[LEAuthors] Leonardo Electronic Almanac - Global Crossings Special

[Leonardo Electronic Almanac]

  [image: The MIT Press] <http://mitpress.mit.edu/default.asp?mlid=584>
*Leonardo Electronic Almanac*

http://lea.mit.edu
ISSN #1071-4391

INTRODUCTION
THE LEONARDO GLOBAL CROSSINGS AWARD: Artist Statements
GLOBAL CROSSINGS
BYTES

________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

Be prepared for a double dose of gastronomic global offerings in this issue,
which features the Leonardo Global Crossings Special Project.

We first celebrate the inaugural winners of the 2005 Leonardo Global
Crossings Award – the brother-sister team of Abdel Ghany Kenawy and Amal
Kenawy from Cairo, Egypt, who have been collaborating on large-scale
installations since 1997.

Accolades also go to the three runners-up - Regina Célia Pinto (Brazil -
web-based and CD-ROM art), Kim Machan (Australia - curator, arts producer
and consultant) and Shilpa Gupta (India - Internet, video and installation
works) and all other nominees: Andres Burbano (Colombia), Kibook
(collaborative team of Visieu Lac [Vietnamese Australian], Mark Wu
[British-born Chinese] and Stefan Woelwer [Germany], Nalini Malani (India)
and Hellen Sky (Australia).

This award recognizes the contribution of artists and scholars from
culturally diverse communities worldwide who work within the emerging
art-science-technology field, and was juried by an international panel of
experts. The award is part of the Leonardo Global Crossings Special Project,
supported by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Visit the
gallery: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards

Following that, the Global Crossings Gallery, as curated by Dennis Summers
and Choy Kok Kee, showcases a veritable feast of concepts that explores what
it means to be a global citizen. Indulge in this "quality cross-section of
the technical and aesthetic range of globally-related artwork" – with themes
that touch on the socio-political to technological/(pseudo)scientific to
multi-cultural communications.

The range of ideas bounced around is astounding: From creating a global
community dedicated to raising issues of the sweatshop treatment of women
throughout the world, particularly in relation to Nike (Cat Mazza's *Nike
Blanket Petition*) to the darker side of global control (Alison Chung-Yan's
*Surveillance*) to Mike Mike's more positive approach to *The Face of
Tomorrow*.

Then there is Samina Mishra's take on the children of immigrants from India
and other East Asian countries and Tiffany Holmes's serious and scientific
approach to global water pollution, *Floating Point*.

Add to that Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber's *Radiomap*, which places
participants on a physical representation of the globe projected onto the
floor, and allow them to hear different radio stations based on their
"global location", Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers' *Capture Site*,
which sees two artists suspended above ground surrounded with sensors that
communicate local environmental information throughout the world, Vanessa
Gocksch's *Intermundos*, a representation of Colombian youth culture and its
connection to other youth cultures worldwide and the physically
uplifting *World
Hug Day* project by the Gao Brothers for a sizzling stew of wondrous global
delights. Visit the gallery: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx


________________________________________________________________

Leonardo Global Crossings Award
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards

Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to announce that the first Leonardo Global
Crossings Award has been awarded to Abdel Ghany Kenawy and Amal Kenawy, of
Cairo, Egypt, a brother-sister team who have been collaborating on
large-scale installations since 1997. These works, whether tower-like
structures containing glass balls rising up towards the ceiling or tunnels
leading to a block of frozen ice in a room surrounded by chiffon,
demonstrate that there is no "natural" barrier between the worlds of art and
science.

The Kenawys' unique collaboration is built partially upon Abdel Ghany's
background in the physical sciences and Amal's background in filmmaking, yet
their individual efforts cannot be so neatly defined as singularly
"scientific" or "artistic". Committed to their creative processes, they work
very closely together on every aspect of their projects from
conceptualization and structural design to production and execution in their
workshop.

Characteristic of all their projects is the power of texture and image, and
sensorial play with surfaces between spaces (loosening up the inside/outside
polarity)- whether it is a "textured" video, the texture of light projected
on a triple screen of chiffon, the texture of human hair bows on a pair of
wax legs in a display case, or the textures (acoustic and visual) of a
beating heart on which a pair of lace gloved hands is sewing a white rose
appliqué. For examples of their work see
http://www.thetownhousegallery.com/html/artists/amal_abdelghany_kenawy.htm.

The three runners-up for the 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award are Regina
Célia Pinto (Brazil - web-based and CD-ROM art), Kim Machan (Australia -
curator, arts producer and consultant) and Shilpa Gupta (India - Internet,
video and installation works).

Other nominees for the 2005 award included: Andres Burbano (Colombia),
Kibook (collaborative team of Visieu Lac [Vietnamese Australian], Mark Wu
[British-born Chinese] and Stefan Woelwer [Germany], Nalini Malani (India)
and Hellen Sky (Australia).

The 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award, funded in part by the Rockefeller
Foundation, was juried by an international panel of experts co-chaired by
Nisar Keshvani and Rejane Spitz. The 2005 jury consisted of Samirah Al-Kasim
(filmmaker, Egypt), Julio Bermudez (educator, U.S.A.-Argentina), Choy Kok
Kee (artist, Singapore), Maria Fernandez (researcher, U.S.A.-Nicaragua),
Pamela Grant-Ryan (editor, U.S.A.), Nisar Keshvani (editor-consultant,
Singapore), Jayachandran Palazhy (choreographer-artistic director, India),
Sundar Sarukkai (researcher, India), Yacov Sharir (educator, U.S.A.) and
Rejane Spitz (educator, Brazil). The award recognizes the contribution of
artists and scholars from culturally diverse communities worldwide within
the emerging art-science-technology field. The award is part of the Leonardo
Global Crossings Special Project, supported by the Ford Foundation and the
Rockefeller Foundation.


________________________________________________________________

Abdel and Amal Kenawy - Global Crossings Award Winners
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/lea/gallery/gxawards/kenawy.htm

Abdel and Amal Kenawy
4 Omer Ibn 'Abdel Aziz street,
El Haram Street,
Giza-Egypt
Tel: +2 010 306 6755
amalkenawy at hotmail.com
http://www.thetownhousegallery.com/html/artists/amal_abdelghany_kenawy.htm

Artist Statement

The Room, 2003
Video performance
PAL system; 10 minutes
Dimensions variable

Amal Kenawy's work spans a breadth of mediums, creating a space in which she
negotiates her own identities vis-à-vis the world around her. In a recent
work she entitled *The Room*, her brother, partner, and mentor Abdel Ghany
Kenawy helped her put together ribbons, ties, and straps. An identity is
slowly diluted into oblivion as Kenawy explores the dream-world of illusion
against the memory of reality. She brings the unseen into a visual space by
sensing a metaphorical world that hides behind the physicality.

It is a room that reflects the much bigger world where the social being is a
product and reflection of its surroundings, customs and conditions. Alone on
stage, the visual artist embroiders adornments directly onto her flesh.
White cold tiles surround her, furnishing a grid, fixing the profile of the
artist and the white wedding dress next to which she sits slowly,
mechanically sewing her palpitating heart onto the white cloth of a sleeve.
Her two hands remain encased in white lace gloves. The absence of the body
from which the heart has been removed and to which the plastic legs of dolls
have been attached, the presence of the artist on stage, de-atomizing
herself, underlines the renunciation of physicality at large.

Personal Statement

While working on *The Room*, it had no artistic preference but it was rather
a project that drove me towards a style of self-expression. I found myself
thinking about the strange relationship between man and his society. This is
when I found myself inside a room. The internal room surrounds my body,
while the outside was represented by society.

The internal self is a representation of the imagination, the controversial
and the non-realistic. It is always an invisible and private sphere of
thought, a true production of social truth. Thus *The Room* is not simply a
location of space but a relationship between place and time. It is a
realistic presence of time with an illusion of dreams and memories of the
human self that do not cease to exist.

I never imagined that I could do my work while absorbing every detail around
me. I also knew I could not revert to an actor to play my role inside *The
Room*. It would not have been real no matter how talented and experienced
the actor could have been. Every detail imagined, every image edited was
planned and I abided by my storyboard. The music appeared in my mind and was
transferred as I imagined it flowing through the air as moving streaks of
light.

Citation

For the GX award, I am nominating the brother-sister team of Abdel Ghany and
Amal Kenawy from Cairo. They have been collaborating on large-scale
installations since 1997, and these works demonstrate that there is no
"natural" barrier between the worlds of art and science, whether they are
tower-like structures containing glass balls rising up towards the ceiling,
or tunnels leading to a block of frozen ice in a room surrounded by chiffon.
Abdel Ghany brings to the works his skills and knowledge in the physical
sciences and Amal brings to the works her background in visual art
(performance, video). They work very closely together in the
conceptualization and execution of each project but Abdel Ghany is largely
responsible for the problem solving of structural and scientific concerns,
and Amal co-articulates the vision and experimentation of form, time and
space.

Abdel Ghany's statement about his relationship to science and art perhaps
best articulates the approach that appears in their works:

"Scientific knowledge is a means of understanding reality, and its various
guises and manifestations. In the realm of art, scientific knowledge can be
used to examine the relationships, dynamics and structure of things and
beings, culminating in a more thorough understanding of their nature.

I use functionalist notions of causality to gain a better understanding of
the potential meaning inherent in the materials that I use and their
consequences. The relationship between form and concept, material and energy
is the basis of my work, rendering the process of creation more organic and
less contrived. I borrow from the laws of nature, biology and physics. This
knowledge has been integral to my work, which integrates elements of nature,
with the force of the human condition replete with emotions and memories to
articulate an artistic discourse that transcends time and place."

Amal is also a performance-artist in her own right, and Abdel Ghany
contributes to most of her solo pieces, further enforcing their unique
ability, as siblings, to collaborate artistically. When observing the
materials, you will notice the CV title is only for Amal Kenawy but all
their projects are listed.

Biography

Abdel Ghany Kenawy
- 1969: Born in Cairo, Egypt
- Lives and works in Cairo
- 1989: Studied sculpture in Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, Egypt.

Amal Kenawy
- 1974: Born in Cairo, Egypt
- Lives and works in Cairo
- 1997/98: Studied in the Academy of Arts, Cinema institute
- 1999: BA in Painting & graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan
University, Cairo, Egypt
- 1997/1999: Studied Fashion Design, Cinema Institute.

Born in Cairo in 1974, Amal Kenawy studied painting and sculpture at the
Faculty of Fine Arts of Helwan University and film at the Cairo Film
Academy. In 1996, Kenawy received the first prize in sculpture at Egypt's
annual Salon of Youth exhibition. At the 1998 Cairo Biennale, Kenawy and her
brother Abdel Ghany Kenawy's collaborative work secured them the UNESCO
grand prize. Her mixed medium, installation, sculptural and video works have
been shown in countless exhibitions in Cairo, Beirut, Paris, Dakar and
Bethlehem among other locales. Kenawy most recently showed her work as part
of the Afrika Remix exhibition touring from 2004 - 2006; the Kunst Palast
Museum (Düsseldorf), the Hayward Gallery (London), the Centre Georges
Pompidou (Paris), and the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo). In December 2004 she
completed a three-month residency in Aarau, Switzerland.

