Exhibition Related Event
ACE Projects at the Lounge: PlayTech Opening Reception
Friday, May 17, 5-7 pm
Orange Lounge, South Coast Plaza
Free and open to public

Exhibition Credits
ACE Projects at the Lounge is coorganized by Aimee Chang, OCMA curator of contemporary art and Simon Penny, professor of Art and Engineering and co-director, ACE program, UC Irvine. Major support for Orange Lounge programs is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Orange Lounge design and construction funded by the Segerstrom Foundation. Technical support provided by Integrated Media Systems. Special thanks to the Beall Center for Art + Technology.

Museum Information
Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach is located at 850 San Clemente Drive. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, with extended hours Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is $10/adults; $8/seniors and students; children twelve and under and OCMA members are free.  OCMA is open free to the public every Thursday. For more information, call 949.759.1122 or visit http://www.ocma.net .

Click here for directions to the Orange Lounge (opens new window)

ROM Conversion to Polar Landscapes – A Landscape for the Third Culture

Marko Peljhan

Wednesday May 16th 12.30-2pm — ACE Teleseminar Room

The critical issue facing art and science is the lack of communication and real exchange between these two fields. The building up of a common knowledge base and the systems of interaction (interdisciplinarity) would finally establish each of these discrete knowledge fields as permanent and stable partners to the other. In general, the push towards interdisciplinarity between these creative fields is still resisted in the academy at large and at the level of political decision making (where it would be useful for scientific and artistic strategies to be considered within policy making).
Engineering and science on the one hand, and creative arts and humanities on the other are, at their best, instrumental at setting the path of evolution of knowledge. They all feed human curiosity and vision, but together, as a synergy, they would make a remarkable planetary evolutionary force. However, this synergy will never happen if we do not slowly reconstruct a common history, reflecting on these fields from a new perspective and thereby creating a basis for a common future path.
In my work, I try to bridge this divide, which is real and a lot of the time hidden behind a well-rehearsed rhetoric of acquiescence to established norms that have less to do with the visionary energy of science and art and more to do with the preservation of the status quo of capital and inherited or assumed power. Of course, it goes without saying, that the current dispensation still does not support the possibility of this synergy, both in political and economic terms, and consequently a shift in priorities and attitudes will have to be effected if we want to maximize the creative potential of both fields. There are many ways in which synergy can be achieved, one of these is to build communication systems which foster exchange, both in terms of hardware and content. Last but not least, I strongly believe in the individual dimension of these group interactions. It is necessary to build a culture of activism amongst arts and science practitioners if synergies are to be established and fostered, when and wherever possible. The debate revolves around a change of culture and a creation of a new, third, synergetic creative culture, built on the experience and knowledge of the visionaries of past centuries and fuelled by our own twin forces of curiosity and responsibility.

BIO:

Marko Peljhan was born in 1969 and studied theatre and radio directing at the University of Ljubljana and in 1992 founded the arts organization Projekt Atol in the frame of which he works in the performance, visual arts, situation and communications fields. In 1995 he founded the technological branch of Projekt Atol PACT SYSTEMS, which started by creating an online satellite navigation urban interface project, the UCOG-144 and in 1999 he founded the Projekt Atol Flight Operations, which serves as the organizational branch for flight and
spaceflight related projects. In 1995 he co-founded LJUDMILA (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab), and from 1996 on worked at there as programs coordinator. He coordinates the Insular Technologies high frequency global radio network imitative and the Makrolab (1997-2007) project and works as flight director of the parabolic art/science flights with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Moscow and the MIR – Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research consortium. From 2001 to 2004 he was member of the strategic council for information society established by the government of the Republic of Slovenia. In 2003 he created a
mobile containerized media lab-media literacy project, Transhub-01/Mobilatorij. His work was presented at major international exhibitions such as documenta X in Kassel, 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Ars Electronica, Media City Seoul, Gwangju Biennale, Manifesta, Venice Biennale and ISEA. In 2000 he received the Medienkunst prize at the ZKM, in 2001 the Golden Nica, together with Carsten Nicolai for their work Polar and in 2004 the Unesco Digital Media Art Award for Makrolab. He is currently associate professor of interdisciplinary studies in Art and Media Arts and Technology at UC Santa Barbara and director of Projekt Atol, where he also initiated the music label rx:tx. From 2005 on, he is coordinating the design and utilization projects for the final Arctic and Antarctic Makrolab related projects in the framework of the Interpolar Transnational Art and Science Constellation.

Directions to ACE/UCI

Experience and Abstraction: Bodily Knowledges and Interaction

Katja Kwastek, Keith Armstrong, Perry Hoberman, Simon Penny

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Audio & Video

Simon Penny

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Keith Armstrong

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Perry Hoberman

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Katja Kwastek

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Final panel discussion

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Monday May 7th, 11am-2pm — ACE Teleseminar Room (ACE Complex - UCI building 522)

Overview

This symposium addresses fundamental questions regarding the creation of, and theorisation of, interactive artworks, specifically around issues of embodied engagement. These practices are radically interdisciplinary, in that they attempt a negotiation between two world views whose opposition has structured western culture for 200 years: the values inherent in computational technology, structured around and valorising notions of disembodied information and abstract symbolic representation, and the traditions of the arts, whose commitments are towards embodied practices, performative values, and generation of immediate, affective and persuasive multi-sensorial experience. The full force of some of these disjunctions is felt most clearly by the practitioner in the complex process of realisation of cultural artifacts employing these technologies. Contemporary digital arts practice is shaped, in large part, by the ramifications of the disjunctions discovered in a process where technological components formulated for instrumental ends are applied to goals which exceed these instrumental conceptions.

