From cosmology to calligraphy at Crystalpunk

Stumbled upon Crystalpunk today, a loose organisation and series of workshops under the socialfiction.org banner. In their words, the site "Socialfiction.org is a long-term research project that seeks to develop speculative knowledge that subverts ordinary ways to employ, experience and measure space, time and language.

The day to day reality of socialfiction.org is filled with projects. For most of them we encourage participation by persons known and unknown. Some of our projects are like whales, most are like plankton: the small ones feed the large ones."


Among the standouts, a Virtual raindrop installation by Tao Sambolec, a poem on e.coli bacteria, and the masks of Marcel Janco. General areas of continued interest seem to include the patterns and profundity of Go, Chinese calligraphy, bioengineering, and soft hardware. Where else could you find titles such as, "Quilts, Dreams and a Haunting by Cellular Automata".

Shadowy wiki editors unmasked with logo_wiki

Wayne Clements writes to let us know his wiki project, evolved as part of Window's online programme last year, continues with logo_wiki.

"logo_wiki identifies military, corporate, and governmental editors of Wikipedia ('the Free Encyclopedia'). It does this by tracing back the editor's IP address. logo_wiki shows recently edited 'diffs' pages (with changes highlighted) and shows who the shadowy editor is. logo_wiki does this by replacing the Wikipedia logo with the editor's logo. Military, corporate and governmental users are responsible for many thousands of unacknowledged alterations to Wikipedia pages. logo_wiki reveals this process occurring in real time."

Curatorial positions open

Window is seeking new curators to run its University of Auckland exhibition space. Window has been operating for over six years as an Auckland-based, University supported art project exhibiting parallel programmes of contemporary art in the physical gallery space, and virtual art online. Window prizes an emergent focus and provides a well-regarded platform for the work of young artists and curators educated at the University of Auckland both during and following their study. As a correlative, Window aims to increase the visibility of net.art and digital projects initiated by New Zealand practitioners through its Online programme and Archive. The right applicants will be able to take advantage of an open structure to gain valuable practical experience, develop their own career and build on the strength of the current programme.

Full details available in the PDF (Adobe Acrobat format, 42K)

Gazira Babelli coming to Window

Pioneering Second life performer, sculptor, and general cause of mayhem, Gazira Babelli will be staging a work at Window in the first week of June. One of the earliest artists working in this virtual space, Babelli has consistently pushed the limits of art in SL - from the grotesque distortions caused by hitting terminal velocity in COME.TO.HEAVEN. to the world-crashing, lag inducing cyber terrorism of Grey Goo.

Notable European contemporary arts/new media blog We Make Money Not Art recently featured a review of Babellis show at the Fabio Paris gallery in Brescia, Italy, as well as the iMAL in Brussels. The Window exhibition, entitled "Olym Pong" features a new work designed and coded specifically for the show, and will be interacted with by SL performance group, "Second Front", as well as available On Site, giving visitors to the opening a chance to engage with it.

Sending art to a better place

Via the Art Newspaper, "One of the central works in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (until 12 May), Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has died. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened."

Catts and Zurr, based at an Arts and Science collaborative lab in Western Australia, designed the work as a prototype mixing living and manufactured elements, intending to provoke "a more responsible attitude towards our environment". It succeeded in doing just that, forcing curator Paola Antonelli to euthanise the jacket, halting growth permanently.

For more information, see the Victimless Leather entry at the Design and the Elastic Mind site.