"My brother Abdel Ghany Kenawy and I started doing collaborative projects in
1997. So far we have jointly produced 11 art projects covering the full
range of sculptures, installations, video installations, and performances.
We use various mediums to accommodate the concepts inherent in each project.
The bulk of our work is dedicated to the understanding and use of scientific
laws, to link between the scientific and the human, and to establishing the
unity within the absolute and general laws of nature."

________________________________________________________________

Andres Burbano
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/burbano.htm
Andrés Burbano
Assistant Professor
Los Andes University
Bogotá, Colombia
South America
Tel: +57-1- 3394949 ext 3056
burbano at alleati.com / burbano at gmail.com

Keywords

Net art Latin America, technology and society, art science, art technology,
experimental documentary, digital narratives

Artist Statement

*Ways of Neuron*, an online scientific and experimental documentary
an open project initiated by Andrés Burbano
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/burbano/neurona

Hermeneutics + basic sciences = interface. This is the main element of the
project in terms of interface conceptualization. For Hans Diebner,
physicist, the interface is a concrete space of relation between two spheres
of scientific knowledge: on one hand are hermeneutics or sciences of
language and on the other are physics within the context of exact sciences.
This space of relation is the interface, "interface" meaning the cultural,
technological and artistic "place" where interpretation systems and
phenomena themselves are connected.

This powerful and complex concept of "interface" is the most important
reason to develop a scientific documentary with interactive profile that
aims to understand and give structure to the notion of interface according
to the nature of its content, being always aware of the role of this project
in the cultural, artistic, scientific and technological scenes.

*Ways of Neuron* is an online scientific and experimental documentary about
the impact of neuroscience research and its relationship with the nature of
the mind.

A critical aspect of the documentary is, from an aesthetic point of view,
the coherent relationship between data processing and content access.

The documentary has a navigational interface whose design is guided by
conceptual principles rather than traditional principles of visual or
interactive design. So, the notions of neural networks and semantic networks
are fundamental elements to the design and programming process of the
interface and to the development of the way of communication between two web
servers, one for databases and another for streaming media.

It is important to understand that scientists have represented the neuron,
neural networks and the brain in different visual ways since the birth of
neuroscience. Throughout his investigative process, S. Ramon y Cajal made
hundreds of drawings. The visual results exceeded at a certain moment the
purely graphical aspect passing to more complex techniques of representation
very unusual in his time, like photography, color photography,
microphotography, etc.

The *Ways of Neuron* project is constructed based on the idea of creating
non-conventional forms to explore databases, crossing different spaces of
knowledge and creation to contribute to a contemporary way to represent
neuroscience concepts.

Neuroscience has been developed in such a way that it is important for the
community to understand its repercussions, complexities and possibilities.
Research neuroscience opens a new set of questions regarding the human
condition.

The documentary is informative while using professional and respectful
sources of research and information in order to provide the necessary depth
of content bound to these scientific fields; it is based on three types of
materials: interviews with specialists, interactive experiences and
audiovisual material. The project will cover 12 general conceptual axes:

Brain, Cognition, Consciousness, Emotion, Evolution, Imaging, Language,
Memory, Mind, Neural Networks, Neuron, Perception.

Maintaining coherence with its nature, the project tries to involve people
in different places and from different disciplines in order to contribute
concepts, ideas, technical information, interviews, etc. The project has the
special collaborative support of the Basic Research Laboratory of the ZKM.

Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Institut für Grundlagenforschung
http://basic-research.zkm.de:8080/basic_research/
http://www.zkm.de

Citation

Burbano explores the interactions of science, art and technology in various
capacities: as a researcher, as an individual artist and in collaborations
with other artists and designers. Burbano's work ranges from documentary
video (in both science and art), sound and telecommunication art to the
exploration of algorithmic cinematic narratives. The broad spectrum of his
work illustrates the importance - indeed, the prevalence - of
interdisciplinary collaborative work in the field of digital art.

*Hipercububo/ok*, an anthology on digital art of Latin America that Burbano
edited in collaboration with Hernando Barragan, was published in 2002. A
website for this project is now under construction

*Typovideo*, also in collaboration with Hernando Barragan, is a system of
video streaming ASCII text that explores the interaction of new and old
technologies, the relation of image and text, server technologies,
compression processes and tactical media. The project can be viewed at
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/~aburbano/_html/content/typovid.html

Hernando Barragan is a Colombian architect and designer, who participated in
the 2004 Milan Triennial. His project for that event can be seen at
http://people.interaction-ivrea.it/h.barragan/

*The Quiasma Project* created by Burbano in collaboration with media artists
Clemencia Echeverry and Barbara Santos, re-imagines geography from the
condition of isolation that Colombians increasingly experience on account of
the War on Drugs. That the war is linked to broader international political
and economic issues needs little elaboration.

Burbano's independent videos, *Medios*, II and III address specific
political events in Colombia, which are nonetheless linked to global
conditions. Economic and political stability become more urgent in the
countries south of the US border as struggles for the control of the world
intensify. This work can be viewed at:
http://www.freewaves.org/festival_2002/events/latin/colombia_faguet.html

Burbano's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, to working with new
and old technologies and to exploring relations among aesthetics,
technology, society and the sciences is rare in the field of Latin American
digital art. I recommend that he be considered for this award.

Biography

Andres Burbano explores the interactions of science, art and technology in
various capacities: as a researcher, as an individual artist and in
collaborations with other artists and designers. Burbano's work ranges from
documentary video (in both science and art), sound and telecommunication art
to the exploration of algorithmic cinematic narratives. The broad spectrum
of his work illustrates the importance and prevalence of interdisciplinary
collaborative work in the field of digital art.

His works include *Typovideo*, created in collaboration with Hernando
Barragan, a system of video streaming ASCII text that explores the
interaction of new and old technologies, the relation of image and text,
server technologies, compression processes and tactical media (the project
can be viewed at
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/~aburbano/_html/content/typovid.html); and *The
Quiasma Project*, created in collaboration with media artists Clemencia
Echeverry, Santiago Ortiz and Barbara Santos, which re-imagines geography
from the condition of isolation that Colombians increasingly experience as a
result of the conflict.

Andres Burbano – Pasto, Colombia, 1973 - is a film and TV maker from
Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Masters in interactive media from Mecad,
Barcelona, Spain; researcher of Basic Research Institute at ZKM, Karlsruhe,
Germany. Burbano is assistant professor in the art department at Los Andes
University, Bogotá Colombia.

________________________________________________________________

Hellen Sky
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/sky.htm

Hellen Sky
Co Artistic Director
Company in space
P O Box 1495
St Kilda
VIC Australia 3182
Tel: +613 9534 6676
hellen at companyinspace.com
http://www.companyinspace.com

Artist Statement

Liquid paper 1. - Making Light of Gravity – embodiment in intelligent
camera-based technology systems.

I start with myself, the universe of my body, and all that reaches between
the cells of my brain and the cells of my skin, the neural networks
synapsing chemical transmissions proprioceptor to receiver, triggering
connections between memory banks, tastes of sensations, perceptions,
consciousness, a knowing and being. An embodied experience of the space I
fill and the spaces through which I move.

Technology is often described as utilitarian, like an object, which has a
particular function. However I think it's more like DNA, its already part of
our subcellular structure. We are processing each other in constant
exchanges; we are in effect of each other in a fluid osmotic architecture
navigating new pathways. Images, and thoughts, sounds and movement co-exist
and become dispersed over smaller and larger grids. Our perceptions begin to
reconfigure and we begin to consider these as larger choreographies, as
evolutions of corporeal interconnectivity that move beyond the fixity of
stages of the 20th century.

Located within multiple architecturally projected environments - liquid
walls, the speaking, moving, and the images, shifts between perspectives on
past, present and future work. In a non-linear poetic, the voice traverses a
range of mindsets and localities, making metaphoric connections between
journals of daily life, complex philosophical and scientific thinking, from
astronomy, neuroscience, intelligence, consciousness, and concepts of home,
land, gravity, security systems, and the spectrum of networked states of
perception.

This Liquid paper presents an artist's ideas interwoven with complex
philosophical and scientific thinking in a manner which allows the art, and
the qualities of the performance itself, to speak with as strong a voice as
the words that are spoken. It integrates a multiplicity of systems of
communications, including live and recorded sound/real-time video
feeds/pre-recorded and archival video footage to consider new concepts of
bodies, technology and choreographic form. It is a fluid form, allowing new
writing, movement and media systems to enter the work in response to the
environment and context of presentation.

There are 100 trillion stars in our universe
There are 100 trillion IP address on the Internet
100 trillion neurons in my brain
There are a hundred trillion cells in the universe of my body,
But only 10 trillion of these cells are human,

Each living cell is an intelligent system.
Each cell is a sub molecular machine
A transcribers of genes
Codes of intelligence

Their antenna listens for signals
In each one of my 10 trillion cells there is 1.8 metres of DNA

If you could find my source code
Get behind my firewall. You might be able to crack me open.
Unwind me. My body would be 108 trillion metres long

I'll give you a clue.
The key to my code is in my Skin, is in my Blood, and is in my Brain.

I can seek you out. I can draw you in.
My body is a bridge… it spans time.

New Work in Development: *The Darker Edge of Night* - 2005 – 07 Technology
and Time within a blinking of the eye, begins from an imagined point of view
beyond the horizon of mid 21st century integrating many media, including a
poetic synthesis of cosmological data visualizations, and interpretation of
audio visual media engaged with via a real time haptic motion capture
network system outcomes of the research between CIS's collaboration with The
Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing & Sensory Neuroscience
Laboratory, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia, supported through
Arts Innovation Program - *The Darker Edge of Night* begins where *The Light
Room* diminishes.

*Making Light of Gravity* - Liquid paper 1 - was first presented in Utah Art
and Technology Symposium – Arts of the Virtual: Poetic Enquiries in Time,
Space, Motion Oct 2004, and will be published in Extensions: The online
journal for embodied technologies. Volume 2: Mediated Bodies: Locating
corporeality in a Pixelated World – UCLA Department of World Art and
Cultures. Liquid paper 1 was further developed during a three-week residency
at Waag society for old and new media, Amsterdam in Jan 05 - Connected
Program, supported through ANAT (Australian network for art and technology)
working in collaboration with media artist Michelle Teran, exploring keyworx
software to facilitate a real time interface between voice and image. Most
recently presented in Melbourne at Malthouse Theatre in April 2005.

Thoughts, memory, past, present, our spatial perspectives and our
perceptions begin to reconfigure and we begin to consider these as larger
choreographies, as evolutions of corporeality interconnectivity that move
beyond the fixity of stages of the 20th century 'theatre' the physical site,
no longer the only infrastructures that will connect theatres of artists
evolving work because and through the technology which is transforming how
we as social beings inhabit this world.

These ephemeral networks. These global tides, become part of our sensing,
needing processing, modulated surges of power, cascading effects across
electronic grids, distributed over networks – blackouts - to frame a single
point of view in this global arena.

These Virtual Colosseums
who is the gladiator who are the slaves,
A big brother command SMS your message
Evict that neighbour.

