It takes a village to raise an art scene

“If Silicon Valley can rightfully call itself the breeding ground for technological innovation, shouldn’t it also host the pre-eminent digital arts festival in North America?

“The organizers behind 01SJ, San Jose’s technologically smitten five-day arts gathering that starts Wednesday, have posed the question with their self-proclaimed “global festival of art on the edge.”

“City officials, Silicon Valley tech companies, galleries, San Jose State University and some of the most acclaimed artists in their fields are among those also lining up to embrace the 01SJ, which will turn swaths of downtown San Jose into hotbeds of digital art.

“From DJ Spooky’s “Terra Nova,” a multimedia performance piece that uses the sound of melting ice in the Antarctic, to Peter Hudson’s “Homouroboros,” a carousel-like spinning zoetrope with ape-like creatures, 01SJ’s installations and performances allow many artists to realize their sometimes kooky, often inspired visions through the latest technological advancements.

“In other words, what the World of Warcraft is to Pong, 01SJ is to cave paintings.”

Mark de la Viña

via San Jose Mercury News

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Interview with Jason Freeman

Jason Freeman’s Flock will be presented as part of the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge Thursday, Friday and Saturday at MACLA.(Click here for times and here for tickets).

Jason Freeman was recently interviewed by Helen Thorington at Turbulence:

Helen Thorington: Jason, your work Glimmer was one of the first in which you engaged the concert audience as musical collaborators. Would you tell us about this? Did you compose a score and if not, what did you do? How did you feel about giving up control of the performance to the audience? Were you pleased with the performance? Or was the performance less important to you than providing a way for the concert audience to experience making music?

What did you learn from this experience? What would you do differently if you had the opportunity to produce Glimmer again?

Jason Freeman: Before I answer this question, I want to propose a (personal) definition of networked music so we have a framework within which to consider this work.

In one sense, almost all music is networked music: whenever musicians play together, their eyes and ears are connected by a complex, real-time network of aural and visual signals that have a tremendous impact on what they play and how they play it. And musicians are usually part of a second network as well, which connects them back to the composer who created the score and the listeners who hear the performance (or a recording of it). Continue reading

via Networked Music Review

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Free Shuttle Service to Santana Row Saturday June 7

A Santana Row Shuttle Service will leave every hour on the hour from 10 am – 2 pm from Circle of Palms in Downtown San Jose to Santana Row on Saturday June 7th. The shuttle will return every half an hour from 10 am – 2pm from the concierge booth at Santana Row.

The shuttle will give festival goers the opportunity to see Paul DeMarinis’ RainDance installation. To experience the artwork, pick up an umbrella at the Santana Row Concierge office and stroll through the installation!

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01SJ on Tech Close-up Sunday; new sneak peek footage released

 Don’t miss this glimpse at what’s in store for you at this year’s Festival; tune in to Tech Close-up Sunday night at 4pm on KGO/ABC 7.  If you miss it, the program airs again at 8pm that night.

And be sure to take a look at our newest video footage on YouTube.com. Check it out.

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Free museum admission Saturday June 7th for children under 12!

Courtesy of the Target Corporation, we are pleased to announce that there will be free admission for kids under 12 on Saturday, June 7, 11 am to 5 pm, at the San Jose Museum of Art and The Tech Museum of Innovation.
Bring children to see the work at SJMA that is part of the 01SJ Biennial exhibition Superlight, with over 20 inspiring interactive works sure to delight, and the Robots exhibition, which investigates the design and role of robots in human culture. Also visit The Tech Museum of Innovation, to experience the 01SJ Adobe Global Youth Voices projects, digital arts projects made by young artists ages 11 to 21.

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Announcing the DMAX Blog!

Announcing the DMAX Blog
http://dmax.bampfa.berkeley.edu/blog

As an epicenter of the digital revolution, the San Francisco Bay Area is a buzzing hive of constant activity and energy around digital culture and art made possible by technological innovation. A critical feedback forum contributes to a thriving, evolving and intellectually playful cultural community. For this reason, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive’s Digital Media Art Access and Exhibitions program (DMAX) and the UC Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) are hosting such a critical forum – in the form of the new DMAX blog – to sustain our community of thinkers.

This blog has a loose and flexible focus on: Bay Area regional / digital / art and culture. The regional focus supports a geo-physical community of familiar faces that already meets. The broad digital culture focus reflects the fact that this community spans many professional fields, creating a need for a different kind of apparatus from the traditional academic or art review.

Serving as a civic cultural forum for this broad and diverse community is a natural role for a public museum and a public university. In this spirit, this blog will not limit the public to behind-the-scenes comments, but will be open to public participation at all levels (top- level posts, comments, events) in addition to featuring bloggers drawn from the DMAX and BCNM programs. The DMAX Blog provides our community with a gathering place to let each other know what’s going on, what people think, and what’s next. Welcome home!

