http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch
The DIGITAL ART WEEKS program is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of symposium, workshops and performances, the Digital Art Weeks program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances during the Digital Art Weeks Festival each year, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of application of technology in the arts.
See below for calls for:
– visual art under the theme ‘Digital Mandala’
– sound art under the theme ‘Today’s Ohm: The 60 HZ Hum’
– sound art under the theme ‘Stereophonic Soundscape’
– proposals for open public spaces (works that use any form of networking that either connects performers within the space used or connects them in some form between spaces used)
– digital puppetry (including Digitally Enhanced Puppetry, Waldo puppetry, Motion capture puppetry and Machinima)
– performing artists under the theme ‘Wired Madness’ (wearable technology)
– work that concentrates on the use of sensors systems that take their inputs from the human body and whose outputs are then transmapped to audio or video sources
THE THIRD MIND PROJECT
A number of devices exist that stimulate the mind of the user by visual and audio signals. The fundamental principle applied to each is that a particular train of visual and aural pulses leads to different states of mind. These states include, for example, deep relaxation, heightened creativity and heightened awareness. Often, the aim of the device is to allow users to learn faster or relax deeper, but artists have extended the experience with such device into the realm of art. The Dream Machine, conceived in the early sixties by Brion Gysin, is a mechanical device that is viewed with eyes closed as it rotates at 12 HZ around a light source located inside it. The light, coming against the eyelids as the device rotates, effortlessly produces a relaxed state of mind. This occurs, because the optical nerve is stimulated and alters the brain’s electrical oscillations. Gysin referred to the effect as “interior visions” and in his words the effect of the Dream Machine can be described as a projection of dazzling lights and celestially colored images whirling around inside one’s own head.
CALL VISUAL
The Digital Art Weeks 2007 (DAW07) invites Visual and to submit their work to the theme of the Digital Mandala.
For the “refit” of the Dream Machine for the 21st Century, Visual Artists are asked to submit static or animated images in the form of “Digital-Mandalas” that are relevant in content and effect to the theme of “inner visions”. The Digital-Mandalas will be projected on to the walls of the gallery space and will be dynamically synchronized to the 12 HZ flickering frequency of the Dream Machine. This flickering is then used to drive computer programs that will subtly modulate attributes of the image dynamically to gently arouse news states of mind. In this manner the inner visions of the Dream Machine become outer visions within the installation.
CALL AUDIO
The Digital Art Weeks 2007 (DAW07) invites Audio Artists to submit their work to the theme of “Today’s Ohm: The 60 HZ Hum”.
Audio Artists are asked to submit works of approximately ten minutes or so in length in .aif format that are relevant in content and effect to the theme of “the 60hz hum is the electronic ohm of our times”. Submitted works will be projected into the space using a stereoscopic loudspeaker system from the company StereoLith® of Switzerland. The play back of the submitted works, although thought and experienced as independent works themselves, will naturally enhance the psychedelic effects of the Dreammachine environment further.
Note: The submitted images and audio works will be presented in an installation type situation in which the public may experience using the dream machine up close and afar during the Closing Event of the festival. All artists will be listed in the program.
DEADLINE
Friday, 2nd March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007.
For more information regarding the call please write to: .
STEREOPHONIC SOUNDSCAPE
The Digital Art Weeks of ETH Zurich and the Stereolith Speaker System Company, Switzerland, would like to invite audio artists to submit soundscape works. The works will be chosen on their ability to “evoke” the presence of things or beings in space and to the extent in which the work “immerses” the listener into a completely imaginary sonic environment. Each work must be in stereo of around 10 minutes in length.
Stereolith is an innovative reproduction system for the re-creation of recordings made to playback in stereo. Unlike traditional loudspeaker configurations, the Stereolith is a single construction in which both the “left” and the “right” channels have been incorporated. In this way, the system can be installed at any point within the listening space allowing the listener to experience a true stereo effect of each work from any point within the space as if it was a live event.
CALL
Please submit all works in .aiff format on a CD. Please include in digital form the title of the work, a short description of it (no more than 100 words) and a short biography of the author of the work (no more than 50 words). Selected works will be presented on the Stereolith Systems over a period of 3 days from the 12th to the 14th of July 2007 during the Digital Art Weeks Festival.
Information about each audio artist, soundscape work and the time it can be heard will be announced in the events program. This years prize for the best work in the contest is a Stereolith 232 Monitor. The prize is sponsored by Klangpur Zurich, the exclusive licensing partner of the Stereolith company worldwide. For more information about the Stereolith 232 Monitor and other Stereolith designs, please visit the Klangpur webpage at: http://www.klangpur.ch/
DEADLINE
Friday, 16 March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Monday, 16th April 2007.