Citation

Hellen Sky is the creative director of Company in Space (CIS). Her practice
has evolved through performance and image making extended through new
technologies. In CIS projects she collaborates with others to develop
scores, and systems for integrating multiple media and technologies into a
total choreography for performative events, linking virtual physical
terrains to the general public. Previous work such as *Escape
Velocity*(live and telematic movement driven performance),
*Data Dancing* (London), *Downloading Downunder* (Amsterdam),
*SIGGRAPH*(Florida),
*MDDF2* (Monaco), *Digital Now* (Hong Kong), posed the question: Where do
flesh, fragile bone, senses and perceptions fit into the new geographies of
the late 20th century? More recent work such as *CO 3*, performed in
Interact Asia Pacific Multi Media Festival (Melbourne), *Future
Physical*ICA (London), and
*Arnolfini* (Bristol), explored concepts of presence, and identity within
virtual reality. *The Light Room* new media movement opera, premiered at
MIFA 01 & 02 (Melbourne Museum), engaged with physical and virtual
architectural worlds as metaphor for life bridging the cusp of 20th/21st
centuries.

New work in development for 2004/5 *The Darker Edge of Night* again asks
questions of time and origin, perceived from the emergent new horizons of
the mid-21st century. The work integrates many media, including a poetic
synthesis of astrological data sets and outcomes of research from CIS'
collaboration with The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at
Swinburne University.

I should add that Hellen Sky is Australian. She is very active worldwide and
has a visible global influence (in Oceania, Europe and Asia more than in the
U.S.A.). Her work combines the latest tele-media technologies, strong
theoretical and choreographic craftsmanship, and stunningly beautiful
performances.

Biography
Hellen Sky is co-director of Company in Space. She is both a Fellow of the
Australia Council Dance Fund, 2004 – 2006, and nominee of the inaugural 2005
Leonardo Global Crossings Award. Hellen was a Visiting Fellow at SIAL for
the Skins of Intimate Distance: Liveness and Affect week held in August 2003
and a guest artist at Waag Society for Old and New Media (connected program
Amsterdam 05).

Her choreography performance and image-making has been extended through new
technologies. She collaborates with composers, performers, scientists,
academics, designers, writers, architects, interface programmers to develop
scores and systems, which consider movement to effect and alter the
relationship between multiple media into total choreographies for
performative events linking virtual and
physical terrains to the general public.


________________________________________________________________

Kibook - Visieu Lac, Mark Wu and Stefan Woelwer
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/kibook.htm
Kibook Ltd
38 Kingsland Road
4 Perseverance Works
London E2 8DD
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7739 9233
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7739 5266
info at kibook.com
http://www.kibook.com

Kibook is an interactive design company formed by Visieu Lac, a
Vietnamese-Australian with a degree in nuclear physics; Mark Wu, a Briton of
Chinese descent; and Stefan Woelwer, a German. Kibook pursues
interdisciplinary projects that draw on science and lend themselves to
artistic applications.

Citation

I am nominating a group of three, one Vietnamese Australian - Visieu Lac, a
British born Chinese - Mark Wu and a German - Stefan Woelwer, because of
their constant efforts in creating innovative and revolutionalized works.
The group being a mixture of different nationalities, cultural backgrounds
and diversity represent the global crossing initiative. They are called
Kibook and have created revolutionary experimental and borderless
interactive works, which can be applied to many disciplines.

The nominated team has different backgrounds and work in different
circumstances. What these diverse combinations of creative individuals have
in common is that they all work within the relatively new field of
interactive design or art, and their work is in some way experimental, that
they have each, to a greater or lesser degree found a new way of using
interactive media, and thereby extended the language of interactivity across
boundaries. Interaction art and design is an emerging practice, and the
language of interactivity is still forming. In this context, adopting an
experimental approach to the design process is not so much an indulgence as
a necessity. There is an enormous space out there and much of it has not
been explored yet. At a very basic level, dealing with this new medium,
practitioners - artists, designers, specialists still have to work it out
themselves, and that means experimenting with the medium and the audience.
This process was a combination of inventing and discovering - inventing in
the sense of coming up with new way of communicating with the medium,
discovering in the sense that there are still much to explore. In this
process – one of real discovery and real invention, it is still the
conditions in which much interaction art and design take place today.

Biography

Kibook is a firm of specialist digital design consultants, evolving,
developing and delivering the best creative interactive media solutions to
our clients. The directors of Kibook, Stefan Woelwer and Mark Wu, share
extensive experience in the digital media and education industry with a
portfolio of varied work and a range of clients. International clients
result in projects developed for world class brands such as BAR Honda F1,
SAP, Canon, Sun, Hitachi and L'Oreal. Kibook have also created work for
personalities such as the talented Japanese singer/artist/performer Kazuko
Hohki, Yellow Earth Theatre and the Designer of the Year 2004 nominee Sam
Buxton, for whom they have developed the brand and online experience for his
successful MIKRO series of products.

As well as providing design and technical solutions for an international
client base, Kibook has also developed educational material and have been
commissioned to organize and deliver seminars and workshops for various
universities and colleges. Kibook was chosen by the ICA to go to Berlin to
showcase its work alongside other high profile companies from the UK.


________________________________________________________________

Kim Machan - Global Crossings Award Runner-UP
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/kim.htm
Kim Machan
GPO Box 2505
Brisbane QLD 4001
Australia
Tel: +61 7 33487403
Fax: +61 7 33484109
kim at maap.org.au
http://www.maap.org.au

Keywords

Asia Pacific New Media Art, MAAP – Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, New Media
Art Festival

Artist Statement

"Global Crossings" as a concept is one that I feel a very close affinity to.
When I was eight years old I have a hyper vivid memory of feeling very cold
from swimming and then crawling and rolling in the warm sand where I grew up
in Booker Bay. I crawled, and I pondered, why do white people live in
Australia? I did know the history of white settlement in Australia, and as a
side thought, that my mother was born in Indonesia, but it was a deeper
question. I thought about all the people in the world being born somewhere,
not by choice, just that we are all born somewhere. My concept at that very
moment was one of billions of people everywhere, thinking and doing
something. Quite an innocent revelation but perhaps this is a moment that is
always with me, one that I still reflect on and has consequentially been a
conscious and sub conscious motivating force.

Australia as a land is so far from the European traditions and culture that
permeates our life. Asia is our closest region and essentially I feel that
we need more understanding and exchange culturally to make sense of 'where
we all are'.

Serial contemporary art projects as curator and cultural producer with
gallery and television projects placed me in the 'eye of the storm' when the
digital technological revolution was seeking content for new delivery
systems. In the mid nineties, all sectors (government, corporate and
education) had a great interest in Asia and were eager to engage with the
Asian Tiger Economy that enabled support for the birth of MAAP - Multimedia
Art Asia Pacific. MAAP is an organization and festival that explores New
Media Art across a range of art forms and practices emphasizing interactive
multimedia, broadband content, Internet, digital media, animation and varied
projects integrating new media.

MAAP was established to bring focus to the 'unmapped' cultural new media
content emerging from the Asia Pacific/ Australia regions and is now an Asia
Pacific touring New Media Arts Festival and website resource. MAAP partners
with key organizations in our region creating new networks, creating
exhibition opportunities, introducing the artists and their work to
audiences, and increasing cultural contact and understanding through the
experience of New Media Arts to a broader community.

MAAP's inaugural annual festival in 1998 was based in Brisbane and online
and continued annually till 2001 when commitment to regional partnerships
had significantly matured to progress further engagement. MAAP stepped
offshore to the China Millennium Monument Art Museum, Beijing in 2002,
partnering to achieve major milestones for all involved. After the success
of 'MAAP in Beijing' our next major festival followed. 'MAAP in Singapore'
2004, involving seven galleries (including the Singapore Art Museum) with
curators invited from our region, public artworks, live broadband events
linked to Brisbane and a refereed conference hosted by Nanyang Technological
University.

As a founding board member and Asia enthusiast, I stayed committed to the
project - through the Asia financial crisis, SARS, the Iraq war, terrorism
and Asian bird flu. My work as a facilitator to bring together the enormous
creative talents of our region is one that is constantly challenging and
always a most satisfying honor to work with such diverse and gifted people.

Citation

Instead of nominating an artist - an individual who work has overcome
trans-cultural boundaries. I would like to nominate an individual whose work
has facilitated numerous artists overcoming trans-cultural boundaries. My
nominee is Kim Machan, Festival Director of the Multimedia Art Asia Pacific
Festival (MAAP).

Though an artist, Kim of late, has performed more of a curatorial/festival
director role in the Asia Pacific region. She has played a tremendous role
in moving the art and technology scene forward in this region. Based in
Brisbane, Australia, the annual MAAP festival humbly began in 1997. From its
earliest days, the festival strived to identify and showcase young, emerging
artists from the Asia Pacific. The festival featured a range of work from
students to stalwarts like Stelarc, providing a diverse range of work -
which would not normally be seen.

In 2000-2002, the festival was adopted by the Brisbane Powerhouse - Centre
for Live Arts, where the festival demonstrated its coming of age - with a
single dedicated venue with the equipment and facilities it needed. About
then, the festival (Kim) realised that it had reached its peak and decided
to turn into a touring festival to:

- Reach out and expand to new audiences
- Overcome regional boundaries, reach out and identify new artists who do
not always have access to technology
- Provide countries with an opportunity to showcase local artists in the
same platform as international artists (a common problem in the Asia
Pacific)

Since then, the MAAP Festival has been housed in Beijing, China and then in
Singapore this year. There are plans to tour to Seoul and other venues. I
strongly recommend Kim as a candidate for the Global Crossings award as her
work fits the Global Crossings initiative perfectly. Through the festival,
young new artists were seen, some of whom have gone on to international fame
- Shilpa Gupta, Candy Factory (Japan), Gong Xi (China). It has overcome
natural geographical barriers that prevent trans-cultural collaboration to
give artists an opportunity to work together and see new works.

On a personal note, Kim has boundless energy and almost always
single-handedly manoeuvres often trying situations - developing and working
with high level corporate and government bodies. In sum, she is an
individual who has devoted the last 18 years and contributed to the progress
of the Asia Pacific new media ethos and significantly assisted in helping
artists have their work recognized and introduced to new audiences by
successfully overcoming traditional geographical boundaries.

Biography

Kim Machan has been Director of MAAP-Multimedia Art Asia Pacific since 1998
and involved in contemporary art for some 20 years. Working as an
independent curator and producer, she initiated projects such as ABC
broadcasts *Art Rage: Art Works for Television* involving 70 contemporary
artists over four series (1996-2000) and other arts media productions. She
has made several New Media Art research tours through Asia and developed
collaborative partnerships with arts organizations and governments through
the region. In 2002 she was contributing curator for Media City Seoul,
Co-Chief Curator for 'MAAP in Beijing' and Chief Curator for many MAAP
programs including annual Net Art and screening programs since 1998.

She has served on several panels and advisory boards including Sound Mill
Arts Qld, on the World Wide Web Consortium Program Committee and as paper
reviewer (2000-2004), Griffith Artworks Acquisitions Board and currently,
The Institute of Modern Art Board. Presently Kim is researching the next
major project for MAAP 2006 that will focus on artists in Asia using the
internet. Kim is a Ph.D. candidate at Queensland University of Technology in
Creative Industries in the area of New Media Art in Asia.


________________________________________________________________

Nalini Malani
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/malani.htm
Nalini Malani
3\42 Nanik Nivas,
91 Bhulabhai Desai Road,
Bombay 400026, India
Phone: + 91 20 26140832
nalinim at bom5.vsnl.net.in
http://www.naliniMalani.com <http://www.nalinimalani.com/>

Artist Statement

The Indian artist Nalini Malani who was born in 1946 in Karachi, saw the
gradual erosion of the earlier nationalistic, Nehruvian socialist ideologies
giving way to the subtle economic strangulation of the Indian economy by the
West. While Indian art for decades was mostly focused on new interpretations
of its traditions, Malani's framework has always reached farther than the
boundaries of India. The Greek tragedies, politically engaged theatre from
the 20th century such as Heiner Mueller and Bertolt Brecht, film noir, and
existentialism became source material for many of her large projects.

Malani's works have had an engaged social commitment throughout. Her
innovative productions in theatre and video from the nineties onwards have
dealt with the axis of globalism and parochialism and the ensuing aggression
in the form of sectarian violence, manipulation of history and threat of
nuclear war.

Just after the riots of Bombay in 1992-1993 that put Indian secular society
out of joint, she was one of the first artists to pick up the video camera
as an alternative medium for making art. In the nineties she traversed a
labyrinth of different media practices with video, theatre, neon, painting,
drawing, installations, combined and montaged them, let them collide. She is
an artist 'pur sang' and although her latest major works are video
installations, she does not call herself a video artist but a painter. Her
artworks do not become just a didactic, audiovisual pedagogy, but rather a
challenging aesthetic conception of her subjects. The video installation
form that she uses for this takes on an aesthetic that seduces the spectator
in the first register.

In Hamletmachine, 1999/2000, she portrays fascist leaders bleeding over a
body creating a throbbing visual cadence that reaches a cathartic high point
from which emerges a large deformed face of a woman howling for her lost
world as the Muslim slum of Behrampada burns to ashes. In *Transgressions,
2001*, she combines the video element with reverse paintings and shadows. On
the video projections of white European skin appears the Western clichéd
experience of the Orient, combined with shadows of her Kalighat paintings.
The narrative proceeds to give critical interpretations on genetic
engineering and global marketing strategies, followed by a moronic child's
voice pleading to learn English while languages from India pour down like
monsoon rain lost into the earth forever. Like tattoos, these images adorn
the fair skin for eternity, in a process of cultural destruction (rather
than of cultural creation) that has never come to an end. In works like
these, Malani has found a hybrid form combining her painting style with
video and performance to construct unique ways of contemporary storytelling.


For Nalini Malani, art is a search for the working of the mind, convincingly
crystallizing questions regarding human behavior. As she says, "I do believe
in a more progressive society, and I do not refer here to technological
progress. It has to do with human beings and tolerance and understanding."

Citation

Malani is one of the pioneers of contemporary Indian art. Although primarily
a visual artist, she has over the last decade or two moved into installation
and media art. Her influence on other younger artists to experiment with
different media is often acknowledged by the art community in India. As far
as work with technology goes, mention must be made of *Remembering Toba Tek
Singh*, a 20-minute video installation.

Among other props, this piece used 17 VCDs, four data projections and 12
television monitors (for more on this piece, see
(http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Nalini_Malani).
Her *Sacred and the Profane* uses a 'primitive' technology of the cinema in
conjunction with popular art. An experiment of this kind brings forth the
fascination with technology not only to the artist but also to the viewer
and the larger public. It does so not by presenting technology per se but by
re-presenting common art forms and images.

This re-presentation captures the similarities as well as the differences
with the original, popular images. In so doing, technology establishes a
common space with artistic expression and thereby gets assimilated within
the universe of art. So, although Malani's work does not deal with 'high'
technology, her works sublimely capture the spirit of technology – that is,
technology that is used does not intrude on the artwork, allows the artwork
to retain its autonomy as a piece of art and yet makes it clear that this
work has been radically altered by the use of something other than art, in
this case some technological intervention.

Her work also satisfies the criterion of global connectedness. *Remembering
Toba Tek Singh* is based on a short story by the well known writer Manto
dealing with the events during the partition of the Indian sub-continent
into India and Pakistan, reflecting artistically on inhuman and irrational
violence. As many commentators have noted, her art often reflects on
marginalized voices and is committed to protest, whether it is a response to
sexual exploitation (as in her *Medeaprojekt*) or religious/national
fanaticism (as in *Hamletmachine*).

Biography

Malani has worked with video since 1991. She started by recording her
ephemeral, continuous drawing *City of Desires *, on the walls of Gallery
Chemould, Bombay, made in protest against the rise of Hindu fundamentalism.
Her video works have been an expansion of her practices in drawing and
painting. In her multimedia installations she often makes single cell
animated drawings that bleed and stain. Foregrounding the dispossessed of
the earth, she has worked in theatre collaborations using texts by the
German playwrights Heiner Mueller, Bertolt Brecht and the Pakistani writer
Sa'adat Hussain Manto which reflect on violence, pain and suffering in the
name of nationalism and religion.

She has shown her large scale works in solo exhibitions at Prince of Wales
Museum Bombay, 1999, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York 2002,
Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi, 2002; and Bose Pacia Modern, New York
2004.

A selection of the venues where her presentations have been shown are: The
World Wide Video Festivals, Amsterdam 1998, 2000, 2002; Century City at the
Tate Modern in London, 2001; Unpacking Europe, Museum Boymans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam, 2002; the Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, 2002; Kalaghoda
Festival, Bombay, 2003; Multi-Media Art Asia Pacific, Millennium Monument
Beijing, 2003; Poetic Justice, Istanbul Biennale, 2003; House of World
Culture, Berlin 2003,Zoom, Museo Temporario Lisbon, 2004; Minority Report,
Aarhus Art Festival, Aarhus, 2004; La Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2004; "Homo
Ludens" Media_City Seoul, 2004; Crossing Currents, New Delhi, 2004; Edge of
Desire, Queens Museum, 2005; Sharjah Biennale 2005; and Venice Biennale
2005.


________________________________________________________________

Regina Célia Pinto - Global Crossings Award Runner-Up
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/pinto.htm
Regina Célia Pinto
Rua Conde de Bernadotte,
26, bloco: 02, apto: 502,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
reginapinto at arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm

Keywords

Net.Art, globalization, Milky Way, giant pixel painting, genre.

Artist Statement

Be Alive Today
by Regina Célia Pinto

After starting out in the world of the arts, I have been working with art
and computers since 1993. In 1997, I became a Net.Artist. I have never
regretted that move. The "Net Art" category is being simultaneously
conceived and built by many artists from several terrestrial coordinates.
Although globalization and exclusion are completely interlinked terms, I
still believe that one of the good qualities of the former is the fact that
it permits the exchange of artistic experiences in the national and
international spheres. That delights me! All of my work is focused in that
direction.

My interest is clearly expressed in *The Museum of the Essential and Beyond
That* (http://arteonline.arq.br), my best-known work. The museum has no
institutional links and receives no financial aid or sponsorship of any
kind. It is developed on a home computer in the city of Rio de Janeiro, but
it has a dynamic digital model, in a permanent state of "coming into being"
and, for that very reason, receives contributions from different latitudes
and longitudes of this geography without borders created by information
technology. In addition to being its curator, I am also an artist – the
museum encompasses all of my own work, including the *Library of Marvels*,
my collection of "artist books" on the Web.

These books are electronic narratives that use several kinds of media and
processes: image, sound, words, movement, games, simulation, programming,
and interactivity or the simulation thereof (
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm). In addition to examining the cultural
impact and possibilities created by computers as machines that can produce
books and libraries, the *Library of Marvels*, in a way, is also part of the
same positive quality of globalization because it seeks to disseminate the
writings of important authors from all continents.

Today, this may be because:

"The image-world is the surface of globalization…. The task is not to get
behind the image surface but to stretch it, enrich it, give it definition,
give it time. A new culture opens here upon the line." (Susan Buck-Morss,
"Visual Studies and Global Imagination").

Perhaps because I have returned to my roots somewhat, I have been devoting
myself to "giant paintings" (pixels on screen) such as the Milky Way
(http://arteonline.arq.br/via_lactea
), which began as reflections on pain, beauty and a photograph that
personified the Beslan tragedy (2004). In this "painting" I touch on another
focus of my early studies: the female gender. The Milky Way is like a
mosaic. Different images with a strong impact, screen sirens, ordinary
women, women who have been victims of violence and women from the third
world, side by side, all have a right to their 15 seconds of fame – "Star
Time." The aim is not to compare them; what matters is the "Whole." The role
of women, ensuring the survival of the species with their milk in this Milky
Way.

I am fascinated by the thought that with my work as a (Brazilian!) woman I
am doing something to light up this Milky Way. It's good to be alive TODAY!
And to participate actively and creatively in this great web of information.


Citation

It is my pleasure to recommend Regina Célia Pinto for the Leonardo Global
Crossings Prize. Pinto is a Brazilian artist whose work focuses on web-based
and CD-ROM art. Pinto's utilization of technology is permeated with a poetic
and playful sensibility, which has the effects of both challenging and
delighting the user. Global awareness and desire to make connections
characterize most of her work.

Pinto's most extensive project is *The Museum of the Essential*, and *Beyond
That*, previously the on-line publication *Arte on Line* which she initiated
and ran from a home computer. The ability to cross borders has always been
important to Pinto both practically and metaphorically. This virtual museum
exhibits the work of international artists, with special emphasis on South
American digital art. The plan of the building attests to the global
ambitions of the project. It includes areas dedicated to topics such as
Cartographies of Globalization, Cloning and the Web, Esthetic of Tragedy,
Borders of net.art and Web Art Today, The Concept of Borders Today,
Electronic Poetry, Electronic Artist's Books, Anthropological and
Sociological [issues], a video room and a game room.

Pinto's own artwork, consisting of multiple interactive books and game books
is featured in various parts of the web site, especially in the room labeled
"Library of Marvels". I specially recommend *The Book of Sand*, a game book
designed to encourage the participant to reflect on the relation of
aesthetics, ethics, and global events. The game consists of a virtual set of
dominos that allows the user to reconstruct the Twin Towers. Each piece of
the game is linked to images and texts. The visitor is instructed to think
of ethics and aesthetics while playing the game.

While several internationally renowned Latin American artists use
sophisticated technologies, much of the digital artwork (specially web art)
emulates earlier static, two-dimensional media, such as painting, drawing,
and photography. Pinto models her works on books, yet she allows the viewer
to create individual pathways and to experience the works in unique,
non-linear ways. The inclusion of games within the books greatly contributes
to this effect. Pinto's work invokes the joint powers of art and technology
to seduce, to entertain, to connect, to challenge, to inspire and to
destroy. Hardly more could be expected of an artist. She deserves your
consideration for this award.

