Image and text source: Telic Arts Exchange

Written for an exhibition with the same title curated by Eduardo Navas at Telic Arts Exchange, Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA. May 25 – June 16, 2007

Text released: May 25, 2007

What separates new media from previous media is, in part, waiting periods that define public and private experience; whether the download of a file from the Internet is taking longer than expected, an e-mail message has not been sent from one server to another for some unknown reason, or a large file is being rendered in video software like Final Cut Pro for output as a viewable movie, new media is largely dependent on constant moments of waiting, often referenced as latency.

Latency is used with three significations in mind. First, is the technological latency that takes place in new media culture due to the nature of the computer: the machine has to always check in loops what it must do, to then execute commands, eventually leading to the completion of a task. This is the case when someone uses Photoshop, Microsoft Word, or any other commercial application; or streams image and sound across the Internet. This constant checking in loops at hardware and software levels opens the space for latency’s second signification, which extends in social space when the user consciously waits for a response that begins and ends with the computer. Latency becomes naturalized when a person incorporates computer interaction as part of his/her everyday activities.

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Text and Image source: Create Digital Music

March 20, 2007

The wireless, Bluetooth-based Wii controller is fast becoming the music control hardware of choice. The latest addition: Yann Seznec’s Wii Loop Machine, a free, Wii-controller looper for Macs. The software is built in Max/MSP using my current favorite way to interface with the Wii controllers, the free aka.wiiremote external for Max. Load in any samples you want, boot up any Mac with Bluetooth, grab your Wii controller, and you can sync, control, manipulate, and muck with loops.

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TV Remix by Philipp Rahlenbeck

Note: This announcement is archived for historical purposes.

Image source: http://fluctuating-images.de

Text source: http://www.netcells.net

Red Light Concert #10
TV Remix – Media criticism in real time
Philipp Rahlenbeck is jumping channels for us
Saturday, November 12, 2005, 8pm
fluctuating images, Jakobstr.3, 70182 Stuttgart

Recently, the BBC opened parts of their programme archive, as an opportunity for VJs to create video mixes out of footage from old documentaries on art, society, and nature. A special licence allowed free treatment of the images.

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Image source: http://www.visitorsstudio.org/session.pl?id=23
Text source: http://blog.visitorsstudio.org/?q=node/31/

VisitorsStudio is a Media Art project, in that it is “art through and with electronic digital media… a hybrid of electronically generated images, sounds, machine processes and possibilities for interaction”[1]. In addition to this definition by media, and equally important to an understanding of the VisitorsStudio project, is how it corresponds with processes, and practices developed by an earlier generation of artists associated with the Fluxus movement who worked with mail art, happenings, performance, art-activism and live art. This text describes some of these connections with past works and then positions VisitorsStudio within the thriving territory of real-time art, software art, net art and participative and collaborative expression in contemporary ‘remix culture’.

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Image and text source: http://01sj.org/content/view/976/52/

Jul 27, 2006

Time Code — the Live Mix at ZeroOne San Jose will feature Mike Figgis’ new interpretations of this seminal work he started in 2000. For this performance Mike Figgis will be “playing” with the image and “re-mixing” the sound to create a new way to experience this story. Shot simultaneously on four cameras and presented in four frames, Time Code tracks the lives of a smitten lesbian lover as she obsesses over her partner’s dalliances and the tense goings-on of a Hollywood film production company. Time Code is, as one of its critics point out, is one of the “first films shot in real time in one take, to be truly interactive, and to present four different concurrent stories filmed simultaneously.”

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Images source: http://wii-wii.us/
Text source:  http://createdigitalmusic.com/
Related: alternative interfaces, controllers, DJ, hardware, video, VJ, wii, youtube & more

While music manufacturers struggle to create “integrated hardware solutions”, enterprising DJs and VJs are picking up US$40 Nintendo Wii remotes and having a blast. Here, the controller gets assigned to audio filters on the computer (I’m guessing the Max/MSP/Jitter external may be at work as it’s on a Mac), and controls glitchy visuals. I’ve been working with the Wii myself, and I’m not quite satisfied with the gestures I’ve gotten out of it yet — just as some of the early launch title games for Wii may not quite have the control scheme perfected yet, so, too, are these early performance attempts a bit limited. But another six months to a year, some more code, and I’m sure we’ll being having Wii DJ/VJ battles.

Image title and source: 16 [R]evolutions (2006) – Eyebeam, NYC

Text source: VJ Theory

Date published: 12/10/06

Performance is so many things: the synchronized sounds of a symphony; actions with words in a play; steps and turns in a dance; words from a pulpit. Performance art, too, is variable, perhaps too multifarious to define, even with semicolons. At traditional performances with traditional support materials, from symphonies with program notes to theatre productions with playbills, performance acts as replay, a repeat of an event, a memorization of a string of notes or a set of lines, a reformulation of a tested formula. Then there are those performances that vary, that respond to the moment, that unfold through the implementation of chance or improvisation or, more and more, digitization. With the insertion of new technologies into performance, the question arises – do actions result from numbers? What indeed is the connection between the physical and the digital? Does the digital component determine the performance, or do actions generate a numeric pattern, which then underlies the piece’s structure?

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