For more information regarding the call please write to: . For technical information on the Stereolith, please see: http://www.stereolith.ch/
THE CITY AS AN INSTRUMENT
The call concerns itself with the use of the city as an expressive instrument or place of artistic practice. This may vary from art whose subject is the city to art, which is actually performed in a city. Special attention is given to telematic art practices in which activities within the city bring about changes and responses at another open or closed space.
Interactivity may take place between the open and closed space in equal relationship, but in many projects in this area the activities often take place within the open space, (City Streets, a Park, Parking Lot, Public Building) and “consumed” in the closed space (Movie theater, Gallery, Living Room, Bar, Toilets)
CALL
The Digital Art Weeks 2007 invites Artists to submit proposals for open public spaces. We are seeking works that use any form of networking that either connects performers within the space used or connects them in some form between spaces used.
DEADLINE
Friday, 2nd March 2007.
Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007.
For more information regarding the call please write to:
DIGITAL PUPPETRY
Digital puppetry, the virtual counterpart of traditional puppetry, deals with manipulation and performance of animated figures and characters. Typically, performance and rendering occurs in real-time, which makes digital puppetry distinct from conventional character animation. Also, digital puppetry often includes novel interfaces for expressive control.
CALL
DAW07 is seeking work that links traditional puppetry with its virtual counterpart, digital puppetry. This can be defined as any application from shadow casting, meta-puppets using speech-synthesis, and 3d avatars amongst others that employ character animation, expression, and gestural control for artistic purposes.
DAW07 particularly encourage submissions of performance work that is also suitable for children, as our intention is to create a special daytime session during DAW07 festival for children of various ages.
Example types of Digital Puppets in consideration:
Digitally Enhanced Puppetry – This refers to any type of traditional puppetry such as hand puppets, marionettes to shadow puppets that are in some way enhanced by digital technologies. These might include speech synthesis, motion tracking, and physically linked sensor networks amongst others.
Waldo puppetry – A digital puppet is controlled onscreen by a puppeteer who uses a telemetric input device connected to the computer. The digital puppet therefore responds to the movement of the input in a corresponding manner. A keyboard, a mouse and haptic game controllers have been often used as simple telemetric input devices.
Motion capture puppetry – Also known as mocap puppetry. Here, a puppet or a human body is employed as a physical representation of a digital puppet. The digital puppet is then manipulated by a puppeteer and the movements of the object or body are matched correspondingly by the digital puppet in real-time. Often the actual manipulation of the puppet is used as part of the work, bringing the real and the virtual together in real time.
Machinima – This refers to production technique that can be used to perform with digital puppets. As a production technique, Machinima concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery (CGI) using low-end 3D engines in video games. Scenes are often acted out in real-time using characters and settings within a game. The action is recorded and later edited in to a finished film. This technique can often be used as backdrop scenery with analog puppets in the foreground – thus creating and making use of the possibilities of artificial reality.
Note: The DAW07 team is considering using large-scale urban projection at an outside location to present the digital puppetry show.
DEADLINE
Friday, 2nd March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007.
For more information regarding the call please write to:
CALL: WIRED MADNESS
Wired madness has broken out! Regardless of the mode of expression, this new era of performative art is upon us. This has been revealed recently in many cases: the use of an embedded persistence of vision display to flag a taxi, or the nerdy need to extend alternate-reality games into the real world, or even ironically be more close to the military’s command and control digital networks to be employed on unsuspecting audiences by trained insurgent-performers using computational and conceptual couture as a ‘secondary skin’ in the act of creating the newest New Media art experiences for them.
The Digital Art Weeks 2007 invites Performing Artists to submit proposals in connection with wearable technology and the arts. We are seeking works that empower the performer in an explosion of the boundaries of the body and link the audience into the virtual of technologically animated space. Any form of immersion should trigger critical observation in the mind of the audience in order to counter act the most logical form of evolution in the 21st century enabled by technology: Intelligence without morals. A series of performances during three evenings will be organized in partnership with the Cabaret Voltaire of Zurich.
Deadline Friday, 2nd March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007.
For more information regarding the call please write to:
B.I.O.: To Be the Input or the Output is the Question
In the popular sci-fi film The Matrix, the human being is reduced to a copper-top battery with an output of 1.5 volts. In regard, tapping the human body as an output has become an interesting way to “power up” performance and stage presence in the electronic music and new media art genres.
Creating controllers that respond to brainwaves, galvanic response and heart rate have brought us innovations in creating and performing art with voluntary and with an involuntary signals. The performers activities on stage are therefore expanded and at the same time ironically reduced to near non-activity on stage. Further, using biofeedback brings the artist into the realm of using the human body as an input whose output is clearly linked.
The DAW07 invites artists to submit work that concentrates on the use of sensors systems that take their inputs from the human body and whose outputs are then transmapped to audio or video sources. Any type of interface that is designed to use human body signals to control outside sources and artworks that use such transmapping falls into the call’s profile.
DEADLINE:
Friday, 2nd March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007
For more information regarding the call please write to: