STRANGE KNOWLEDGE: NOTES ON MEDIA ARTS RESEARCH ON ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS presented by Marc Böhlen

The Geography Colloquium Series, Spring 2011 presents:

Strange Knowledge – Notes on Media Arts Research on Environmental Conditions
Presented by Marc Böhlen

When: Friday, February 4, 2011 @ 3:15 pm
Where: 145H Wilkeson Quad (Reception to follow in the Hallway outside of Wilkeson 108)

The first Department of Geography Colloquium of the Spring 2011 semester will be Friday, February 4, 2011 at 3:15pm in Wilkeson 145H (the GIAL lecture room) with a reception to follow in the hallway outside of Wilkeson 108. Please join us!

Abstract: Media Arts have a history of engaging knowledge from other disciplines. The results that emerge from such engagements can take on odd yet at times revealing forms. In this presentation, Böhlen will discuss examples of media arts that query landscapes and the environment to generate discourses that expert groups (such as environmental scientists) do not readily generate. Böhlen will also discuss how such works can contribute to new research agendas, originating in the arts and feeding back into other disciplines.

Artist-engineer Marc Böhlen designs information processing systems that critically reflect on information as a cultural value. His projects derive qualitative potential from the realm of quantitative information and query the relationship between people and machinery in fundamental ways. Böhlen is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department
of Media Study at the University at Buffalo where he directs the PuCoMe (Public Computational Media) Lab. Recent art work has been shown at the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria, 2010). Recent publications include Ambient Intelligence in the City (Springer, Berlin, 2009) and Future Data Culture (Thresholds No38, MIT, 2011).

For more info on the Colloquium Series, contact Jared Aldstadt at: geojared@buffalo.edu

This Event is Co-Sponsored by the Undergraduate Geography Student Association (UGSA) & Geography Graduate Student Association (GGSA).

 

“Strange Knowledge – Notes on Media Arts Research on Environmental Conditions”

 

Marc Böhlen

Associate Professor,
UB Department of Media Study

 

Friday, February 4, 2011

3:15 pm

145H Wilkeson Quad

 

 

Filed under: Lecture, presentation, speaker series, Jared Aldstadt, Joseph Murray, marc böhlen

15th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S FILM FESTIVAL

The Fifteenth Annual International Women’s Film Festival
@ the Market Arcade 639 Main Street, Buffalo, NY
on February 17, 2011 – March 31, 2011

The festival is running for six consecutive Thursdays and gives film lovers from Western New York a rare chance to see some authentically underground films from all over the world.

The IWFF, which is sponsored by UB’s Gender Institute, consists mostly of little-known films made by un- or underfunded independent women filmmakers. Festival programmer Ruth Goldman, in her second year at the helm, says she likes to cast as wide a net as possible when scheduling the festival. “I believe the festival should provide viewers with the opportunity to see films by women that they would not otherwise have the opportunity to see in a theater,” Goldman says.

Although most mainstream moviegoers will not recognize the filmmakers in the lineup, Goldman, who is an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Media Study and a documentary filmmaker herself, says the point of the festival is not to give viewers something they are comfortable with. Instead, the festival should make viewers uncomfortable, it should make them think, and it should introduce them to new ways of seeing the movies. “As a programmer and educator,” Goldman says, “my intent is to provoke, in the best possible spirit of the word.”

To view the entire Spree Article: http://buffalospreemagazine.com/current/010211film.html

Channel 7 Clip: http://www.wkbw.com/programming/am-buffalo/video/Buffalo-Spree-Magazine—International-Womens-Film-Festival—January-20th-114305439.html

Film Fest Schedule:  http://genderin.buffalo.edu/filmfest.php

 

 

Filed under: Event, festival, Screening, Ruth Goldman

The Eyes of the Skin, Art and Senses: SOUND

The Eyes of the Skin, Art and Senses: SOUND
February 11th through May 22nd
@ Burchfield Penney Art Center 1300 Elmwood Avenue Buffalo, NY 14222

Featuring work by Mark Shepard, J.T. Rinker and Alexandra Spaulding
Curated by Stefani Bardin

Sunday, February 13th at 3pm
Live performance of Mark Shepard’s Hertzian Rain featured in this show.
Hertzian Rain is an interactive and sonorific sound performance.

About the Exhibition:
The Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa wrote a book entitled The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses in which he argued against the isolating ocular-centric paradigm in western culture and its impact on phenomenology in favor of a more holistic model of multi-sensory architecture of integration. The series of exhibitions at The Burchfield
Penney Art Center The Eyes of the Skin: Art and the Senses shifts the focus from visually based art toward work that is grounded in a sensorium of sound, smell, taste and touch.