Katja Kwastek is an art historian, currently directing the research project “Interactive Art” at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research in Linz. Her research area is media art history, focusing on the aesthetics of interaction in digital media art.
She studied history of art, archaeology and history in Muenster, Cologne and Florence. From 2001 to 2006 she was assistant professor at the art history department of the University of Munich. She has curated exhibition projects, lectured profusely and published many books, including Ohne Schnur. Art and wireless communication, Frankfurt 2004.

Interactive Art as aesthetic experience
Interactive Art does not only require an action of the visitor for the work to become realized, often this action is a central aspect of the work and therefore the focal point of its aesthetic strategy. This paper asks, how this new form of aesthetic experience can be described and analysed. Art history needs new methods to approach the aesthetics of interaction to enable a better understanding of the artistic strategies and reception processes that determine these works.
The paper discusses examples from different fields of interactive art, focussing on strategies of embodied experience.

Keith Armstrong is an Australian/English interdisciplinary media artist, Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Creative Industries Research Fellow and currently a CalPoly Visiting Professor for the Spring Quarter, working in collaboration with their Liberal Arts and Architecture Faculties. He is in the US to show, tour and teach around his internationally awarded work ‘Intimate Transactions’. (http://www.intimatetransactions.com).

Ecology, Performance and Collaboration - Embodying Intimate Transactions.

Intimate Transactions is a dual site, telematic installation currently been shown here in the US. It allows two people located in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using only their bodies (predominantly their backs and feet), using two identical interfaces called ‘Bodyshelves’. During a 30-minute, one-on-one session their physical actions allow them to individually and collaboratively explore immersive environments. Each participant’s own way of interacting results in quite different, but interrelated animated and generative imagery, real time generated audio (seven channels), and three channels of haptic feedback (felt in the stomach and back). This experience allows each participant to begin to sense their place in a complex web of relations that connect them and everything else within the work.

Intimate Transactions is an investigation in creating embodied experiences that are both performative and improvisational by harnessing individual, performative languages of ‘untrained’ bodies as a means to engender understandings of ‘ecological’ relationship. It arose from a deep collaboration between media artists, performance practitioners, sound artists, hardware and software engineers, a furniture maker and a scientific ecologist. Our entire process was informed by a praxis-led approach to art making that stressed embodied connectivity and inseparability.  This allowed us to understand how participants might move within the constraints of a particular interface, allowing us to shape and form the overall phrasing and sensibilities of their experiences, whilst maintaining the unique nature of their collaborative experiences.

Perry Hoberman is an acclaimed media and installation artist whose work often focuses on the boundaries and battles between art and technology. Working with a variety of technologies, ranging from the utterly obsolete to the seasonably state-of-the-art, he has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. In 2002 he was both a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellow. His installation “Timetable” was awarded the Grand Prix at the ICC Biennale ‘99 in Tokyo, and “Systems Maintenance” won a 1999 Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction. “Unexpected Obstacles”, a retrospective survey of his work, was exhibited in 1998 at the ZKM Mediamuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany, and before that at Gallery Otso in Espoo, Finland. Hoberman is represented by Postmasters Gallery in New York, where he has had numerous one-person exhibitions. Since 2003, Hoberman has lived in Los Angeles, where he is an Associate Research Professor in the Interactive Media Division at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

Interactivity: an abstraction chats up a metaphor

The radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner—the idea that human activity can only be understood externally, without recourse to internal psychological states and processes—has long been out of favor. Yet it could be argued that as interaction designers, we are essentially forced to act as behaviorists; we have no access to our users’ states of mind, only their physical actions. Further, it has to be admitted that—given the current state of sensing technologies—we can’t even keep track of most of these actions, even when we start to move beyond the one eye/one finger paradigm of mouse, monitor and keyboard. Nonetheless, we often attempt to extrapolate some state of mind from our limited apprehension of a user’s actions. It follows that any idea we might form of their “state of mind” is at best an abstraction, at worst a fraud. In addition, since we are generally concerned with interaction between human and machine, it’s a given that at least one of the party’s “state of mind” is metaphoric at best. So if interaction is a conversation (as it is often defined), what are we left with? An abstraction conversing with a metaphor. Might it not be better (like the behaviorists) to give up any pretense at dealing with states of mind altogether?

Simon Penny is founder of the Arts Computation Engineering (ACE) program at UCI. He has been making interactive installations, writing about interactive art and teaching related issues for over twenty years. He edited an early volume on digital arts : Critical Issues on Electronic Media (SUNY 1995), curated Machine Culture, an international survey exhibition of Interactive Installation in 1993, has had residencies at ZKM, GMD and elsewhere, won the 1998 Cyberstar award and honorable mention in Prix Arts Electronica 1999, etc.

