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cream * in transition edition *
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You must be starving. There haven't been any servings of cream the last
half year. We are still here though! Cream is simply in transition. From
a 'one editor newsletter' cream is moving to a era in which not only all
contributors edit their own version of cream, but in which cream is also
inviting outside writers to collaborate with us. Preparing this takes
time, lots of time apparently! But do not worry, this means we are
simply refining the new cream recipe. Very soon the first cream new
style will enter your mail box. In that edition cream will collaborate
with the website and mailinglist betacity.de and writer and curator
Armin Medosch. The German language site betacity.de has developed in a
lively, high quality source of news around art in new media for a German
speaking audience. Cream will give you a taste of it in English, of
course. Armin Medosch is a veteran in on line criticism. He was editor
of Telepolis.de and he has curated many shows and moderated several
debates around media art. We are very happy he finally found time to add
some flavour to cream as well.
But that is all for the next cream! This portion of cream you have in
front of you today is an extra edition, something of an appetizer if you
will, to prepare your taste buds for the next round of creams. This
cream is simply telling you what some of the cream contributors have
been up to or what some other creamies are still working on. Present and
(recent) past projects! There are a lot of nice goodies around out
there. We hope you like this premium selection!
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Steve Dietz: Quake! Doom! Sims!
Tilman Baumgärtel: install.exe/Jodi
Sarah Cook: "Remote" and other
Saul Albert: Dorkbot and other
Frederic Madre: Closing weblog and internet itself
Inke Arns: Media Art Net and other
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from Steve Dietz:
Quake! Doom! Sims!
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/qds/
Transforming Play: Family Albums and Monster Movies
Guest Curator: Katie Salen
Screened at the Walker Art Center, October 19, 2002
Online at: http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/qds/
part of Dig.it 2 The Second Annual Festival of Digital Media
http://www.walkerart.org/calendar/0210/
Featuring:
"Scourge Done Slick", Quake done Quick; "Da L33t Faust", Jan-Philipp
Reining; "Ranger Gone Bad II: Assault On Gloom Keep", United Ranger
Films; "Blahbalicious", Mackey "Avatar" McCandlish and Brian "Wendigo"
Hess; "Devil's Covenant", Clan Phantasm; "Apartment Huntin'" and
"Hardly Workin'", ILL Clan; "Father Frags Best", Phil Rice aka Overman;
"Anachronox", Jake S. Hughes/Ion Storm; "Rendezvous", Peter Rasmussen;
"Matrix: 4 x 1", Strange Company/Hugh Hancock; "Fake Science", Dead on
Que; "Stomp", "Thin Ice" and "Smart Gun", Mike Beery.
>From Transforming Play: Family Albums and Monster Movies by guest
curator Katie Salen:
"In March 2001 at the ICA in London, musician Brian Eno gave a lecture
linking his compositional process to John Conway's game of "Life". The
game of "Life", like Eno's generative music, creates unexpected patterns
of events out of a very simple rule system. In his discussion, Eno
identified the difficulty of writing the rules of a system: "How do you
create the conditions at the bottom to allow the growth of the things
you want to happen?" Eno's question not only highlights the challenge of
designing emergent systems but also points to a phenomenon known as
transformative play. Because the creators of emergent systems, like
generative music or games, can never fully anticipate how the rules will
play out, they are limited to the design of the formal structures that
go on to produce patterns of events. Sometimes the forms of play that
emerge from these structures overwhelm and transform, generating rich
and resistant outcomes. Sometimes, in fact, the force of play is so
powerful that it can change the rule structure itself. A playful slang
term can become an idiom, for example, and may eventually be adopted
into a dictionary, becoming part of the larger cultural structures,
which it originally playfully opposed.
In the case of digital games, transformative play emerges from the
interaction between inventive players and the games they play, like
Quake, Doom, or The Sims. Transformative play occurs when the free
movement of play alters the more rigid rule structure in which it takes
shape. The play doesn't just occupy the interstices of the system, but
actually transforms the space as a whole. A cyberfeminist game patch
that creates transsexual versions of Lara Croft is an example of
transformative play, as is the use of the Quake game engine as a
movie-making tool. It would make sense, then, to consider transformative
play as a powerful creative strategy within digital culture." Katie
Salen, http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/qds/index.html
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from Tilman Baumgärtel:
install.exe/
[Even if the most important jodi exhibition so far has now closed, you
can still catch a glimps of it (and of course read more about it) in the
catalogue. You can order it via the info below. JB]
Exhibition
in [plug in] was from September 18. till October 27. 2002 (now closed)
They simulate error messages, viruses, computer crashes. They overflow
your screen with never ending streams of colorful hieroglyphs. They
revitalize dead computer languages. Jodi's work is about what lies
behind the well known surface of the browser, it.s about the code. And
it is about the dialectics between humans and technology, between
controlling and beeing controlled: Jodi lets us experience these things,
makes us navigate though irritating systems and become aware of our own
blindness. Jodi finds a poignant visual language for these realities of
life. A language which comes across not only for computer nerds but also
for all of those of us who ever sat down at a computer
Jodi (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, Barcelona) were among the first
ones, who used the browser as an artistic tool. They succeeded in
developing a precise artistic language with digital means and to create
some substantial content with it. No one had set an example for them.
They were the ones to set standards and provide the reference.
With install.exe Jodi sabotages the supposed certainty that their art
can only take place on the internet: They present an exhibition in the
physical space of [plug in] as well as a print publication. For orthodox
approaches to net art this means breaking a taboo. For Jodi it's the
consequence of their disturbance-tactic.
Print Publication/catalogue:
Install.exe is the first comprehensive solo show of Jodis work, and
their first solo print publication. The project is a collaboration of
[plug in] Basel and network agent Tilman Baumgärtel from Berlin. As a
independent writer he publishes on media- and internet-culture and has
set standards on the mediation of netart with his two books net.art
Materialien zur Netzkunst, Nürnberg 1999 und net.art.2.0 . Neue
Materialien zur Netzkunst/new materials on net art, Nürnberg 2001.
The print publication is designed by the young Swiss designer Rafael
Koch in close collaboration with Jodi. Flipping though the pages, the
book will show only Jodi-images at first sight. Inside the fold out
image pages the texts are to be found: Contributions in english and
german from Annette Schindler and Waling Boers, Tilman Baumgärtel,
Frederic Madre, Pit Schulz, Florian Cramer and Josephine Bosma. The book
is edited by [plug in], Tilman Baumgärtel and BüroFriedrich and
published by Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel. 112 pages, colour
illustrations, CHFr. 38.-, Euro 26.- plus shipping.
ISBN: 3-85616-184-8
http://www.christoph-merian-verlag.ch/m2_buecher/D04_BuecherDetail.cfm?BUCH_id=185
[plug in], St. Alban-Rheinweg 64, 4052 Basel, www.weallplugin.org
opening hours: Wed, 6pm-10pm; Thur . Sat, 6pm-8pm special opening hours
during Viper 22 . International Festival for Film Videoo and New Media,
Oct. 23 . 27: daily noon - 8pm
install.exe / Jodi exhibition and publication have been generously
supported by: Kanton Basel-Stadt; Christoph Merian Foundation; Mondriaan
Foundation; Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation; Migros Kulturprozent and
Jacqueline Spengler Foundation, Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving
en bouwkunst
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Sarah Cook:
Sarah Cook will be chairing a discussion with artists to coincide with
new media scotland's
"remote" commissions in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 18th 2002:
http://www.mediascot.org/remote/forum.html
Sarah Cook also recommends you to look at http://www.balticmill.com with
which she is in close contact.
Since this summer she was curator and project manager of Margaret Crane
| Jon Winet's project
"Monument": www.locusplus.org.uk/monument (in july).
And she was also new media guest curator and MC for the mini-festival of
new media art for the international conference BRIDGES, collaborations
in art and science: www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/bridges (at the beginning of
october)
Last but not least she was part of a workshop/conference to coincide
with the interesting exhibition Art for Networks in Cardiff, Wales:
http://www.e-toulouse.org/artfornetworks/html/index.php
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Saul Albert:
projects in order of temporary preference:
www.traffic-island.co.uk
www.spacehijackers.co.uk/letterboxing/
www.dicshunary.com
www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon
www.consume.net / http://youarehere.metamute.com
www.londonconsortium.com
:::::::___>
Frederic Madre:
Currently, I think that the internet should be closed and I intend to do
it. First, i'm busy closing down our 2 and a half years old weblog
http://2balles.cc and the outcome of this is making me quite happy. By
closing down I mean in this case restricting the access to subscribers
only; this means it is not a weblog anymore, this means also that there
is an inside and an outside, this means that something is over.
Otherwise, I have not yet published http://pleine-peau.com/top for
reasons which defy any explanation. Perhaps it is too important for me,
yes it is. It is there, though. It will pick up speed. It will. First,
the internet has to be closed down. Will somebody please help ?
[reactions to cream-info@laudanum.net]
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Inke Arns:
she is currently working on the development of an audio visual net-based
"Introduction to Media Art" for the "Media Art Net" (ed. Rudolf Frieling
and Dieter Daniels) based at the Center for Art and Media Technology
(ZKM) in Karlsruhe and the Art Academy (HGB) in Leipzig. Together
with Dieter Daniels she is also teaching at the HGB ("Where do we go
from here? On the future of media based arts", seminar and guest talks).
Besides that she is planning a big retrospective on the Slovenian
artists'
group IRWIN, entitled "IRWIN: Rekapitulacija!" which will take place at
the Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (25 Sep - 25 Oct 2003).
http://www.v2.nl/~arns
http://home.snafu.de/inke/Netzkulturen
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/
http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Uni/Zukunft/index.html
http://www.artmargins.com/content/feature/arns.html
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cream is an experimental collaboration of writers and curators in the
field of net art. You can subscribe to cream and we invite you to
forward this mail to anybody you feel might be interested in the content
of cream.
Contributors to cream: Saul Albert, Inke Arns, Tilman Baumgaertel,
Josephine Bosma, Sarah Cook, Florian Cramer, Steve Dietz, Katharina
Gsöllpointner, Frederic Madre, Robbin Murphy, Tetsuo Kogawa.
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cream is moving. The next few months we will move from Laudanum.net to a
new domain. You will be able to find us at our old adress for a while
too, which is:
http://www.laudanum.net/cream
But from Januari 2003 cream will be at:
http://cream.artcriticism.org
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cream would not be possible without the work and hospitality of the
House of Laudanum, http://www.laudanum.net .
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