Work from each individual sense will occupy the for a period of months so the public can focus on each of the four senses separately and over a period of time in order to experience the environment within a different
phenomenological model. After each of the four exhibitions, there will be a comprehensive group show in 2012 throughout the museum, of all the work from each of the four senses (plus some new artists and some new
pieces) that will allow the public to be immersed in this holistic and re-envisioned sensorium of perception.

The first exhibition, Sound, will be an investigation into what Marshall McLuhan calls the re-casting of technology with which to understand and act on the world. The three artists: Mark Shepard, J.T. Rinker and Alexandra Spaulding utilize different aural modalities but also different lenses through which to cultivate and express acoustical
information.

For more information, please visit: http://www.burchfieldpenney.org/?select=exhibitions&data=upcoming

Filed under: Event, exhibition, installation, performance, Alexandra Spaulding, J.T. Rinker, Juhani Pallasmaa, Mark Shepard, Stefani Bardin

Tony Conrad’s “Yellow Movie” audio clip from MoMA Multimedia

Hear an audio interview excerpt with Tony Conrad discussing Yellow Movie (1973):
www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/53/1024

Filed under: exhibition, moma, Museum of Modern Art NY, tony conrad

Küçük Sinemalar! – Experimental Cinema from Turkey

Sun., Jan. 16, 2011 at 3:00 p.m.
@ Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

$8 general, $6 students/seniors, $5 members

Küçük Sinemalar! (Little Cinemas) is a screening of new experimental shorts by a tight-knit of group film and video makers from Turkey, including Can Eskinazi, Eytan Ipeker, Yoel Meranda, Cengiz Yetken, Mustafa Uzuner and DMS MFA candidate Ekrem Serdar.

“Küçük Sinemalar! is a group of media artists, highly cognizant of ideas and aesthetics coming from the North American and European avant-garde, who together also operate the Turkish experimental cinema blog of the same name,” states curator Ekrem Serdar. “Hoping to provide a small survey of experimental practice originating from a continent-straddling nation, the screening will also provide an initial forum for discovery of Turkish avant-garde cinema with a screening of Cengiz Yetken’s 16mm film Of Eh (1968).” The screening is a follow up to “Formless”, a screening of experimental cinema which took place at Istanbul’s Pera Museum. For more information please visit kucuksinemalar.blogspot.com or hallwalls.org.

Filed under: Event, presentation, Screening, Ekrem Serdar, Can Eskinazi, Eytan Ipeker, Yoel Meranda, Mustafa Uzuner, Cengiz Yetken, Küçük Sinemalar!, Turkish experimental cinema, Of Eh

Glazier: PERFORMANCE, EXHIBITION & PRESENTATION

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE WORKSHOP
20th and 21st of January 2011

@ Palazzo delle Arti of Naples, the PAN Museum in Naples, Italy
OLE (Officina di Letteratura Elettronica)

Glazier Exhibition: Middle Orange | Media Naranja
Glazier Performance: [ 8vo ]
Glazier Presentation: Una Piccola Historia della Poesia Elettronica

Exhibition screening of Middle Orange, performance of digital poem [ 8vo ], and paper presentation of Una Piccola Historia della Poesia Elettronica by Media Study Faculty Member, Dr. Loss Pequeño Glazier, as an invited participant at OLE.

The OLE (Officina di Letteratura Elettronica) Workshop of Electronic Literature conference and festival will be the first significant event in the field of digital literature hosted in Italy. The workshop will allow the OLE to introduce the field of Electronic Literature as it is practiced in Italy. Artists and researchers worldwide shall meet and present their research and works. This will permit researchers to present their latest research and artists to premier their newest works.

Filed under: conference, Event, exhibition, festival, performance, presentation, Loss Pequeño Glazier

2010 in review: blog stats

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2010. That’s about 29 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 82 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 146 posts. There were 5 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb.