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“Water as music, technology as art”

“If you wander by Santana Row anytime soon, you’re likely to see an unusual sight: People listening to Irish jigs or classical music played by drops of water falling on their umbrellas.

. . .

“DeMarinis is a local artist with an international reputation, a guy who infuses a love of history with an interest in technology. The Stanford professor talked to me about how he drew inspiration for “RainDance” from a 1909 book that illustrated how the sound of a ticking watch could be transmitted through water.

“Go singin’ in the rain in San Jose. Or rather, let the rain sing for you. It’s an adventure with a legacy much older than Gene Kelly’s 1952 movie.”

- Scott Herhold

via Mercury News

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Networked Music Review Commissions: “Trace Aureity” by Adam Nash

Artist Adam Nash’s, project, Ways to Wave, has a physical presence in the 01SJ Biennial exhibition Superlight at the San Jose Museum of Art. The Superlight exhibition runs from May 10- August 30, 2008.

Networked Music Review Commissions: “Trace Aureity” by Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona) http://turbulence.org/works/adamnash

“Trace Aureity” is an interactive, immersive, audiovisual sculpture located in the 3-D synthetic world Second Life (http://secondlife.com). There are eighty-eight manipulated field recordings — from city streets, birdsong, to talkback radio – and ninety-six nested rotating objects densely arranged in a three dimensional grid. Avatars, either solo or in groups, generate sounds by moving through the installation. Some of the innermost nested objects, colored red, also spawn glowing spheres which fly out and bounce around inside the work, triggering sounds as they pass through other objects. Because the playable space is so dense, players are rewarded by slowing down their movements as much as possible, since even miniscule movements create differences in sonic output. The contingencies of time-based interaction by people-as-avatars creates a dynamic audiovisual composition, always unique to that moment and those interactors. This may be seen to represent an evolution of the aleatoric composition techniques of Cage and Eno, as well as an enactment of the objets sonore of Pierre Schaeffer.

“Trace Aureity” is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked_Music_Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

via Turbulence

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CITY OF SAN JOSE PUBLIC ART PROGRAM

REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS   ART + TECHNOLOGY ARTIST POOL
This is to announce the San Jose Public Art Program’s Request for Qualifications to establish an Artist Pool for Art + Technology. The focus of initial artwork commission will be the San Jose International Airport’s program of short-term changing Art + Technology projects and two permanent sculptures for the arrival/departure hall of the new terminal.

As part of the Airport capital improvement program, the Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport Public Art Master Plan creates a framework for a unified program of Art + Technology, showcasing the innovation, diversity, and change that defines San José and Silicon Valley.  This program will create a major collection of technology-related artworks for the City at the airport.  Public art at the airport will use the tools and technologies developed in Silicon Valley to provide a portal to the community, highlighting the important histories that are the foundations of San José’s place in today’s global economy.

Commissioning opportunities include, but are not limited to:  2 and 3 dimensional art; static and dynamic work; projections; data-driven work and/or work encouraging social connections; ambient and/or responsive audio work; active textiles or other active surfaces; screen-based; flat-panel displays or low-profile light boxes.  Artists who are accepted into the Art + Technology Artist Pool will be considered for multiple opportunities. Finalists for the two permanent commissions will be short listed from those qualified into the Art + Technology Artist Pool.

APPLICATION DEADLINE
Submissions must be received as a complete application in CaFÉ™ by no later than 5:00 PM (Mountain Time) on Tuesday, July 1, 2008.

APPLICATION PROCESS
To view the on-line application, go to www.callforentry.org, register a username and password, navigate to “Apply to Calls”, and search the list for “City of San Jose – Art + Technology Pool”.

This is an open call as detailed in the RFQ.  Please feel free to forward this notice to interested artists.

Assistance in using the CaFÉ™ system is available during regular business hours by calling 303- 629-1166 or 1-888-562-7232, or via e-mail at cafe@westaf.org.

Questions on the RFQ please contact sanjosepublicartprogram@sanjoseca.gov.

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“Art Experiences in the Bay Area”

“If/Then” was one of the most interesting pieces I viewed at the San Jose Museum of Art on Sunday, May 18 because of its interactivity with the viewer and its harsh and deliberate social commentary.

. . .

The fact that I could “interact” with [Love Disorder] made the piece so potent as I began to become connected to this person due to his display of intense emotions.

. . .

“Tantalum Memorial” by Harwood, Wright, and Yokokoji used another technique to “touch me.” It produced a subtle, but overpowering social message through use of a simple, mechanical idea

. . .

- Katie Lampert

via Bay Area Art Work

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