Pin the Tail on the Trojan Horse

The computer may be viewed as the reification of a rationalist world view in that the hardware/software binarism, and all that it entails, is little but an implementation of the Cartesian dual. Inasmuch as these technologies reify that world view, these values permeate their very fabric. Social and cultural practices, modes of production and consumption, inasmuch as they are situated and embodied, proclaim validities of specificity, situation and embodiment contrary to this order. Due to the economic and rhetorical force of the computer, the academic and popular discourses are persuasive. Thus, where computational technologies are engaged by social and cultural practices, there exists an implicit but fundamental theoretical crisis. An artist, engaging such technologies in the realization of a work, invites the very real possibility that the technology, as Trojan Horse, introduces values inimical to the basic qualities for which the artist strives. The very process of engaging the technology quite possibly undermines the qualities the work strives for.  This situation demands the development of a ‘critical technical practice’ (Agre). This paper explores some of these issues.

Click here for directions to ACE/UCI

Bioneering: Hybrid Investigations of Food

Deena Capparelli, Fritz Haeg, Pearl Ho, Roman Jaster, Christine Nguyen, Claire Pentecost, Lisa Tucker + Ron Chiarello, and Claude Willey, Lesley Stern, Alyssa Pisano.

April 26 - May 11 — Room Gallery, UC Irvine

Opening Reception: April 26
Room Gallery, UC Irvine
6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

A gathering of artists, scientists, scholars, activists and community organizers sharing their work
concerning food production, consumption & distribution.

Artists: Deena Capparelli, Fritz Haeg, Pearl Ho, Roman Jaster, Christine Nguyen, Claire Pentecost, Lisa Tucker + Ron Chiarello, and Claude Willey
Reading by Lesley Stern, UCSD
Demonstration by Alyssa Pisano, Master Gardener
Performance of “Food Diagnostic Activism at Home” by Pearl Ho

For more information or registration, please email Lisa Tucker at tuckerl@uci.edu

ACEd 2006

Exhibit of 1st year ACE students

Opening: Sept 21-Oct 3, 5-7pm — CALIT²

ACEd 2006 is an exhibit of first year ACE students. Directions to CALIT² can be found at this location:
http://www.calit2.net/about/info/uci/index.php

More information on the exhibits and the artists can be found here:

http://ace.uci.edu/aced2006

Ubicomp 2006

September 17-21, 2006 — Newport Beach Marriot Hotel, Orange County

Ubicomp 2006, the Eighth International Conference of Ubiquitous Computing, will be held in Orange County, California, September 17-21, 2006, hosted by the University of California, Irvine. Ubicomp is the premier international forum for research in ubiquitous computing, bringing together designers, computer scientists, social scientists, and artists, to discuss recent developments and future advance. Registration is now open.

http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2006/

ZeroOne San Jose

A Global Festival of Art on the Edge & the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA2006)

AUGUST 7-13, 2006 —

The ZeroOne San Jose Festival will transform San Jose into the North American epicenter for the intersection of art and digital culture by showcasing the world’s most innovative contemporary artists. ZeroOne San Jose is artists making art and using technology as a tool to do so. It is not technology for technology’s sake. ZeroOne San Jose is a multi-dimensional, startling and brilliant audience event - with exhibits, live cinema, performances, workshops, and youth activities. All are one-of-a-kind, many never-before, only-here experiences. Here are some details about what you will find at ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge…

Visit the conference website for more information:
http://www.01sj.org/

Umweltforshöw

Delvin Hanson, Cina Hazegn, Eric Kabisch, Kevin Ponto.

May 18-27, 2006 — The Beall Center for Art and Technology

Programmable Visions: On the Emergence of Computer and Biological Code-Scripts

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Department of Modern Culture and Media Brown University

Thursday, May 11 — 12:15-2:45, ACE Teleseminar Room

Why are images proliferating at a time when their power to index reality is waning?  How and why have non-transparent technologies, such as computers, become conflated with transparency?  This talk argues that the answer to these questions lies in the unforeseen emergence of programming languages.  Drawing connections between early genetics and computer engineering, this talk argues that digital computing’s “programmability” its return to a “clock-work” universe-encapsulated mid-twentieth century dreams of biological heredity.  Rather than foreshadowing DNA, as many have argued, early ruminations on the existence of a genetic code-script that conflated execution and legislation, such as Schrodinger’s What is Life?, foreshadowed the emergence of a code-based causality, which software-not DNA-would, and could only, instantiate.

Wendy Chun is Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2005), and co-editor (with Thomas Keenan) of New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (Routledge, 2005).  She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and a Wriston Fellow at Brown. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Programmed Visions: Software, DNA, Race.

Directions: The ACEbase is complex 522, behind Bonney Research Center, in the shadow of the Science Library.
See map at
http://www.ace.uci.edu/index.php/weblog/contact/

Wired For Sex

Paulina Borsook

Wed, April 12, 12:15-2:45 — ACE teleseminar room

Free Range Intellectuals
Arts Computation Engineering
2005 - 2006 Lecture Series
Lecture Series Organised by Simon Penny

A slide show with unanswered questions. An investigation into the intersection of sex and technology. A project both explicit and non-pornographic,Touching on subjects such as the materials-science, engineering challenges, health hazards of sex-toys, and how, as with other engineered products, high-end domestic boutique producers square off against off-shore manufacturers.

“Wired For Sex” also attempts to make some mappings back and forth between a larger, contemporary, cultural context and the personal sphere of sexuality. It’s been said that every day, computers are making people easier to use, One of the issues raised by the project is the question of how the current bias towards instrumentality affects our feelings about our erotic lives. Images both scientific and archival will accompany the talk.