The busiest day of the year was March 29th with 161 views. The most popular post that day was RON DOUGLAS’ “Unseen Tears” to Screen At Suny Wide Film Festival.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mediastudy.buffalo.edu, facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, twitter.com, and fluxxlab.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for unseen tears, stefani bardin, ishu patel, unseen tears documentary, and buried land.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

RON DOUGLAS’ “Unseen Tears” to Screen At Suny Wide Film Festival March 2010

2

Food and Emerging Media Speaker Series starts February 23, 2010 February 2010
3 comments

3

“BURIED LAND” directed by STEVEN EASTWOOD & GEOFFREY ALAN RHODES premieres @ Tribeca Int’l Film Festival March 2010
1 comment

4

RON DOUGLAS’ “Unseen Tears” Screening Feb. 18th February 2010
3 comments

5

E-POETRY 2011: An International Digital Literature Festival September 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized

CFP: Time Mutations: Vertical Horizons

Call for Proposals:

Since the invention of the clock and the telegraph, space and time have been harnessed to each other in a culturally imposed lock step. Standardizations in train time ultimately led to the establishment of global time zones that persist today in fundamentally structuring our daily experience of the world. Ironically, the standardization of time has had the effect of illuminating the relativity of time and space in even our most mundane experiences. From jet lag and GPS to the syncing of dozens of clocks that seem to multiply around us with every electronic device, we find ourselves constantly adrift in the waters of relative and absolute space and time. Electronic communications technologies from email to live real-time video streaming have intensified this experience in our daily lives, conditioning us to take for granted the relative speed – and lag – of mediated time and space, and to accommodate it with new social conventions and unwritten codes of behavior.

The desire to collapse boundaries of space and time is inherently utopian. To erase cultural and geographic distinctions, and instead inhabit a community in which communication is integrated and instantaneous is a persistent, yet elusive dream. Even when motivated by a generous impulse toward exchange, the desire to dissolve difference in culture, access, time, place and language in the experience of total simultaneity can, of course, never be complete. Seamless or lossless exchange is always thwarted by the embodied nature of communication, culture and technology. Manipulations of time and space through recording and editing techniques may lead us to perceive time and location as particulate states, but ultimately such interventions can never fully reduce experience to such stable or concrete terms.

Time Mutations is a proposal for an exhibition of new artworks that explore these concepts, challenges, and potentials, through a collaboration between two institutions that have historically been deeply invested in experimental media practice. Media practitioners from the Media Art & Design Program at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and at the State University of New York at Buffalo’s Media Study Department have come together to present new projects and provide a platform for interaction between our institutions’ physical and research localities. For this exhibition we are seeking works that focus on individual and collective perceptions of space and time emerging from technologically mediated interaction and exchange. Of particular interest are works in which the concept of time as linear or location as static is successfully challenged, manipulated or collapsed, giving way to alternative experiences and constructions of time, space and place. Explicit failures in these attempts are embraced as both inevitable and interesting – for instance, the failure of technology or mediated social interactions to erase differences in language, cultural protocol, etc.

Proposals for the presentation of existing works as well as new works are invited. Works in every media are welcome including film, video, sculpture, photography, painting, performance, and all genres of electronic and digital media. Limited support for real-time streaming media events and projects will also be available.

Deadline for proposals is February 21, 2011. Please send proposals, questions, or requests for information to: liz.flyntz [at] gmail.com.

Location:

Marke.6 gallery, in the Neues Museum Weimar, Germany is neo-renaissance building constructed in 1869, which currently houses exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.

http://www.klassik-stiftung.de/index.php?id=78

Filed under: call for work, exchange, hypercubism, liz flyntz, multi-dimensionality, mutation, new media, non-linearity, particalization, streaming, synaesthesia, synchronicity, techno-utopia, timeline, video

Nicholas Stedman : ADB in LEONARDO

ADB
Nicholas Stedman
Project MUSE – Leonardo – ADB Project MUSE Journals

Nicholas Stedman ADB is a snake-like, modular robot designed for haptic interactions with people, writhing, wriggling, twisting, and squeezing in response to how it is held and touched. It can be used to explore intimate and emotional relationships with technology through direct physical contact. ADB adapts to and reciprocates the energy one puts into it through one’s body. When touched, it comes to life. When stroked, it seeks more of you. When harmed, it defends. ADB is composed of a series of identical modules that are connected by mechanical joints. Each module contains a servo motor, a variety of sensors, including capacitive touch sensors, a rotary encoder, and a current…

Leonardo – Volume 43, Number 4, August 2010, pp. 414-415
E-ISSN: 1530-9282 Print ISSN: 0024-094X
The MIT Press

View the full article on Project MUSE.

Filed under: publication, Nicholas Stedman

STUDENT SHOW Department of Media Study

Department of Media Study Student Show
Monday, December 13, 2010

Interactive and Installation Pieces and Open Labs begin at 5:00 PM
(though some installations may be up by early afternoon) and will run
through the end of the screening. These will be located in the CFA
atrium, the TV Studio (278), and possibly in the labs.

Screening begin at 6:00 pm in the Screening Room (112 CFA).

Filed under: Event, exhibition, installation, presentation