Biography

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Regina Célia Pinto is a researcher, visual artist
and teacher.

She earned a teaching certificate in Drawing and Art at the Escola de Belas
Artes of the Universidade Federal in Rio de Janeiro, 1974 - 1977. She has a
Master's degree in Art History, specializing in the Anthropology of Art /
EBA, UFRJ, 1994. Her Master's thesis is titled: "Four views in search of a
reader, important women, art and identity," 1994, EBA, UFRJ.

She has written a variety of academic works, including published scientific
essays. As a visual artist, she has participated in several exhibitions and
curated several.


________________________________________________________________

Shilpa Gupta - Global Crossings Award Runner-Up
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/gupta.htm

Shilpa Gupta
2nd Floor, Premesh
6 B Turner Road
Bandra West
Mumbai 400 050
India
Tel: 91 22 26427721
shilpagupta at hotmail.com

Keywords

Interactive, public, accessible, mass reproduced, democratic, politics in
everyday life, installation, video, Internet, Bombay/Mumbai.

Artist Statement

Untitled, 2004
Interactive Projection,
Projector and Computer
8 meters wide

In this wall projection are seven figures, all dressed up in camouflage –
which has become increasingly fashionable after the War on Terror Campaign.
First in the West, and more recently, spilling East onto the streets outside
my home. Now I can walk into shops two blocks from where I live and buy
camouflage gear. Camouflage makes you feel Cool and masquerades Terror.
Terror is quite Cool.

Click on the figures and they move, they copy, they imitate. Click one,
click two, choose a leader, become a leader and the rest follow. If they
stop, click them up and they join.

Exercise 1 – 2 – 3 – 4. One Bend, Two Bend, Three Bend, Stay.
Look Straight – Don't See – STAY

I have a bag, I have a phone, my neighbour has a phone, my phone, I don't
have a phone, I don't have a shopping bag, but I need to JOG for it. Jog Jog
Jog Stay on the Spot. Jog Jog Stay Stay

March Free Speech Free Press Free Market March Market Market March Free
Speech No Speech No Press Market Market Market march March

Shut and Be. Shut and Eat. Don't Interrupt. PRAY.
Fun Merry Merry Merry Fun Fun. DO or OUT. Aim 1234 Right Kill 1234 Left Aim
1234 Shoot Shoot Aim Shoot 1234 1234 1234 4,4

Dumbed in a capitalist society, we enjoy being programmed. We find instant
satiation and loss of memory in turning ourselves into puppets. We allow
media, electronic extensions of ourselves now in the hands of a corporate
often with state support nexus to think for us and amputate individual
reasoning (McLuhan). Mental and physical activity slips from the mechanical
to the mindless, deteriorating into fear, chaos and violence against an
enemy that does not exist in a world where global consent is hijacked to
fight a war in search of weapons which were never there. Everybody Bend;
Don't Talk, Don't See, Don't Hear. Gandhi said so.

The project recalls a psychology where a combination of healthy physical
exercises can help in slow and intense indoctrination of the mind by intense
state military drills, local Hindu right wing RSS cadre exercises or new age
courses to make you fighting fit.

The interactive loop keeps slipping into mindless violence. Violence – which
is no longer just a fashion but is being internalized, morphing the emptied
vulnerable self to become a source to project it towards the state, which is
no longer the sole entity that has monopoly over the legitimate use of
violence.

Citation

Gupta has shown a remarkable flexibility in her approach to creating works
of art moving away from conventional notion of what constitutes art and art
practice. Her work is often about interactivity and it exists mostly in that
moment, an aspect which distinguishes her from conventional visual artists.
She has managed to bring to life practices, experiences, beliefs, memory and
imagination of people, particularly from India, into the realm of new types
of art practices. In doing so she has reached out to a wider section of
society and has changed the idea of how we experience or even imagine art.
She has also managed to move away from a Eurocentric art history based art
practice. Her work stands outside the definitions created by such
institutions and offer a fresh approach to creating art in Indian context.

Among her well-known works are
*Blessed-bandwidth.net<http://blessed-bandwidth.net/>
*, *Sentiment-Express.com* and *Diamonds and You.com <http://you.com/>*.
Describing *Blessed-bandwidth.net <http://blessed-bandwidth.net/>*, a piece
commissioned by Tate Online, Jemima Rellie says, "Shilpa Gupta's new
work *Blessed-bandwidth.net
<http://blessed-bandwidth.net/>*invites visitors to log on, choose a
religion and get blessed. Set against a world divided by faith, the work
explores religion, globalization and the complex cultural and political
dynamics of the Internet … it juxtaposes the real and virtual worlds and
encourages visitors to consider how these spaces overlap and merge." In
writing about her work, Johan Pijnappel has this to say: "She creates fake
worlds that simulate the culture of her environment, while simultaneously
standing this culture on its head. In a conversation we once had, she
suggested to me her reasons for bringing net art into her practice: 'It is
about default properties, default politics. Net.art is non-consumable. It is
familiar, interactive, friendly and time based. It can't match your
curtains, and comes built in with a challenge to the lopsided hierarchical
relationship between the artist and the patron'."

While Shilpa Gupta's works are visibly technological, the use of technology
is not to throw light on technology but on ordinary experiences. In the
process, technology becomes an essential part of her work, again not because
she is using the net as a medium but because she is saying something
essential about the net - that the net impregnates our experiences so
seamlessly that we are always in danger of forgetting that it is technology
that is mediating between us and the world. It seems to be the case that the
most important insights into technology which her work develops are the ways
by which technology becomes 'natural', something which we take for granted
in the same way as the natural world around us.

Biography

Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976) lives and works in Mumbai where she has participated
in shows at Saakshi Gallery, Gallery Chemould, National Gallery of Modern
Art and at Lakeeren Art Gallery.

Recent works include *Your Kidney Supermarket*, an interactive installation
and video on illegal human organ trade which was shown in a bookshop window
in Mumbai and later at the Transmediale, Berlin where it received the
Interaction award 2004.

She also works in Internet art, for example, *Blessed-Bandwidth.net* which
was commissioned by the Tate, London (2003) and *Sentiment -
Expess.com<http://expess.com/>
*, which was shown at Century Cities (2001) curated by Geeta Kapur at the
Tate Modern.

In 2006, she will show at Biennial of Sydney, Solo Show - The Blackbox @
ARCO, Madrid, 9th Havana Biennial and Liverpool Biennale. She has
participated in Media City Seoul Biennale and Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial
and over the past 10 years she has participated in shows in Berlin,
Brisbane, New York, Beijing, Hoorn, Amsterdam, Auckland, Singapore, Jakarta,
Manchester, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Melbourne, Toronto, Glasgow, Seoul, Tallinn
and Ljubljana.

She has initiated the Aar Paar - a public art exchange project between India
and Pakistan and the Video Art Road Show, screenings of video art on streets
in Mumbai and Delhi. In 2005 she co-facilitated a visual art exhibition on
borders for the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil.


________________________________________________________________

GLOBAL CROSSINGS
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/

by Dennis Summers
3927 Parkview Drive
Royal Oak, MI 48073
U.S.A.
Tel: +248-549-2322
Dennis [@] quantumdanceworks [dot] com
http://www.quantumdanceworks.com

and Choy Kok Kee
School of Film and Media Studies
Ngee Ann Polytechnic
535 Clementi Road
Blk 53 #07-01
Singapore 599489.
Tel: +65 6460 8251
kokkee [@] np [dot] edu [dot] sg / kokkee [@] artlover [dot] com

"We are looking for work that considers the global earth in some fashion or
another. It can be work that addresses global social, political economic,
spiritual, etc. issues. It can be work that physically or metaphorically
lies in multiple locations on the planet, it can be work that may have
personal relationships to multiple locations on the planet. Or anything else
that loosely falls along the concept of being "global" in nature." – LEA
call for entries.

Introduction

The idea for this show came out of an email exchange between myself and
Nisar Keshvani, LEA's editor-in-chief. The *Leonardo* journal had recently
published an article on my ongoing global memorial artwork called *The
Crying Post Project*.

In the time between writing it and publication I had put up some more posts
and had thought that *LEA* would be a good venue to update the article.
Nisar suggested putting together an Internet exhibit of other artworks that
were somehow global in design or content. Nisar also brought in Kok Kee Choy
as a co-curator to participate with the review process.

I have to say that this exhibit turned out to be much trickier, and to take
much longer than I initially expected. First of all, our original call for
entries brought in almost no appropriate work at all. And although our
second call was much more productive, I have the feeling that there are many
more artists doing exciting, challenging global artwork. I know that at
least a couple of artists that we personally approached had not seen the
call for entries at all.

As powerful a communications medium as the Internet is, the reality is that
even well networked people are buried under too many information resources,
and it can be quite easy to miss opportunities. Furthermore, our goal was to
try to increase the representation of artists around the globe who tend to
be under-represented in the Euro-American art axis. This too was difficult,
in that many of them may not even have Internet access.

Additionally, there were some artists with interesting work, who
unfortunately were unable to resolve technical details in getting the work
presentable for the Internet. In spite of all these concerns, I believe that
the artists we have collected here represent a quality cross-section of the
technical and aesthetic range of globally related artwork. However, if you
are reading this and believe your work to be appropriate, please do not
hesitate to contact *LEA* at lea at mitpress.mit.edu.

Before considering the artists that have been included in this exhibit, I'd
like to consider a number of artists we were unable to include, and the
implications of their artwork to a new networked global art and economy.

One artist wrote:

"Hello there,

My name is Scott Wesly am a local artist from austria

i will like you to do me a favour. the favour is that my agent is to pay me
some money for the art award which i won from mr erick benjamin in usa for
the jobs i model for him, Now he is owing me some money and he has decided
to pay me with USPS Money Order and i cannot cash the money over here
because it is USPS Money Order or CANADA money order. so now am looking for
any US or Canada CITIZEN that i can trust in helping me to cash the Money
Order and i don't mind in paying the person 10% of the money because this
has been a problem for me so i want you to help me out of the problem.

I will be very greatfull if you can help me out in cashing this money order.
I will be waiting for your urgent response ASAP today. Here is the full name
and address of the agent owing me if you will like to contact him for
confirmation

MR ERICK BENJAMIN
206-338-5690"

The global component here should be apparent: Austria, the USA, and perhaps
Canada. Additionally there is a provocative subtext – global monetary
practices; perhaps the abuse suffered by people on the wrong end of the new
global economy. Unfortunately the artist failed to supply us with the
necessary website or attached information.

Mr Wesly was by no means the only artist dealing with global monetary
practices, and their aesthetic implications. Several artists including Mr
Aroh Edy (Nigeria), Mr Serge Mitev (Russia), Dr Debbie jerry [sic] (also
Nigeria), Mr Wong Du (China), Mr John Savimbi (Angola), and Mrs Luisa Loi
Ejercito Estrada (Philippines), all submitted interesting collaborative
project ideas. In general, each project consisted of a request to a
collaborator to supply banking information and/or money in order to transfer
larger sums out of their respective countries.

