gravitymax in transition

MEDIA FACADES FESTIVAL EUROPE 2010 will explore the networked possibilities of urban screens and media facades via internet and new technologies on a European level.
The format of the MEDIA FACADES FESTIVAL reflects on the increasing presence of massive-infrastructures with digital visual elements in public spaces while investigating their communicative function in the urban environment.

The festival will show especially developed art projects in Europe-wide Joint Broadcasting Events which aspire to share dreams of the different cities and report about local issues and exchange peoples’ stories and ideas. The media facades will be transformed into local stages and open a global window for cultural and societal processes to create a dialogue and connect the local public virtually with the other places throughout Europe.

Its long-term vision is to be a catalyst for the creation of a sustainable and transportable structure where artists, cultural professionals, arts organizations, cultural institutions, governmental bodies, private and commercial businesses, media and the general public, within Europe and beyond, can interact through the development of a new cultural communication format in the public space.

joint broadcasting events from august 7 – september 12. finissage live streaming: october 2. more info here.

via transmediale.

an online exhibition that investigates the effect of social media in our culture, curated by national museum of art in athens, greece.

Tag ties & affective spies is a critical approach on the social media of our times. What happens when we are “tagging” , “posting” and “sharing” our experiences and opinions  in platforms such as those of Facebook, YouTube, flickr or del.icio.us? Are we  really connecting and interacting or are we also forming the content and the structure of the social web itself? The online works included, highlight the controversies of the web 2.0, commenting on the constant balancing between order and chaos, democracy and adhocracy, exposure and exploitation that it presents.

Tumbarumba is an add-on for Firefox web browsers. It quietly sits in the background, occasionally inserts a fragment of a story into a webpage that is being viewed. The result is an absurd sentence that is reminiscent of the surrealist exquisite corpse game. If the inserted fragment (we call the fragments “tumbarumbas”) is spotted and clicked upon, the entire story will emerge and eventually take over the page.

ranging from easy to soul-robbing difficult. pc magazine saves all of us some digging (and regretting) on how to delete your account from popular social networks, online retailers, blog services, sharing services, and online services.

a very entertaining interview with matteo pasquinelli on his new book animal spirits: a bestiary of the commons. pasquinella chuckled his way thru a dizzying variety of topics regarding digital culture and network theory. dubstep is likened to the anthem of current our doom and gloom times. and parasites are not such bad things at all.

Surfing the waves of crisis – from energy, to environment to the current financial crisis, Pit Schultz and Matteo Pasquinelli talk failed metropolis, cyberpunk and underground culture. A history lesson for urban survival in the future, they discuss notions from J.G. Ballard, digital sub cultures and parasitic cybernetics.  Matteo bids a dirty farewell to media culture!

Matteo Pasquinelli is a writer, curator and researcher at Queen Mary University of London. He edited the collections Media Activism (2002) and C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader (2007). With Katrien Jacobs and the Institute of Network Cultures, he organised the Art and Politics of Netporn conference (2005). He lives in Amsterdam.