzhou. Her earlier projects investigate the condition of video in art making and the dynamics within the production process through participation, improvisation, real-time and socialization. Her current work uses common formats from popular culture such as the news, reality TV show, music videos, and online videos to dissect culture and political meanings in the media and in our everyday society. Fang studied in School of Visual Art with Luca Buvoli and completed her BFA in Graphic Design in 2005. She received MFA in New Genres (Video+ Performance) at the San Francisco Art Institute with Tony Labat, Paul Kos and Okwui Enwezor in 2007.

8 - 10 pm: Reception for Deer Fang (free wine)
10pm to Late (after-hours): DJs and Performances

Free before 10 pm
$10 after

Event proceeds support GAB & Bitch Magazine “feminist response to pop culture”.

Heya, my buddy Christopher Willits, who did a ccMixter remix contest previously, is playing in Southern China, including in Guangzhou, and please go see it for many different reasons! I wish I was in China to go see him play right now, but in SF for some more weeks.

Photo by Buzz Andersen

Here are the show dates from his site:

CHINA TOUR DATES - CHRISTOPHER WILLITS AND DICKSON DEE

Confirmed dates for China, right after last shows in Japan.. very excited for this.

:: Christopher Willits / Dickson Dee - South China Tour ::

JUNE 26th - SHENZHEN CITY
Mooka Space

address: F3 Block,Mooka Space,Enping Road,Oversea Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China
http://www.myspace.com/mookaspace
time:20:00
ticket:50 RMB
organized by: Noise Asia
co-organized by: Mooka Space

JUNE 27th - GUANGZHOU CITY
Gula Space

address: NO.1 Jian She Liu Ma Lu, Guangzhou, China
http://www.myspace.com/gulatang
time:20:00
ticket:50 RMB
organized by: Noise Asia & Gula Space

JUNE 28th - FOSHAN CITY
Ninliho Gallery

add:No.1402,Hai’er road,Guicheng,Nanhai,Foshan,Guangdong
http://www.sayyes.cn/blog
time:20:00
ticket:free
organized by: Ninliho Gallery & Noise Asia

links:

CHRISTOPHER WILLITS

http://www.christopherwillits.com
http://myspace.com/christopherwillits
http://www.overlap.org

DICKSON DEE

http://www.myspace.com/dicksondee
http://www.dicksondee.com
http://www.dicksondee.com/blog/