Paulina Borsook (MFA in fiction/Columbia University; AB psycholinguistics with a minor in philosophy/UC-Berkeley) has been writing about culture and technology for more than 20 years.  Author of the critically acclaimed “Cyberselfish, a critical romp through the terribly libertarian culture of high-tech”, her fiction, essays, journalism, and humor pieces have been published in venues such “Wired”,"Salon" and “The New York Times” and have been widely anthologized. She has been a frequent commentator on NPR and on the Pacifica radio network. She is currently at work on various spoken-word and public-art projects.

Directions: The ACEbase is complex 522,
behind Bonney Research Center,
in the shadow of the Science Library.

See map at
http://www.ace.uci.edu/index.php/weblog/contact/

Design principles for open-ended function-creation in machines and nervous systems

Peter Cariani
Department of Physiology, Tufts Medical School

Monday, March 6th 12:30-2pm — ACE teleseminar room

Lecture Series Organised by Simon Penny
This talk co-sponsored by
UCI department of Anatomy and Neurobiology

How does one go about building artificial devices that are capable of growing new structures that create novel functions in an open-ended manner? How does one organize a system that can continuously construct itself? How do we construct autonomous systems with intentions of their own, i.e. whose embedded purposes steer their behavior? How do we construct neural networks that can create new internal signals for themselves that can be imbued with meaning?

We will discuss various primitive artificial mixed analog-digital systems (von Neumann’s kinematic self-reproducing automaton, Ashby’s homeostat, Pask’s electrochemical assemblage), their underlying functional principles, and their similarities to biological systems. We will also consider the brain as a self-organizing mixed analog-digital cybernetic system in which feedback loops link internal and external events to create anticipations of consequences (meanings) and to steer behavior in accordance with internal goals (pragmatics). Finally we will outline an alternative vision of neural networks in which the basic signals are temporal patterns of spikes. Such temporal coding makes possible signal multiplexing, broadcast and selective reception, statistical nonlocal storage of temporal memory traces, and creation of new signal types, topologically more like radio or internet than telegraph network or phone switchboard.

New Media, Technology, and the Humanities

Conference at UC Irvine

Feb 17-18, 2006 — Humanities Instructional Building 135

The Department of Film & Media Studies and HumaniTech® Proudly Present:

New Media, Technology, and the Humanities A Conference at UC Irvine

Friday-Saturday, February 17-18, 2006

Given the growing importance of digital technologies in contemporary culture, the humanities should be well positioned to offer perspectives on cultural communication. The fast pace of technical innovation, as well as the rapid development of academic disciplines relating to individual media or to discourse on media, also pose a challenge to the humanities. This conference seeks to articulate the relation between media history, digital culture and the humanities. Panel discussions and demonstrations will focus on the following topics:

Friday, February 17, 9:00 AM to 12:45 PM
Digging: Media / Archeology

Lev Manovich, Visual Arts, UC San Diego Erkki Huhtamo, Department of Design/Media Arts, UCLA Tara McPherson, Division of Critical Studies, USC School of Cinema-Television Jennifer Urban, Intellectual Property Clinic, USC Law School Mark Poster, History, UC Irvine.

2:00 PM to 5:00 PM Texting: Digital / Humanities

Jeffrey Schnapp, French & Italian, Stanford University Eyal Amiran, Comparative Literature, UC Irvine Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Communication, UC San Diego Mark Hansen, English and Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago Rita Raley, English, UC Santa Barbara

5:15 PM - Public Reception, Beall Center for Art & Technology

Saturday, February 18, 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM Gaming: Remix / Culture

Rosemary Coombe, Law & Cultural Studies, York University Andrew Herman, Communication, Wilfred Laurier University Robert Nideffer, Studio Art & Computer Science, UC Irvine Henry Lowood, History of Science & Technology, Stanford University Libraries John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist for Xerox Corp., and former Director, Xerox PARC.

Free and open to the public Organized by Barbara Cohen and Peter Krapp Supported by: Arts Computation Engineering (ACE), Beall Center for Art & Technology, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Department of Film & Media Studies, HumaniTech®, Humanities Center, International Center for Writing and Translation, School of Humanities, UC Humanities Research Institute.

For more details, please visit our website at: http://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitech/

Before code lost its body: Things-That-Thought without Software

Nicholas Gessler

12:30 - 2pm — ACE Teleseminar Room

Knowledge or Information? Blogs, Wikis and Listservs: A Panel Discussion

5-5:30pm — 135 Humanities Instructional Building, UCI

Reception to follow in HIB 137
Sponsored by the UCI Libraries and HumaniTech

The Internet has spawned new genres of publication, with accompanying new vocabulary--blogs, wikis, and listservs--digital forms of diaries, journals, and newsletters. These digital platforms vary in both quality and content while spanning modes of expression such as personal reflection, commentary, collaborative editing and diatribe. The areas of specialty are as diverse as any, ranging from global issues of media, gender, politics, human rights, philosophy, and community, to individual travel logs, movie reviews, and workplace gossip. Like many other forms of new media, they are controversial: lauded by some and censured by others, with critical examination of issues a still significant gap. Come join our panelists as they facilitate dialogue on the impact and ramifications of these new forms of publication.

