SEAM: Somatic Embodiment, Agency & Mediation in Digital Mediated Environments.

Critical Path (Director, Margie Medlin) and University of Western Sydney (Dr. Garth Paine) present SEAM 2010 Agency and Action.

SEAM 2010 follows on from the success of the inaugural SEAM 2009, and promises the same intriguing mix of artistic and academic research and presentations, crossing disciplines and offering a smorgasboard of performances, exhibitions, forums, workshops, laboratories, papers and presentations to specialist researchers and the general public alike.

Underpinning SEAM 2010 is groundbreaking academic and practitioner-based research occurring at the VIPRe Lab (Virtual Interactive Performance Research Environment), at the University of Western Sydney, Macquarie University and Critical Path as well as ongoing research from around the world.  In 2010, SEAM will establish a number of experimental environments to investigate and record the relationship between performer and audience and how notions of agency, embodiment and mediation are altered by interactive technologies. The notion of performance embodied in a myriad of forms made available through the most current technological advances will be thoroughly scrutinized.

The primary focus for SEAM 2010 is to provide a resource rich, stimulating environment for local dancers and choreographers and media artists to interact with local and international leaders in the field of interactive technologies and allied arts disciplines. We want dancers and choreographers to take away with them a raft of new tools, new knowledge, philosophical and performance frameworks, contacts and possible future partnerships in the creation of new or more profound directions within their contemporary choreographic practice.

For further information on SEAM 2010 events, click through the program of events on the left hand menu.

For more information on Critical Path, go to the Critical Path website.

via SEAM2010 Agency and Action: ABOUT SEAM 2010.

InTensions & Bodytext

Collaborative works by: Simon Biggs, Sue Hawksley, Garth Paine

Bodytext

Bodytext is a performance work which uses speech, movement and the body, to question and offer insight into the relations between movement, agency, representation and language.

Using real-time motion capture, voice recognition and interpretive language systems, the dancer's movement and speech are acquired and remediated within the performance space. The dancer's acquired speech is re-written within a projected digital display, the text animated by and re-presenting the performer's gestures. The performer can, through their movements, cause texts to interact and recombine with one another, changing their grammatical composition in the projection.

Visual Artist: Simon Biggs

Choreographer/performer: Sue Hawksley

Sound Artist: Garth Paine

Bodytext was completed through an artists' residency at the Bundanon Trust (Australia) and a subsequent collaborative residency with sound artist Garth Paine at the Virtual Interactive Performance Research Environment (VIPRe) Lab at the University of Western Sydney.

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Details:

Date: Saturday 16th October

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Woodend Barn, Banchory

Cost: £9 / £7

Booking: www.boxofficeaberdeen.com

via DanceLive | Aberdeen's contemporary dance and live music Festival.

The Conversation Weekend, on 25 & 26 September 2010, will be the culmination of The Lab - a week when invited participants from a range of disciplines spend time in residence at Bundanon responding to the environment, landscape and histories of the site.Artists Diego Bonetto, Nigel Helyer, r e a, Barbara Campbell, Rayma Johnson, Alex Kershaw, Nick Keys, Heidrun Löhr, Richard Scott Moore, Garth Paine, Robyn Backen, Tess De Quincey and Peta Strachan have been working alongside environmental scientists Tim Cohen and Leah Gibbs and weaver and Landcare activist Jim Wallis.Siteworks is led by convenors Michael Cohen, Fiona Winning and Deborah Ely.

via Bundanon Trust - THE CONVERSATION.

The big buzz this week was the surprise emergence of Squarepusher on a project with Ed Banger Records – a surprise because Squarepusher has long been synonymous with Warp. I’ll leave the music blogs to concern themselves with the label. (Resident Advisor goes understated, whereas exclaim.ca offers, snarkily, “Either Ed Banger Records has moved on from the French touch explosion of 2007 or IDM legend Squarepusher has dropped the wacky time signatures for some four-on-the-floor filter-house.”)

Mostly, Squarepusher fans have been having a good time with a funky, fun track and remix that’s free on Soundcloud (the one “label” we all find ourselves on these days):

via Create Digital Music » New Music Listening, Free and Pay-What-You-Will: Shigeto to Squarepusher to Ambienteer.

This year’s event will be held on 15 and 16 October and will focus on interactive digital technologies in performance underpinned by groundbreaking artist and academic research from Australia and around the world.

The two-day program will feature public talks, workshops, performances, and interactive installations including the “Articulated Head”, Australia’s first thinking robot by Australian performance artist Stelarc.

Running alongside the symposium is the groundbreaking and internationally renowned production GLOW by celebrated contemporary dance company Chunky Move. A collaboration with the legendary interactive software creator Frieder Weiss, GLOW features innovative multi-media including motion capture tracking. Utilising the latest in interactive video technologies a digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancers’ movement, rendering no two performances the same. Read more

SEAM participants can purchase tickets to any performance of GLOW for the discounted ticket price of $15. Contact the Box Office on 02 9351 7140 for more information and to book.