There was some variation in the socio-political subtexts. In some cases they
dealt with different funereal practices, i.e. the relationship between money
and the dead (Edy, Du, and Savimbi); in others they dealt with power
relationships and the significance of protected resources (Mitev, jerry, and
Estrada). I was intrigued to see that this common aesthetic was shared by
artists from what we would generally consider to be wildly differing
cultural traditions. It may be true, as some have suggested, that the global
economy is leading to a shared global culture.

Nonetheless, this seems to me to be an important new aesthetic development,
which goes under-reported by the traditional art press. Perhaps owing to the
nature of the *Leonardo Electronic Almanac*, artists that would normally go
unrecognized felt comfortable enough to respond to our call for entries.
Unfortunately, it was difficult to get the full details of these projects
from either the artists or their global collaborators.

The Works

- Capture Site by Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers
- Floating Point by Tiffany Holmes
- Home and Away by Samina Mishra
- Intermundos by Vanessa Gocksch
- Nike Blanket Petition by Cat Mazza
- Radiomap by Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber
- Surveillance by Alison Chung-Yan
- The Face Of Tomorrow by Mike Mike
- World Hug Day by Gao Brothers

The artists in this show have addressed the global concept with variety. It
should come as no surprise that several took a socio-political approach
(Mike, Chung-Yan, Mishra, Mazza). Three might be considered more of a
technological/(pseudo)scientific approach (Holmes, Hohl/Huber, and
Doyon/Demers), and two a multicultural communications approach (Gocksch and
the Gao Brothers).

Mike, Chung-Yan, Mishra, and Mazza all consider what it means to be a global
citizen. Mazza and *microRevolt* have created a global community dedicated
to raising issues of the sweatshop treatment of women throughout the world,
particularly as it relates to Nike. Much like the AIDS quilt and certainly
just as serious, small squares are knitted by people all over the world and
are being collected for use as a blanket to present to Phil Knight, the
Chairman of Nike. In this project the Internet is the format for publicity,
but not the actual artwork.

Chung-Yan also looks at the darker side of global control with her *
Surveillance* project, in a piece that could only be created and displayed
via the Internet. In her case, she points out how much of the world is now
both public and easily accessible, raising the usual questions of just how
far the information revolution will go, and how little control we have over
it. I personally would like to see this raised to a higher level of
engagement than a "things as they are" presentation. Perhaps into an artwork
that allows for some form of public engagement as does the Nike Blanket
Petition.

Mike takes a more positive - some might even say utopian - approach with *The
Face Of Tomorrow*. Here Mike creates composite images of men and women
created by combining multiple pictures of the populations of cosmopolitan
cities throughout the world. What is interesting is how similar these
composites appear even from wildly differing locales. There are however,
some structural issues that ought to be considered. For example, Mike does
point out the difficulty in getting photos of women in Muslim countries, but
this leaves a noticeable and questionable gap in his presentation.
Additional issues include the fact that the photos are overwhelmingly of
young people, which certainly skews the composites. I also would have been
intrigued to see this carried even further into gender-neutral composites.
Finally, the Google ads for smiley faces and other products and services may
have been an economic necessity, but it distracts from the presentation.

Mishra looks at the children of immigrants from India and other Asian
countries, and displays their often poignant and wise comments on living in
Great Britain. Although I appreciate the range, depth and subtlety of her
photos and quotes, I think that the piece overall would benefit from a more
technically savvy and aesthetically sophisticated presentation. Such an
interface design could enhance the content, and be an even richer experience
for the participant.

Holmes takes a serious and scientific approach to global water pollution in
*Floating Point*. In this piece she creates multiple methods of visually
representing data pertinent to specific water components at specific
locations. Although it might be dismissed as "simply" information design,
there are both aesthetic and interactive components to many of the
locations, which are quite interesting independently of its informational
value.

Hohl and Huber have crafted a project, which in addition to its
informational value, seems to be just plain fun. In *Radiomap* participants
(and ultimately collaborators) walk on a physical representation of the
globe projected onto the floor, and based on their "global location"
different radio stations can be heard. Each station is taken from the "real"
location. This is a complex piece, which in addition to bringing people into
"contact" with other parts of the world, also can allow for a variety of
collaborative and other experiences.

*Capture Site* by Doyon and Demers is a piece which in some ways is the
inverse of *Radiomap*. Here, the two artists are suspended above ground in a
large net, with all sorts of sensors in place that communicate local
environmental information throughout the world.

Additionally, the two performers engage in a performance/conversation that
is also streamed throughout the internet.

*Intermundos*, created in Colombia by Vanessa Gocksch (Pata de Perro), has
as its goal the representation of local youth culture, and its connection to
youth cultures worldwide. It has a range of funky elements and does a good
job of capturing both visual and conceptual aspects of their cultural
environment. At this point it is still mainly focused on Colombia, but there
are enough segments that look elsewhere, that I have hope for the growth of
what is described as an ongoing project.

Some may discount the *World Hug Day* project by the Gao Brothers as both
simple, naïve and aesthetically uninteresting. And to tell you the truth, I
would have a hard time discounting that critique. However, perhaps because
of my "flower power sixties" imprinting, I see it as both a powerful
statement and a social sculpture not dissimilar to that of Christo and Jean
Claude, or Fluxus artists such as Yoko Ono. The image of thousands of people
throughout the world in a simultaneous hug is quite striking.

So if you're not out there hugging, please stop reading this and start
exploring the world.

BIOGRAPHIES

The multimedia installations, bookworks, digital animations, performance and
conceptual works of Dennis Summers have been inspired by his readings in
quantum physics, philosophy of science, anthropology, linguistics and
information theory. He has worked and exhibited artwork internationally for
the past 20 years. More recently his interest in environmental issues,
current theories on mapping, and language extinction has led to a variety of
artworks including his ongoing global conceptual artwork *The Crying Post
Project*, begun in 2001. In addition to the physical posts placed around the
world as part of *The Crying Post Project*, other components include a
series of digital prints and an interactive 3D website. In contrast to this
sort of work, a recent series of abstract digital "color field" videos have
been described as mesmerizing, beautiful and complex. His artist's books and
videos are in the collections of several major museums.

Choy Kok Kee holds a Master of Art degree in Design for Interactive Media
from the Centre of Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, London, UK. Prior
to that, he was trained in advertising art/applied art and fine art. He has
worked in the creative industry for more than two decades as an art director
and creative consultant. Kok Kee is also an academic and advisor to tertiary
institutions and art colleges. As an artist, Kok Kee first exhibited his
works at a tender age of 11 in the late 1970s after being spotted as an art
prodigy. Since then, Kok Kee has exhibited and won numerous art awards both
abroad and locally. His works are acquired and collected by both foreign and
local commercial institutions, government bodies and educational
establishments. He is also a member and chairperson of governmental,
educational, art and design advisory committee and professional bodies in
areas concerning political matters, media, education, creative design and
arts development. Kok Kee is also a noted pioneer digital media artist in
Singapore and an ex-Mensa international member. He is also the founder and
mastermind behind the brand Cult Of Creatives.


________________________________________________________________

Capture Site
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/capture/index.htm

by Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers
Doyon/Demers
746, rue Saint-Olivier
Québec (Québec)
G1R 1H5
Canada
Tel: +(418) 524-6337
Petitsrectis [at] doyondemers [dot] org
http://www.doyondemers.org/situation/index_sc.html

In the context of the Festival Art Action Actuel (FA3), Doyon/Demers
presented the third version of *Capture Site*, located 5.25 meters above a
rooftop visible from the windows of Artexte. The installation, composed of
sensors fixed to a suspended gridwork, gathered data corresponding to
changes in the environment, detecting variations in luminosity, temperature
and wind velocity, as well as the movements and pressure exerted by the
performers. The conversation d'amour, d'anecdotes et de théories between
Doyon and Demers, as they stood on the aerial grid each day between 12:00
and 5:00 PM, were transmitted in real-time audio and video to the interior
of Artexte's space.

St Raymond - The Capture Site

For the duration of this performative event, the environmental data were
translated into information taken from Artexte's bibliographical database.
Five streams of data were produced from the random pairing of the
environmental elements with different categories from the database. For
example, measures of light intensity were matched with documents from the
"Subject" category of Artexte's database, temperature changes found their
equivalence from the "Geographic Code" category, wind speed was matched with
"Artists", etc. These constantly changing data streams, produced by applying
environmental variables to information concerned primarily with Canada's
visual arts community, were accessible on-line, in real time.

Finally, an email message containing selected information from the climatic
reading and the movements of Doyon/Demers at that precise moment, was
automatically sent, every 20 seconds, to one of the five continents.

Biography

Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers have been working together since 1987.
Active in performance art, but keeping free of all labels, Doyon/Demers
identify themselves as "undisciplinarians". These "Socioaestheticians" have
produced many events incorporating rural and urban environments, in which
often voluntary citizens become both the material for the work and its
dispersed authors. Their works have been presented in Quebec and elsewhere
in Canada, France, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands and Japan. Doyon/Demers
are currently completing their Doctorat en Etudes et pratiques des arts at
the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM), Canada. In 2003, Helene Doyon
was appointed professor in New Media Arts at the Ecole des arts visuels of
Laval University in Quebec City. Jean-Pierre Demers also teaches at UQAM.


________________________________________________________________

Floating Point
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/floatingpt/index.htm

by Tiffany Holmes
Assistant Professor
Department of Art and Technology
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago IL 60603
U.S.A.
Tel: +312-345-3760
Fax: +312-345-3565
tholme [at] artic [dot] edu
http://www.enviroart.org/HolmesColab/docs/

In her project *Floating Point*, the artist proposes to study
trans-disciplinary methods of information analysis in the context of making
pollution data accessible and informative to the general public — through
art and performance. The broader goal of the proposed research is to
creatively design art that promotes sustainable and ecologically responsible
modes of living and a general awareness of both local and global water
quality issues.

In Zurich, the artist creates a two channel video installation that displays
a comparison of the dissolved oxygen levels in both Lake Zurich and the
Limnat River. To begin this project, she will develop a piece of hardware
from a dissolved oxygen sensor. This hardware will be fashioned to float off
a lifejacket or body buoyancy aid. The device will be connected to a laptop
that can read the data transmitted in real time and provide an instant
visualization of the amount of oxygen available. Currently, the artist is
testing content ideas for use in the real-time visualization. The link above
connects to the animation studies for the project, which document the
process of how the artist conceptualized different ways to image water
quality.

Biography

Tiffany Holmes is a multimedia artist whose practice blends traditional
materials and new media in large-scale interactive installations. Her work
explores the relationship between digital technology and culture with an
emphasis on technologies of seeing. Her recent work explores the movement of
both human and animal bodies and the visual languages from different
disciplines used to capture that movement. She exhibits widely in
international and national venues, including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los
Angeles, the Interaction '01 biennial in Japan, ISEA, SIGGRAPH 2000,
World at rt in Denmark, Digital Salon '99 in New York and Madrid, and the Viper
media festival in Switzerland. She writes about her work and research and
lectures in venues as diverse as the International Symposium on the History
of Neuroscience in Zurich, SIGGRAPH '99, Next 1.0 in Sweden, and the
Computer Games, Digital Culture conference in Finland.