Panelists:
Josh Fouts
Director, Center on Public Diplomacy, USC

Czeslaw Jan Grycz
CEO, Octavo.com

Elizabeth Losh
Writing Director, Humanities Core Course, UCI

Kevin Roderick
Former LA Times editor and founder/publisher of LAobserved.com

Moderator:
Lynn Mally
Professor of History, UCI

For more information or special accommodation for a disability, contact HumaniTech at (949) 824-3638, or e-mail: epace@uci.edu

Ontological Theater: Gordon Pask, Cybernetics and the Arts

Andrew Pickering

12.30-1.30 — ACE teleseminar room (building 1)

This talk reviews the contributions to the arts of one of Britain’s leading cyberneticians, Gordon Pask (1928-1996), focusing on his synaesthetic Musicolour machine in the early 1950s, his plans for a cybernetic theatre, his robot-artwork at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the ICA in 1968, the Fun Palace project, and his enduring contributions to cybernetic architecture. I try to relate all these projects to the ontology of cybernetics, a vision of the world as a place of emergent agency in performative interaction.

Andy Pickering ( BA, Oxford (physics) 1970; PhD, London (physics) 1973, PhD, Edinburgh (science studies), 1984) is Professor, Sociology and Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics and The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, and the editor of Science as Practice and Culture. He is currently writing a book on the history of cybernetics in Britain.

Directions: The ACEbase is complex 522, behind Bonney Research Center, in the shadow of the Science Library.

See map at
http://turing.ace.uci.edu/index.php/weblog/contact/#ACEBASE

BioArt and Public Sphere Conference

University of California, Irvine

The BioArt and Public Sphere Conference is hosted by the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). Very Special Thanks to Director David Theo Goldberg and his staff!

This conference aims to bring together artists, biologists, and science studies scholars, to address a broad range of questions about science in the public sphere. The list of possible research domains to be investigated includes, but is not limited to, genomics, tissue engineering, genetic engineering and stem cell research.

1. What types of models of interdisciplinary engagement might facilitate rich, well-informed public participation in scientific discourse?
   
   
2. How do we go beyond the "demo" model often used by science museums and approach the subject matter in an experiential hands-on way that allows for failure, redirection of research questions and the promotion of agency towards an area that is usually reserved for the expert community?
   
   
3. What types of epistemological questions emerge at the intersection of biology, art, and the public sphere? How would an exchange mutually benefit the research areas of each discipline? Under which umbrella could research collaborations of this kind be supported?
   
   

We are specifically interested in the relationship of these research areas to the social landscape of the pharmaceutical industry, the agricultural industry, global trade and corporate license agreements, the framing of biosecurity and biodefense, constructions of disease, and the global politics of the reproductive health industry.

Resources & Affiliations

BioTech Art Workshop

Symbiotica

University of California, Irvine

Artistic Director Oron Catts and key scientific collaborator Gary Cass from the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Western Australia will run a five day intensive workshop where the tools of modern biology are demonstrated through artistic engagement, which in turn gives voice to the broader philosophical and ethical exploration into the extent of human intervention with other living things.

The practical components of the workshop include DNA extraction and fingerprinting, genetic engineering, selective breeding, plant and animal tissue culture and basic tissue engineering techniques.

Open public discussion rounds will be held daily from 5-6pm.

Workshop Schedule:
http://www.publicsphere.parasitelab.net/symbiotica_schedule.php

Participation/Registration:
http://www.publicsphere.parasitelab.net/symbiotica_participate.php

More about Symbiotica: http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/

Misbehaving: Machines Acting Up

Heidi Kumao

6:00 PM — McDonnel Douglas Auditorium

Coffee Reception: 5.30pm
Talk: 6pm

Abstract:
Heidi Kumao will discuss her recent investigations into the use of electronic media as mediator of ordinary interactions.  Recent projects include Wired Wear, a series of womens clothes fitted with custom electronics that assist the user in her daily social interactions, CNNplusplus, an real-time altered cable news broadcast that randomly juxtaposes activist texts and images next to the real news.  She will also show work from Misbehaving: Media Machines Acting Out, a series of female performers.

Bio:
http://www.heidikumao.net
Heidi Kumao is an electronic media artist and Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her work takes the form of intimate robotic/kinetic installations, public broadcasts, single channel videos and animations, and wearable electronics. Sometimes comedic in nature, the creation of these machines and mechanisms for public performance is meant to heighten the publics awareness of ordinary social interactions.  Professor Kumao uses technology to address feminist issues and insert a female point of view into the world of high-tech innovation.  Her project Misbehaving: Performative Media Machines Act Out, is a series of three female performers for intimate installations. In each tableau, a hybrid machine being performs: a kinetic, electronically controlled machine speaks with a visual voice of erratic physical gestures and video imagery.  As a combination of performance and robotics, they represent women and girls who disobey or resist external pressures and expectations.

Kumao has exhibited her work at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fundaci Joan Mir, Barcelona, Spain, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Recent Grants and Fellowships include:
The New York Foundation for the Arts, the Creative Capital Foundation and a Microsoft Research Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University. 

For more information please call (949) 824-2109

Credits:
This lecture is part of the Hybrid Media Lecture Series. The Hybrid Media Lecture Series is organized by the Arts Computation Engineering (ACE) Program and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

The series is sponsored by The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Calit2 and the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

Eccentric Orbits: ACE Student Show

The ACE 1st year graduate students

6:30pm — Calit2 Media Arts Lab, 2nd floor

An exhibit curated by the 1st year graduate students in Arts, Computation, and Engineering at UC Irvine

Opening reception: Thursday, May 26th from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.