Tickets can be purchased via the Seymour Centre’s website (www.seymourcentre.com) or by phoning the Box Office on 02 9351 7940.

SEAM SYMPOSIUM TICKET PRICES
2-day (Friday AND Saturday)
$60 Adult
$50 Early Bird (deadline 24 September)
$40 Concession

1-day (Friday OR Saturday)
$35 Adult
$27 Early Bird (deadline 24 September)
$25 Concession

Anyone who purchases a ticket to SEAM (one or two day) is entitled to a ticket for GLOW for only $15. This ticket price is only available by calling the Box Office (and not available online).

Here are the weblinks for both
GLOW:
and SEAM

ABC The Drum Unleashed - Arts funding: think outside the box.

Ben Eltham has written and excellent and well researched article questioning the status-quo of music, arts funding in Australia. He points out that the vast majority of funding goes to classical music and in particular the symphony orchestras, and that the crumbs left over are all that supports contemporary practice and the development of music that represents our experiences, our stories in the now.

I wrote on this issue also a few years ago - the article can be found here on my blog

The paper examines the funding environment for sound focused art within Australia, be it, digital, new media or analogue. Some of the underlying assumptions commonly applied to sonic artworks, often considered too abstract and intangible for exhibition in art galleries and major public spaces, are discussed.

The paper asks why the audible domain remains subordinate? Why do we not respect and honour the audible culture, the experiential, visceral, instinctive, intuitive, spontaneous, intimate perceptual habitat where the human body is central, where the visceral engagement with sonic architectures dismisses the western mind-body split as hopelessly inadequate. We can listen with the mind, but not without the body.

Not withstanding consideration of the uniqueness of the sonic experience, many experimental sound artists have struggled to find funding support and to create opportunities for the presentation of their work in Australia.

Music based funding is characterized as conservative. The importance placed upon historic, practices has been clearly illustrated by the federal government’s substantial funding increase to the ABC symphony orchestras in early 2005 against the recommendations of the Strong report it commissioned. The report by James Strong, recommended the Queensland, Adelaide and Tasmanian orchestras be reduced in size . The state orchestras are supported by a budget of more than $57 million dollars per annum with a total of $80 to $100 million dollars being earmarked for classical music activities in Australia.

Figures for attendance at symphony orchestra concerts and analyses of the number of unique individuals who attended concerts (rather than repeat attendances) is difficult to find, however the Symphony Australia website has figures for 1999-2001 , which show a total of 990907 attendances with 263537 of those attending free concerts, and 76046 attending school concerts, leaving a total of 651324 ticket purchasing members of the public. This represents a subsidy of $87.51 per paying attendee.

Such subsidy is not and is never likely to be forthcoming for contemporary and experimental music, but what this figure does show is the vast chasm between the establishment institutions, the symphony orchestras and the other classical music endeavours and the music of our time.

As Ben Eltham points out, the orchestras, including ACO identify less than 10% of their performance program as Australian music.

It really is a shame that even after the Strong report, the vast majority of music funding in Australia supports the living archive of classical music and adds nothing new to our culture. It does not assist us in developing a contemporary Australian identity or culture and offers nothing toward the telling of our stories - the stories of now, which critically are well supported in publishing, and in the visual arts.

via Emulator » Emulator.

Additional content for this article, available only online.

Hobby Laser and Materials Buying Advice

October 29, 2009 | Technorati | del.icio.us

+ LINKS

Circuit Schematic

Skycraft Parts & Surplus

Edmund Scientific

Rainbow Symphony

Dragon Lasers

Sunclan

Laser Pointer Forums

Photolexicon

Thomas Wilfred

via makezine.com: Lunchbox Laser Shows.

SUBMIT TO UNSOUND FESTIVAL NEW YORK Deadline: August 23, 2010

BASIC INFORMATION
audience has been invited to participate in Unsound Festival New York, a "festival of advanced music and sound art." Founded in 2003, Unsound is an annual event held in Krakow, Poland; in Spring 2011, the festival organizers will present the second edition of Unsound Festival New York at venues throughout the city. This event will be presented with the Polish Cultural Institute New York and Goethe-Institute New York, with an array of partners including The Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Conceived in 2006, audience is an unprecedented project that explores the cinema as a 21st century concert hall. It is dedicated to the advancement of aural arts by providing wide distribution and new contexts for works by emerging and established sound artists and composers. The centerpiece of audience is a biennial program of 5.1 surround sound works by international artists intended for presentation in movie theaters as "cinema in the dark."

via Submit, audience's Portfolio.

Real-time hand-tracking with a color glove by Robert Y. Wang and Jovan Popović who demonstrate real-time tracking of the 3-D pose and configuration of the hand for gestural user-input and desktop virtual reality. The only components of the system are a cloth glove and a webcam.

via Real-Time Hand-Tracking with a Color Glove.