With a diverse academic background in painting, animation, and biology,
Holmes situates her work at the intersection between artistic, biomedical,
and linguistic modes of bodily representation. With a Bachelor's degree in
art history from Williams College, Holmes received a Masters in fine arts in
painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Masters in fine
arts in digital arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. To
promote her interdisciplinary artistic practice, the Society of Fellows at
the University of Michigan awarded Holmes a prestigious three-year
fellowship. Holmes recently earned an Illinois Arts Council individual grant
and an Artists In Labs residency in Switzerland. She is currently an
assistant professor of art and technology at the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago where she teaches courses in interactivity and the history and
theory of electronic media.


________________________________________________________________

Home and Away - Growing up as British Asians in London
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/floatingpt/index.htm

by Samina Mishra
264/1 Gulmohar Avenue
Jamia Nagar
New Delhi 110025
India
Tel: +00 91 98116251888
samina [at] vsnl [dot] com
http://www.sarai.net/compositions/multimedia/samina/samina/index.htm

*Home and Away* is a multi-layered, multimedia work that explores the
dynamics of defining one's identity. The children in *Home and Away* are
second and third generation British Asian and belong to families that
traveled to Britain from across the Indian Subcontinent India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. An unfamiliar land was filled slowly with the familiar objects,
sounds and smells.

And so, for the first generation, it may have been easy to identify
themselves as the Indian Diaspora, with a comfortable division between a
home left behind and a new home, between a nostalgic past and a pragmatic
present. But for these children, this is the only home they have ever known
- a unique combination of London's physical space and the Subcontinent's
"culture". They grow up in predominantly Asian neighborhoods, speak English
with an accent that is far from Asian, eat roti sabzi at home and learn
hardly any Asian history at school. So, if London is Home, then it is still,
in some senses, distant and away. And if the Subcontinent is Away, it is
still home to many things that make up their identity.

The *Home and Away* exhibition is made up of digitally produced panels. The
panels integrate large single images as well as selected strips from the
contact sheets with text that excerpts interviews and an author's narrative.
The photographs consist of portraits of the children and their families as
well as street images and signage. These speak of a very strong Asian
presence, both in everyday spaces as well as the exceptional, for example,
the annual Baisakhi celebration in Southall, which coincided in 2003 with
the opening of a new Gurdwara, the largest anywhere outside of India.

The exhibit is bound together by an edited soundtrack using voice, music and
effect sounds. In one corner, there is a computer displaying an html
presentation which combines all the elements of the exhibition but is a
stand alone work that allows the viewer interactive freedom.

Biography

Samina Mishra is a documentary filmmaker and media practitioner based in New
Delhi. She has recently finished *The House on Gulmohar Avenue*, a
documentary film about home and belonging, tracing the filmmaker's personal
journey to understand what it can mean to be a Muslim in India today. *Home
and Away*, a multimedia exhibition on British Asian children in London,
appeared in ISEA 2004.

Her work includes *Stories of Girlhood*, a series of three films on the Girl
Child in India, produced for Unicef, India and *Adha Asman*, a video about
differential access to healthcare, produced for the British Council as part
of the Gender Planning Training Project. She has also written *Hina in the
Old City*, a non-fiction book with photographs on the Walled City of Delhi
for children. She was the location sound recordist for the documentary film
*Words on Water*. She has translated six children's stories from Urdu into
English for The Magic Key, published by Young Zubaan, New Delhi.


________________________________________________________________

Intermundos Site
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/intermundos/index.htm

by Vanessa Gocksch (Pata de Perro)
Hotel Bellavista
4650 Avenida Santander
Marbella, Cartagena de Indias
Colombia
Tel: +57 5 664 6411
patadeperro [at] intermundos [dot] org
http://www.intermundos.org

*Intermundos* is an independent organization based in Colombia. Through
events, exchange and the media arts we work to network marginalized
Colombian communities together with different cultural youth movements from
the "north".

The project started by working with the Colombian hiphop movement, and it is
in this area that it has grown the most. We have an office in Bogotá that
serves as an information center where youths can find videos, books,
magazines and music related to artistic movements from the north, as well as
information related to their cultural heritage.

Local events and workshops are organized relating to the hiphop movement; we
host a weekly hiphop radio program, have published documentaries and have
collaborated with other independent entities by participating in events and
exchanges on a local and global scale. We have recently initiated a
collaborative initiative with the PixelACHE festival group from Finland
whereby exchanges are being generated between the "electronic subcultures"
of our two countries and beyond.

In all of our projects we work to strengthen the sense of local identity by
highlighting the immense intellectual and cultural wealth of the different
regions of Colombia. We, like many others in Colombia, feel that it is only
through this heightened sense of identity (and greater access to
information) that we can construct movements (or a society) that can move
beyond following cultural trends towards proposing them.

Today, what is perhaps the most important intellectual legacy existent in
Colombia - indigenous knowledge - is fast disappearing. The western world
has not yet validated "pre"–literate forms of knowledge acquisition as a
valuable asset towards the "development" of human culture. This disdain on
the part of the dominant, technology-based culture causes as consequence the
continuous extermination of aborigine cultures and disappearance of their
intellectual legacy. *Intermundos* is developing ways of reaffirming the
values of these cultures through different projects and exchanges. Most of
these are still in their initial phase.

The website Intermundos.org <http://intermundos.org/> is to serve firstly as
our window to the world, and secondly as a multimedia experiment that serves
to find new ways to communicate ideas through an organic format that does
not follow a specific logic (that arises from linear thought) but rather
invites the user to lose themselves in a chaotic framework much more true to
life itself (multidimensional). We still consider the website to be a pilot,
we are currently seeking funding in order to make it into the cultural
portal we wish it to become.

Biography

Vanessa Gocksch is an artist who was born in the north but opted for the
south. Travelling from Brussels to Miami, then Mexico, she is now based in
Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. She studied visual
arts with an emphasis in sculpture in Florida International University, La
Cambre and Universidad Autonoma de Mexico. She has worked with many
different media, including sculpture, etching, photography, installation,
performance, video and documentary. Her work has been exhibited in galleries
and festivals in Mexico, Colombia, Brooklyn, Miami, Helsinki and London. As
of the year 2000 she started venturing into the digital realm, teaching
herself the tools necessary to communicate and create in what she calls an
indispensable medium when located in a "remote" region of the planet. She is
presently performing as a video jockey under the name of Pata de Perro, as
well as producing a documentary and developing the communication project *
Intermundos* and its website.


________________________________________________________________

The Nike Blanket Petition
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/nike/index.htm

by Cat Mazza
microRevolt
P.O. Box 1659
Troy, NY 12180
U.S.A.
Tel: +518 253 5830
inquiry [at] microrevolt [dot] org
http://www.microrevolt.org/petition_overview.htm

The Nike Blanket Petition is an initiative of *microRevolt*, a collective of
fiber hobbyists and cyber-activists founded by artist Cat Mazza. The mission
of *microRevolt*is to organize new media projects that promote sweatshop
awareness and investigate the current crisis of global expansion and the
feminization of labor.

The *Nike Blanket Petition* is a 14-foot wide blanket made up of knitted
together squares. Each square becomes a pixel that makes up a bitmap of the
Nike swoosh logo, and each square acts as a hand made petition for fair
labor policies for Nike apparel workers. Participants from the United States
and abroad have come together to knit or crochet a petition or virtually
sign a square through the microRevolt.org website. The project combines
Internet technology with traditional craft as a way of engaging social
networks, whether in face-to-face knitting circles or an on-line community
in dialog about the labor process of garment production.

The Nike Blanket Petition has toured various knitting circles including ones
held in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and has
received on-line signatures from over 20 countries. Once the blanket is
complete with a border, it will be presented to the Chairman of the Board of
Nike Corporation, Phil Knight, as a gesture of hope for abolition of the
sweatshop conditions for Nike apparel workers.


Biography

Cat Mazza founded *microRevolt* in 2003 to combine her interests in media
activism, women's labor issues, and art. From 1999-2003 she worked at
Eyebeam, a non-profit new media art center in New York City where she
developed education, curatorial and technology programs. She is currently
teaching electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she
received her Masters in fine arts. 2005 exhibitions include: Prix Ars
Electronica, where she won a Digital Communities award; SESI gallery, Sao
Paulo, Brazil; *Fuzzy Logic* at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, UK, and the
*Upgrade International* at Eyebeam in New York City.


________________________________________________________________

Radio Map
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/radiomap/index.htm

by Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber
Sheffield Hallam University
School of Cultural Studies
Art & Design Research Centre
Psalter Lane Campus
Sheffield, S11 8UZ
United Kingdom
info [at] hohlwelt [dot] com
stephan [at] digitalmind [dot] de
http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/interact/practice/radiomap.html

*Radiomap* is an unencumbered interactive environment that enables one or
more participants to walk about a large photorealistic map of the world and
listen to live radio programs from those locations they are walking about.
The location in focus is indicated by a "point of interest", a visual ring
element.

If more then one participant is present on the map this single "point of
interest" is shared among them. Now they have to negotiate their movements
to accurately tune into stations as they have an equal amount of control
over it. The overall interaction is simple and intuitive and encourages
collaboration.

The radio programs in the database have been selected for their strong local
color and program format. Where possible, stations that solely broadcast
music of a certain genre have been avoided, as they would not support the
concept behind the work.

Part of this concept is the effect of disorientation as this large-scale map
is not experienced from a (safe) distance but participants are placed upon
it. Continents appear from a different perspective, and geography and the
relationships among continents seem distorted.
Another part lies beyond the mundane quality of the radio broadcasts as
attentive participants realize different time zones and seasons in the
different hemispheres besides the multitude of languages and dialects. These
broadcasts together with the unusual, disorientating viewpoint create
Gestalt effects that enable people to perceive the earth and other cultures
from a different perspective. It is a collective and holistic experience of
exploration, surprise, longing and belonging, mediating between the
individuals (in the installation) and the cultures of the broadcasting
places, creating an intense, presence that is expected to last beyond the
active participation itself.

*Radiomap* is the practice-based part of a research project Hohl is
undertaking at the Art & Design Research Centre of Sheffield Hallam
University. This exploration is about the Experiential Qualities of
Interactive Environments.


Biographies

Michael Hohl graduated in 2000 with a Masters in Digital Media Design from
the University of the Arts, Berlin and also spent some time at the Köln
international School of Design (KISD) in Cologne. He worked as a
conceptionist in digital media from 1994 in different digital media
companies in Berlin (PIxelpark, ArtCom, cityscope, imstall). In 2002, after
the bubble burst he relocated to the UK (after having lived for almost 10
years in Berlin). He is currently researching "Experiential Qualities of
Interactive Environments" at the Art & Design Research Centre at Sheffield
Hallam University.

Stephan Huber is a freelance designer, artist and programmer based in
Hamburg, Germany. He started with an apprenticeship in typesetting and
graduated in 2003 with a Masters in Digital Media Design from the University
of the Arts, Berlin. Stephan is interested in wicked technical challenges
such as the visualization of databases. He also tries to explore the sources
of right-wing extremism in his Masters in his installation *A world of
truths*.