Open weekdays, 12-6pm and Saturday, June 4, 12-4pm.

Closed Memorial Day Weekend May 28-30.

See http://ace.uci.edu/orbits/ for more info.

The Tuning of the Media

Edward F. Niecikowski

5:00pm — Calit2 Room 3008

This talk parallels R. Murray Schafers book The Tuning of the World with the soundscape of the virtual world. By comparing the two environments, an understanding of the function of modern sound design and music becomes more clearly defined. Examples of past projects and commercial releases will demonstrate the impact of technology and how important sound is to the success of new media.

Edward F. Niecikowski has written music and sound designed for Film, Dance, Theater, Interactive Media and the Internet. Niecikowski’s work has been shown at more than 30 film festivals, as well as on A&E, TNT, Bravo, the Independent Film Channel, the Sci-Fi Channel, KCET-TV and numerous other venues. With his 3 siblings they started The Evil Polish Brothers LLC, and produced board games. Currently he teaches Computer Graphics at Antelope Valley Community College and Film/Video Post Production at The California Institute of the Arts. He holds an M.F.A. in Integrated Media and a B.F.A. in Music Technology from the California Institute of the Arts and an Associate of Applied Science Digital Electronics Technology from Pima Community College. Before coming to California he was a rock-n-roll drummer for 16 years. Recently he has returned to his roots and is reading and collecting heavy metal music and videos for a multi-media presentation of the history of heavy metal. As he puts it, During my rediscovery of metal, I learned I was still a barbarian but one that was educated and cultured. Go figure!

Betalevel Events :: Untitled (Installation)

An installation by Eber Palomares

8pm — BETALEVEL

Eber Palomares makes “repairs” using domestic detritus and mis-handled construction materials. These actions produce alien objects and environments that protectively contain domestic trauma. He lives with his family in Long Beach, CA.

“Home Repair involves the diagnosis and resolution of problems in a home, and is related to home maintenance (the routine prevention of such problems). Many types of repairs are “do it yourself” projects, while others may be so complicated, time-consuming or risky as to suggest the assistance of a qualified handyman, contractor/builder, or other “professional”. Repair is not necessarily the same as “home improvement”.
- Eber Palomares

Directions to Betalevel:

1. Find yourself in front of “FULL HOUSE RESTAURANT” located at 963 N. Hill Street in Chinatown
2. Locate the alley on the left hand side of Full House
3. Walk about 20 feet down the alley (away from the street)
4. Stop
5. Notice dumpster on your right hand side
6. Take a right and continue down the alley
7. Exercise caution so as not trip on the wobbly cement blocks underfoot
8. The entrance to Betalevel is located 10 yards down on left side, behind a red door, down a black staircase.

RealTechSupport—Providing the Support Technology Really Needs!

Marc Böhlen

4:00 PM — Computer Science 432

This lecture is part of the Hybrid Media Lecture Series which is organized by the Art Computation Engineering (ACE) Graduate Program at the University of California, Irvine in collaboration with the Media Arts Layer of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Calit2.

The series is sponsored by The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Cal-(IT)2 and the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

MARC BÖHLEN: Assistant Professor at the University of Buffalo in the Department of Media Study.

4:00 PM, *NEW VENUE: Computer Science 432* Reception to follow.

For more information please call (949) 824-2109

ABSTRACT: Problem solving in the engineering sciences is very different from problem solving in the arts. In my work, I employ the problem solving methods of the engineering sciences within culturally complex domains. I add to accepted engineering design goals (such as reliability and robustness) parameters of cultural agency, and give them all the same valency. As such, I understand my practice as a form of technology support. It delivers practical and theoretical materials for an expanded notion of engineering. Residues of the realtechsupport initiative take on a variety of forms, including artist talks, experimental installations, technical presentations, and advising services for government agencies.

In particular I will discuss the ideas of long-term interaction, human-animal-machine interaction and selective data analysis in the context of three installations: “A Nature Interpretation Center with Second Thoughts (Unseen) – 2002/2003”, “The Open Biometrics Project and its Keeper – 2001/2002 “, and “The Universal Whistling Machine – 2003/2004.”

For more information please visit this URL: www.realtechsupport.org

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Marc Böhlen is trained as a stone mason, art historian and electrical engineer. He worked as technical research staff at IBM Research Laboratories in Zürich for several years. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Fine Arts and Robotics. He is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Buffalo in the Department of Media Study where he directs the MediaRobotics Lab. Marc Böhlen has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the New York Digital Salon, the Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, ARCO Madrid, iMAGES Toronto, and SIGGRAPH Los Angeles, amongst others. He has presented papers at AAAI, CHI, ACM, IEEE and AISB. He has been an invited speaker at Harvard, Cornell, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and the Banff New Media Institute, amongst others. “UWM”, the most recent work, received the 2004 Artificial Life / VIDA7.0 Prize.

Hybrid Vigor 2005

APR 6 - APR 16 — Beall Center for Art & Technology

This year celebrates the first graduating class of the newly formed ACE (Arts Computation and Engineering) graduate program at UCI. Students in this pioneering interdisciplinary program will curate and organize an “open lab” exhibition showcasing their own work and experimentation, as well as other selected new media and interdisciplinary arts initiatives across the UCI campus.

Fifteen years ago, it was considered progressive to recognize that within the arts that there were skills which could enhance the production of computational projects and commodities. Given the rapid transition in digital fields from technical to cultural agendas, it becomes imperative to build a new model for the interrelation between the media arts and technical development. It is now necessary to examine ways in which technical skills, methods and sensibilities can be harnessed to cultural research and cultural production.

The ACE program is oriented toward originators of novel techno-cultural formations, makers of machines, environments, and non-standard technological systems. Cultural practices in interactive environment and installation, interactive performance, immersive interaction, robotic art, broadband interaction, wearable and wireless culture, gaming and interactive literature will be supported. Theoretical and historical perspectives from the Arts, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Artificial Life and a variety of other sources will be combined to create relevant critical synergies and perspectives. The sensibilities of sculpture, installation and performance art, improvisitory dance, drama and music will be central in the production of new cultural forms which depend on realtime computation, interaction, and communication.

Thus, while digital imaging and computer graphics are seen as key areas, the ACE program does not focus upon the production of works whose final form is non-interactive linear image streams, such as films or video. Nor is cultural practice oriented towards sedentary desktop interaction (such as conventional web paradigms) a central focus of the program. Real time computation, robotics and motion control, sensor technologies, immersive media technologies, computer graphics, embedded and wireless technologies will be key technical areas. Computational techniques which focus upon emergent and generative real time performance will be emphasized, including genetic and evolutionary approaches, autonomous and semi autonomous agents and communities of these.

The combination of these fields will produce a new kind of professional ideally equipped to innovate and to provide leadership in emerging techno-culture.

The Talking Experiment

Gregg Bordowitz

— HIB 135

Gregg Bordowitz is a Professor of Film and Media Studies, at the Art Institute of Chicago and is a faculty member of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His work focuses on AIDS activism, queer theory and uncontrollable bodies.  His latest book “The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous and Other Writings 1986-2003” was published by MIT press in fall 2004. Gregg is a recipient of the Rockefeller Intercultural Arts Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Social Robotics and Robotic Socialization - Who Knows?

Natalie Jeremijenko

McDonald Douglas Auditorium

Natalie Jeremijenko, is an Assistant Professor in Visual Art, UCSD, the McPherson Visiting Professor in the Public Understanding of Science at Michigan State University, and the 2005 holder of the Mildred C. Brinn Endowed Chair at Skowhegan. She is known to work with the Bureau of Inverse Technology.

This lecture is co-organized with the Henry & Susan Samueli Leonardo da Vinci Lecture Series.

Sound, Politics and Burlesque Mechanics

PETER SINCLAIR

4:00 pm — Where: HIB 135

Peter Sinclair is known for his sound installations and other transdiciplinary works which use sound as their principal medium. Excited by technology but handling it with critical irony, Peter Sinclair’s work has moved from burlesque mechanics, through the ill treatment of computers to performance which parodies modern media language in transatlantic streamed collaborations.

Aside from his personal production Peter Sinclair participates in various artists collectives “PacJap” and “Daisy Chain” and he has been working with NewYork based artist GH Hovagimyan since 1996. Their collaborative works include Exercises in talking, a soapopera for laptops, heartbreak hotel, shooter and Rant rant back back rant.

His most recent presentations include:

Transvision (produced in collaboration with Cyrille de Laleu, Presented at Groningen in Holland in August 2004) –

Transvision proposes a purposefully complex relationship to time and space involving the spectator in a non-linear process. This experimentation with automated methods of editing, composing and presentation aims to question the spectator’s outlook on his or her personal perceptual space, and societies use and abuse of digital media. Transvision is an in-situ installation in two parts. The first part an interactive sound installation places the spectator in the obligation to comply with vocal commands (or not experience the piece). The second part consists of a video triptych featuring video of visitors to the sound installation manipulated and projected in the Tchumi Pavilion, (a glass box situated in a distant public space).

Rant Rant Back Back Rant. (Paris: La gaiété Lyrique, Split, Croatia: festival of new media, Amsterdam STEIM fondation).

There are two performers; the ranter and the processor. In English the word “rant” means (verb) to talk in a noisy, excited or declamatory fashion or (noun) a bombastic, extravagant speech. The processor listens to the ranter and grabs live audio which he outputs to loud speakers. The ranter hears the processed sound clips and responds. The performance can be likened to a musical jam session using digital signal processing. In society you often see ranters on the street. They talk about the current events or shout about people in power etc. They often speak the truth. We listen with one ear while pretending not to hear. The two performers process the information in a feedback loop, in real time. What then is the content it’s information gleaned from TV, newspapers, conspiracy theories, hearsay, paranoid delusions etc.

Peter Sinclair is responsible for the Sound Department at Aix en Provence’s College of Arts, Co director with Jerome Joy of Locus Sonus a post graduate sound laboratory and member of the French ministry for culture’s fine arts scientific council.

Main URL:
http://www.nujus.net/

SWIPE at Walter Philips Gallery in Banff, Canada

Beatriz da Costa will be performing her Swipe project at the Walter Philips Gallery in Banff, Canada! Join in for the opening on Saturday Nov 13th and for the artist talks on Sunday Nov 14th.

