Smartphone Art: Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments

"Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments" invites participants to construct hyper-monuments at historic sites. HHHM addresses historic bias and exploits pervasive computing through mobile technologies. The artwork expresses my (Carmin Karasic's) concept, but is realized through collaboration with artists Rolf van Gelder, Rob Coshow, Brett Stalbaum, and Jo Rhodes.

I use computer based and emerging technologies in my art to increase social awareness through art activism. I believe it is a cyberartist's responsibility to provoke a reevaluation of our existing systems through technology. Because future communication technology will enable total wireless connectivity, I am specifically interested in our interaction with this pervasive computing.

My art investigates alternative views, new connections and interaction between edges. My artworks consciously examine the hyperreal, because presentation has become more important than personal opinion, observation, or even reality itself. "Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments" was inspired by the gap between official political histories and alternative histories. Digital doubles in this project create spaces for untold stories, forgotten histories, and pure speculation surrounding monuments and events. I am also inspired by Teri Rueb's locative media art projects.

Given a prominent historic monument, shrine, location, etc., HHHM begins by playing a location specific movie clip that regresses the present day image to a pre-urbanized image for the specific location. Images displayed in HHHM will be based on archived history and related images uploaded by participants. When available colloquial anecdotes will be presented. Accompanying multimedia components will include text, video, images, and audio downloads. Participants will be able to contribute text, image, or audio content from the monument location via GPS and Windows Mobile enabled cell phones to the project website.

Ultimately, my ambition is to contribute to the positive social engagement of new technologies through art. Synergy between artists, scientists, and engineers can lead to new cultural insights and potential innovation, rather than reinforce old assumptions. I want my work to contribute to invention and digital enhancements.

"Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments" was commissioned for the Boston Cyberarts Festival by Turbulence.org. The work will be presented along with Brian Knep's work at the Judi Rotenburg Gallery, April 21- 28, Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Artist Talk and Reception with Brian Knep and Carmin Karasic Sat, April 21, 2pm.

Visual Music

This is Michael Carter. The east-coast premiere of my piece, “Well (Live)” will be showing at Northeastern University's Visual Music Marathon on April 28^th during Boston Cyberarts 2007.

I feel like the term “visual music” is not so common and not so defined (even for an artist working in the “genre”), so I want to briefly say what it means to me and how I approach it.

For me, visual music is not about finding a one to one “translation” between music and image. I don't see the goal as creating a new language by connecting term for term the typical descriptions of sound and music (note, pitch, timbre, etc) with visual counterparts (color, value, shape, etc).

I'm concerned with infusing, or maybe even rejuvenating, visual art with the primacy, directness and effectiveness of music.

Music is unique among the arts in its directness and effectiveness in reaching and creating “inner” emotional and psychological states. Between musician and audience, music communicates “meaning” and “feeling” with potent results. The ability to experience the world from the point-of-view of another, which is so rare and difficult in the normal day-to-day world, happens almost effortlessly in music. We hear the music and we experience it; We feel it directly in our bodies. And, if we look at the moment before taste or preference kicks in, everyone hears the same sounds in the same way. It's message is immediate and intuitive and we are connected by this shared experience.

Yet, for the visual artist, this feat is accomplished without two important qualities: you can't see and you can't touch music. It has no physical form or substance. It is not materially “real”.

For me, then, visual music is a process of connecting the visible world to the invisible world. It is an admission that the unreal is real, that the intangible and imperceptible exist and affect us everyday.

The invisible manifest in the visible - That's what visual music means to me.

“Well(live)” is running during the 3-4pm block in an all-day program of current and historical works by many excellent artists.

Oh, and I had granola for breakfast this morning. ;)

Boston Cyberarts Gala!!

Join The Boston Cyberarts Festival's artists and friends at the Hotel @ MIT for the official 2007 Cyberarts Gala! You'll meet some of the Festival's featured artists who are in the forefront of the art + technology world -- and enjoy great food and drinks too!

This year for the first time we'll be announcing the winners of the IBM Innovation Award for Art and Performance, selected by a jury from all the events and exhibitions in this year's Festival. The winner will recieve $5,000, and there will be two runner-up prizes of $500 each.

Come help us celebrate the best of the best! Invitations will be sent in early April, but in the meantime mark your calander for May 4!

What: 2007 Boston Cyberarts Gala and Awards Presentation
When: Friday, May 4, 2007, 6:30PM
Where: Hotel @MIT 20 Sidney Street, Cambridge
Tickets: $75 per person
RSVP: rsvp@bostoncyberarts.org

Otherwise Uninvolved Individuals

This concert is the premiere performance of Otherwise Uninvolved Individuals, a collection of works by Boston-based experimental composer, Halsey Burgund, which will take place Sunday May 6th at 7pm at the Cambridge YMCA Theater. Tickets are $8 at the door.

Burgund composes music using spoken human voices which he collects using a portable voice recording booth. He has collected over 600 voices with his Bring Your Own Voice booth, and the compositions performed at this event include many of them, triggered by an array of electronic controllers and samplers and projected throughout the theater in surround-sound. Burgund performs the electronic manipulations live as well as playing mallet percussion and piano. He is joined by his band, Aesthetic Evidence, which includes Peter Bailey on guitar, a string section and other traditional instruments.

Listen to samples of Halsey Burgund's music here

Kinodance premiers DENIZEN @Cyberarts/Celebrity Series

In collaboration with the Bank of America Celebrity Series and Boston Cyberarts' Ideas in Motion festival, Kinodance Company will premier DENIZEN an expanded cinema performance at the Boston University Tsai Performance Center on Wed. May 2 (7:30pm) and Thur. May 3rd (8pm). With film by Alla Kovgan, sets by Dedalus Wainwright, lighting by Kathy Couch, costumes by Laura Coulter and performances by choreographers Alissa Cardone and Ingrid Schatz with a stunning cast (dancers Ruth Bronwen, Pape N'Diaye, Deborah Butler) Kinodance stages an intuitive synthesis of film, set, light, sound and movement. DENIZEN explores the act of hunting in the modern world and is inspired by the film Seasons (1979) by Artavazd Peleshian, an Armenian post-WWII Soviet avant-garde filmmaker. Captivated with Peleshian's filmic approach, and the images of Armenian people and rugged Armenian landscapes he portrayed, Kinodance traveled to Armenia in October 2006 to film in the exact landscapes of Peleshian's film. The images are incorporated into the stage work to magnificently manipulate time, memory, space and light.