________________________________________________________________

Surveillance
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/surveillance/index.htm

by Alison Chung-Yan
Lecturer
Faculty of Music (Sonic Design)
Carleton University
School for Studies in Art & Culture
20 Haslemere Avenue
Ottawa, ON
Canada K2W 1E3
Tel: +(613) 599-8731
alison [at] sonicscape [dot] biz
http://artengine.ca/chungyan/surv/index.htm

*Surveillance* (2004) is a net art installation which explores the
phenomenon of webcam surveillance on the Internet and its capacity to
conjoin spaces near and far – physical and virtual – public and private.
Housed within a single webpage, 15 smaller windows are gradually assembled
security-camera style into a 5x3 matrix offering a near real-time glimpse of
webcams situated around the world.

As a woman in the Netherlands searches her fridge, an elephant drinks from a
watering hole in Africa. Students mill about a campus in southern California
while traffic hums along in Toronto. The night sky is lit up in Shanghai as
an office worker in Houston toils away in a cubicle. In Japan, a Zen garden
is a picture of complete stillness while the Internet Traffic monitor
registers a spike in activity.

Satellite cloud patterns over Costa Rica allude to the possibility of a
storm, as people wait in line at a cafeteria in Alaska and a guinea pig
somewhere in Pennsylvania stirs in its cage. As a solar flare is picked up
by satellite, someone crosses a bridge in Bali and a BBC radio broadcaster
reaches for his cup of coffee.

Unlike the fast-paced abbreviated snapshot of the world as often depicted
and superimposed by television news media, *Surveillance* attempts to show
the world unfolding and moving to its own rhythm. It offers the chance to
observe with the attendant possibility for things to happen – or simply be.

The exhibit uses Flash and Javascript and is optimized for 800 x 600 screen
size resolution, Internet Explorer 5+ browser on PC, and dial-up Internet
access speeds.

Biography

Alison Chung-Yan (b. 1971, Trinidad) is a media artist and composer based in
Ottawa, Canada.

Her works have been exhibited at the Images Festival (Toronto), National
Arts Centre (Ottawa), Oscar Peterson Hall (Montreal), Java Museum for
Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art (Germany), La Casa Encendida
(Spain), Island Art Film and Video Festival (UK), and the 2004 Biennale of
Electronic Art (Australia).

Alison is currently focused on the creation of interactive sound and video
installations with funding support awarded by the Canada Council for the
Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts in
Ottawa.

Classically trained in piano performance under the Western Ontario
Conservatory of Music, Alison also holds a B.A.Sc.(Honours) Degree in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, a Diploma in Sonic
Design from Carleton University, and is an alumnus of the Canadian Screen
Training Centre's Summer Institute for Film, Television & New Media. She is
currently a lecturer on the Faculty of Music at Carleton University where
she instructs courses in computer music.


________________________________________________________________

The Face Of Tomorrow
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/face/index.htm

by Mike Mike
Kadirler 9 - D4
Firuzaga, Beyoglu
Istanbul
Turkey
Tel: +90 537 938 1876
mike [at] faceoftomorrow [dot] com
http://www.faceoftomorrow.com

*The Face of Tomorrow* is an open-source web-based exploration of human
identity as affected by the forces of globalization. It makes full use of
all the tools of the modern economy - distributed work across several time
zones, outsourcing to take advantages of cost disparities, an open source
model that allows input from contributors, and of course the Internet itself
as a medium of display and exchange.

On one level the project answers questions such as "What does a New Yorker,
a Londoner look like?" On a deeper level the work deals with issues arising
out of the mechanics of globalization such as inclusion, access and
democracy.

The source code, which documents the photo shoot, selection and morphing
process is open for inspection and change by all involved. As a result the
project has now taken on a life of its own, like a computer code or virus,
and at present there are people in Colombia, Japan, Israel and Mexico
working on the project independently of Mike.

Biography

Mike Mike, born in 1964 in Cape Town, South Africa, studied at Goldsmiths
College, London and lives and works Istanbul


________________________________________________________________

World Hug Day
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/hug/index.htm

by Gao Brothers
Beijing New Art Projects
4 Jiuxianqiao Road,
The Factory 798 Art District, Beijing
P.O. Box 8503
Beijing 100015
China
Tel: +86 10 84566660
Fax: +86 10 84566660
gaobrothers [at] gmail [dot] com
http://www.world-hug-day.net

Here, we propose the *World Hug Day* project. We started it in Shangdong
Province, China, together with a worldwide Internet project, an interactive
international campaign via the Internet, and have got enormous feedback and
support.

We carried out the first such performance, *The Utopia Of Hugging For Twenty
Minutes*, on 10 September 2000. We invited some 150 volunteers, who were
previously strangers to each other, to participate. We asked the
participants to choose a person at random for a hug at the same time, and
then cluster into group hugs. Since then, we have hugged hundreds of
strangers, and organized group hugs for strangers in different public
locations in different ways many times.

In order to develop the *World Hug Day* project worldwide, we are planning
to go global to hug hundreds of strangers, with permission, of course, and
organize group hugs for strangers, and hold a travel exhibition of these
photos of the hug-performance worldwide.

Biography

Gao Zhen (b. 1956) and Gao Qiang (b. 1962) were both born in Jinan, China.

The Gao brothers are a pair of artists based in Beijing. They are authors of
several published works, including *How Far Can You Walk in One Day in
Beijing*, *The Current State Of Chinese Avant-Garde Art* and *The Report Of
Art Environment*, who have been collaborating on installation, performance,
photography works and writing since the mid-1980s. Some of their works were
published in *A History Of China Modern Art*, *China Avant-garde Photography
*, *The Best Photography Of China*, etc. and collected by Chinese and
foreign people and museums.


LEONARDO NETWORK NEWS COORDINATOR: Kathleen Quillian kq [at] leonardo [dot]
info


________________________________________________________________

BYTES

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
New Constellations: Art, Science and Society
17-19 March 2006
Museum of Contemporary Art
Circular Quay West, Sydney Australia

New Constellations: Art, Science and Society – an international conference
charting the ways in which art and science are gravitating towards one
another within contemporary culture.

The Conference will present the latest thinking about collaboration between
artists and scientists and examine how the worldwide trend towards
interdisciplinary engagement is changing the definitions, methodologies and
practices they use and how they view the social implications of their work.

Key Speakers:

Ruzena Bajcsy, Immediate Past President, CITRIS (Centre for Information
Technology Research in the Interest of Society), University of California,
Berkeley, California;

Elizabeth Grosz, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey, and Visiting Professor of Architecture, Princeton
University, Princeton, New Jersey;

Steve Kurtz, Founding Member, Critical Art Ensemble; Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;

Roger Malina, Chairman, Board, Leonardo, the International Society for the
Arts, Sciences and Technology; Co-Chair, International Advisory Board,
Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts.

The Conference has grown out of a collaboration between artist Mari Velonaki
and The University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Field Robotics, an
Australian Research Council - Australia Council for the Arts Linkage
Project.

The Conference is supported by Artspace, Australian Network for Art and
Technology and Patrick Systems and Technologies and The University of
Sydney.

Conference enquiries: 61 2 9245 2484 or email [at] education [dot] mca [dot]
com [dot] au
For further program details and information go to

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the
Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.


________________________________________________________________

FROMM PLAYERS AT HARVARD: e l e c t r o n I c s

FREE CONCERTS Friday, Saturday, Sunday March 10-12 at 8:00 pm in John
Knowles Paine Concert Hall. Curated by composer Hans Tutschku, the weekend
will feature three different concerts of cutting edge work. Friday night:
Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Earle Brown, Örjan Sandred, Luigi Nono,
Jacopo Baboni, and Alvin Lucier, who will give a pre-concert talk at 7:15pm.
Saturday night: Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar (Germany), performing
pieces by Cage and Stockhausen. On Sunday, the four finalists of the 2006
live electronic competition will perform premieres of their work, joined by
Boston's finest new music performers. This competition--the first of its
kind at Harvard--aims to encourage the creation of new instrumental pieces
with live electronics. A final prize winner will be announced after Sunday's
concert. John Knowles Paine Hall is located on the Harvard University campus
in Cambridge, MA, directly behind the Science Center, and is wheelchair
accessible. The Hall is a short walk from the Harvard Square red line stop.
Free parking for this event is available after 7pm at the Everett Street
Garage.


________________________________________________________________

CREDITS

Nisar Keshvani: LEA Editor-in-Chief
Natra Haniff: LEA Editor
Nicholas Cronbach: LEA Editor
Kathleen Quillian: LEA e-digest Coordinator
Michael Punt: LR Editor-in-Chief
Andre Ho: Web Concept and Design Consultant
Roger Malina: Leonardo Executive Editor
Stephen Wilson: Chair, Leonardo/ISAST Web Committee
Craig Harris: Founding Editor

Editorial Advisory Board:
Irina Aristarkhova, Roy Ascott, Craig Harris, Fatima Lasay,
Michael Naimark, Julianne Pierce

Gallery Advisory Board:
Mark Amerika, Paul Brown, Choy Kok Kee, Steve Dietz, Kim Machan

fAf-LEA Corresponding Editors:
Lee Weng Choy, Ricardo Dal Farra, Elga Ferreira, Young Hae-
Chang, Fatima Lasay, Jose-Carlos Mariategui, Marcus Neustetter,
Elaine Ng, Marc Voge

________________________________________________________________

LEA PUBLISHING INFORMATION

Editorial Address:
Leonardo Electronic Almanac
PO Box 850 Robinson Road Singapore 901650
lea [at] mitpress [dot] mit [dot] edu

________________________________________________________________

Copyright (2006), Leonardo, the International Society for the
Arts, Sciences and Technology
All Rights Reserved.

Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by:
The MIT Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge Center,
Cambridge, MA 02142
U.S.A.

Re-posting of the content of this journal is prohibited without
permission of Leonardo/ISAST, except for the posting of news and
events listings that have been independently received.
Leonardo/ISAST and the MIT Press give institutions permission to
offer access to LEA within the organization through such
resources as restricted local gopher and mosaic services. Open
access to other individuals and organizations is not permitted.

________________________________________________________________

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

Leonardo Electronic Almanac is a free supplement to Leonardo and Leonardo
Music Journal.

To subscribe to Leonardo Electronic Almanac e-news digest, visit:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/lea/e-mail

To subscribe to Leonardo, visit: http://mitpress.mit.edu/LEON

To subscribe to Leonardo Music Journal, visit: http://mitpress.mit.edu/LMJ

For subscription queries contact:
journals-orders [at] mit [dot] edu

________________________________________________________________

ADVERTISING

Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published monthly -- individuals and
institutions interested in advertising in LEA, either in the distributed
text version or on the World Wide Web site should contact:

Leonardo - Advertising
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94133

phone: (415) 391-1110
fax: (415) 391-2385
E-mail: isast [at] leonardo [dot] info
More Info: http://leonardo.info/isast/placeads.html#LEAads

________________________________________________________________

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LEA acknowledges with thanks the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations for their
support to Leonardo/ISAST and its projects.

________________________________________________________________

End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 13:12
________________________________________________________________




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