ALT + CTRL

A Festival of Independent and Alternative Games

October 5 - November 24, 2004
Opening reception: October 7, 6 - 9 p.m.

A festival of independent and alternative games, showcasing the most innovative new concepts in computer games by independent developers, artists and game modders. Not unlike the Sundance Film Festival, ALT+CTRL seeks to cultivate a vibrant independent game community, and bring both the game industry and the general public new and novel applications in game design, game genres, methodologies and approaches to game play. The distinguished list of artists includes Brody Condon, Eddo Stern and c-level.

DORKBOT-SOCAL

KUCI: Opendork Audio Broadcast BBQ

*** JULY 4th 2004 - Noon (SUNDAY)
*** Hosts: Ryan Schoelerman and Mike Boyle
*** Bring: Audio/Electronic Gear, Noise-Making Machines, Recordings, Food, Drinks

Hybrid Vigor

Graduate Exhibition in Arts, Computation and Engineering (ACE)

—

Opening reception: June 3, 6-9 p.m.
Website: http://beallcenter.uci.edu/hybridvigor/

This year launches the newly formed ACE (Arts Computation and Engineering) graduate program at UCI. Students in this pioneering interdisciplinary program will curate and organize an “open lab” exhibition showcasing their own work and experimentation, as well as other selected new media and interdisciplinary arts initiatives across the UCI campus.

ACE Open House for prospective students

-an open house for prospective students

Active Space

Interactive Videodance, Lisa Naugle and John Crawford, with Frederic Bevilacqua

May 12, 2004 - May 28, 2004
Opening reception: May 12, 2004, 8-9 p.m.

Active Space environment installation dates and times:
Sunday - Friday, May 13, 2004 - May 22, 2004, 12-5 p.m. (Saturday 1-5 p.m.)

Interactive Videodance performance dates and times:
May 12 - May 15, 7 p.m.
May 20 - May 22, 7 p.m.
Matinees: May 15 and May 22, 12 p.m.
Performance time: 50 minutes
Gratis tickets: 949 824 2787

Active Space Body Tech Week
May 24 - May 28

Paul Vanouse

Lecture: EXPLORING PECULIAR INTERSECTIONS OF "BIG-SCIENCE" AND POPULAR CULTURE

Sara Diamond “The Art and Science of Interdisciplinary Collaboration”

The Hybrid Media Lecture Series

—

Claire Trevor School of the Arts
The Beall Center for Art and Technology
and Cal(IT)2
present
The Hybrid Media Lecture Series

Sara Diamond
“The Art and Science of Interdisciplinary Collaboration”

Admission is free
Information: (949) 824-4339 or visit http://beallcenter.uci.edu

Sara Diamond, the director of research for the Banff Centre and the
artistic director (media and visual arts) for the Banff New Media
Institute, will discuss her ongoing work in the area of
interdisciplinary collaboration. The lecture will focus on her current
artistic practice, the “CodeZebra” collaborative software and
performance environment. The “CodeZebra” suite currently includes
“performances, collaboration software and wearable and ubiquitous
technology designs.” Diamond will connect this project to general
research in art and science collaboration and present a few examples
of “CodeZebra” implementation.

Swipe - Brooke Singer, Beatriz da Costa, and Jamie Schulte

Performance: March 9, 2004, 7:30 - 10:00 p.m.

Public workshop and demonstration: March 10, 2004, 12 p.m. at the Claire Trevor Theater

Bill Vorn

Lecture: Extreme Robotic Art: Real Noise from Artificial Life

Screen Series - Scott Snibbe

Exhibition and lecture

—

The Beall Center for Art and Technology presents
Screen Series
Scott Snibbe

November 12, 2003 - December 13, 2003
Opening reception: November 12, 6-9 p.m.

ACE Lecture
Screen Series
Speaker: Scott Snibbe
November 6, 2003, 5:45pm
ACE Teleseminar Room

Through the Eye of the Wolf

Exhibition: Bill Tomlinson & Sam Easterson

September 23 - October 26, 2003

Barbara Stafford

Lecture: Artificial Intensity (AI): Images, Instruments and the Technology of Amplification

The Henry and Susan Samueli-Leonardo da Vinci Lecture Series at UC Irvine begins with a talk by the renowned art historian Barbara Maria Stafford, whose work explores the juncture of art and technology. The free lecture, “Artificial Intensity (AI): Images, Instruments and the Technology of Amplification,” will be followed by a reception. For reservations, call (949) 824-1540.
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 2002
TIME: 6 p.m.
LOCATION: McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium, UCI

BACKGROUND:

Stafford, the William B. Ogden Professor of Distinguished Service at the University of Chicago, has brought incisive intellect and scholarly research to the largely uncharted areas of cultural history, specifically in areas where the distinctions between art and science are blurred. Her books include “Body Criticism,” “Good Looking” and “Artful Science.” Most recently, she curated the highly acclaimed exhibition “Devices of Wonder” at the Getty Research Institute in Brentwood, Calif. (http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/choice.html). More information about Stafford is available at http://home.uchicago.edu/~bms6/.

The lecture is part of the Henry and Susan Samueli-Leonardo da Vinci Lecture Series hosted by The Henry Samueli School of Engineering in conjunction with the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. The new series was created to explore and celebrate the intersection of art and technology that began centuries ago with the work of Leonardo da Vinci. For more information about the Samueli School, visit http://www.eng.uci.edu.