BYO Lunchtime Lectures at ODI: Data as Culture

11 January 2013, 1:00 pm – 1:45 pm
The Open Data Institute, 65 Clifton St, Shoreditch, London Borough of Hackney, EC2A, UK

Introducing Friday Lunchtime Lectures at the Open Data Institute.
You bring your lunch, we provide tea & coffee, an interesting talk,
and enough time to get back to your desk.

For our first lecture…

Curators of the ODI Data as Culture art commission, TED Senior Fellow,
Julie Freeman, and MzTEK co-founder, Sophie McDonald, will provide a
background of the data-driven art movement, why this commission is so
timely, and take you on a tour of the art works installed at the ODI
offices.

20Hz (2011)
Semiconductor

Body 01000010011011110110010001111001 (2012)
Stanza

Metrography (2012)
Benedikt Groß & Bertrand Clerc

Still Lifes and Oscillators 1 (2012)
Ben Garrod

Text Trends (2012)
Martin John Callanan

The Obelisk (2012)
Fabio Lattanzi Antinori

The SKOR Codex (2012)
La Société Anonyme

Three flames ate the sun, and big stars were seen (2012)
Phil Archer

Vending Machine (2009)
Ellie Harrison

To book your place sign up here

Text Trends newspaper: Environmental

Text Trends newspaper environmental

The second issue of Callanan’s Text Trends newspaper, looking at environmental data, will be available in limited numbers from 14 January 2013 at The Open Data Institute.

Over the past twenty years, global climate change has emerged as the overarching narrative of our age, uniting a series of ongoing concerns about human relations with nature, the responsibilities of first world nations to those of the developing world, and the obligations of present to future generations. But if the climate change story entered the public realm as a data-driven scientific concept, it was quickly transformed into something that the ecologist William Cronon has called a ‘secular prophecy’, a grand narrative freighted with powerful, even transcendent languages and values. And though climate science can sometimes adopt the rhetoric of extreme quantification, it also — as has been seen throughout this book — relies on the qualitative values of words, images and metaphors. This can even happen simultaneously: during the discussions that led up to the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report of 2001, for example, a room full of scientists discussed for an entire week whether or not to include the three-word phrase ‘discernable human influence.’ Only three words, perhaps, but three extremely potent words (both qualitatively and quantitavely speaking), that between them tell a vast and potentially world-altering story.

Martin John Callanan’s ongoing Text Tends series offers a deadpan encounter with exactly this kind of quantification of language. Using Google data the series explores the vast mine of information that is generated by the search engine’s users, each animation taking the content generated by search queries and reducing the process to its essential elements: search terms vs. frequency of search over time, presented in the form of a line graph.

In the online manifestation of the Text Trends animations the viewer watches as the animations plot the ebb and flow of a series of paired search terms keyed into Google over the last ten years by Internet users around the world. In the case of the environment sequence featured here, pairs of words such as: ‘nature’ — ‘population’; ‘climate’ — ‘risk’; ‘consensus’ — ‘uncertainty’; ‘Keeling curve’ — ‘hockey stick’, spool out matter-of-factly, like a live market index, allowing the implied narrative content of these word comparisons (along with their accumulated cultural and emotional baggage) to play themselves out before us. In contrast to the hyperinteractivity of emerging news aggregators and information readers, Text Trends explores our perceptions of words presented as connotation-rich fragments of continually updated time-sensitive data.

As an investigation into both the generation and representation of data, Text Trends offers a visual critique of the spectacularization of information, a cultural tic that continues to generate the endless roll of statistically compromised wallpaper that surrounds so much public science debate, and which our book — Data Soliloquies — has in large part been about.

Richard Hamblyn
original version published in Data Soliloquies, UCL Environment Institute, 2009. ISBN 9780903305044

ISSN 2051-6126
ISBN 9781907829086

Kunst aus Bits und Bytes (ISEA 2010)

Harald Welzer on WDR Fernsehen talking about ISEA and Callanan’s work A Planetary Order

Elektronische Visionen in Dortmund broadcast on
Dienstag, 31. August 2010, 22.30 – 23.10 Uhr
Montag, 06. September 2010, 10.50 – 11.30 Uhr (Wdh.)

A quick translation of Harald Welzer talking about A Planetary Order:

I find this piece of work very fine actually because it represents very simply, that is to say in the classical shape of the globe, what is in reality an unbelievably complex process. Normally of course one sees only the sky and the prevailing weather conditions over the place where one is at that time. That this is a complete and forever changing global system is quite wonderfully depicted with this very simple and, in my opinion, beautiful artwork. The worldwide interconnecting system, which Callanan has recorded in miniature, is subdivided in Marko Peljhan’s “Arctic Perspectives” into umpteen individual projects…

ISEA2010 RUHR Exhibition

20 August – 5 September 2010
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Dortmund, Dortmunder Kunstverein, RWE Galerie, Dortmunder U, PACT Zollverein Essen and Duisburg-Ruhrort
Opening: 19 August 2010, 19:00

More than thirty international artists and artist groups urge visitors to the exhibition into new perspectives on environmental issues, questions of identity and discussions about the ever-present social-media. What does a human hair sound like? Which sight will capture your imagination? Who sets the rules in the digital world?

The ISEA2010 RUHR presents outstanding contemporary works of international media art and the current position of artistic entanglements with science and technology. It offers an overview of the most pressing issues and topics in media art. Divided between the cities of Dortmund, Duisburg and Essen are shown 29 works from 37 artists representing 16 countries in total.

Most of these works will be presented in the Dortmund Museum for Art and Cultural History. The works engage with topical themes such as climate change and the deconstruction of identity concepts, and revel in alchemical experiments.

With works by Siegrun Appelt (at), Eve Arpo & Riin Rõõs (ee), Lucas Bambozzi (br), Aram Bartholl (de), BCL (at/jp), Natalie Bewernitz & Marek Goldowski (de), Daniel Bisig (ch) & Tatsuo Unemi (jp), Juliana Borinski (br/de), Martin John Callanan (uk), Işil Eğrikavuk (tk), Verena Friedrich (de), Terike Haapoja (fi), Aernoudt Jacobs (be), Márton András Juhász & Gergely Kovács & Melinda Matúz & Barbara Sterk (hu), Yunchul Kim (kr), Thomas Köner (de), Mariana Manhães (br), Soichiro Mihara (jp) & Kazuki Saita & Hiroko Mugibayashi (jp), Krists Pudzens (lv), Christopher Salter (qc/ca), Bill Seaman (us), Saso Sedlacek (si), Mark Shepard (us), Charles Stankievech (qc/ca), Vladimir Todorovic (rs/sg), Bruno Vianna (br), Ei Wada (jp), Herwig Weiser (at), Norah Zuniga Shaw (us).

FILE 11 – I wanted to see all the news from today

The 11th edition of FILE – Electronic Language International Festival – takes place this year at centro cultural fiesp – ruth cardoso, Brasil, from july 27th to august 29th, 2010. The programme occupies the art gallery of sesi-sp, the fiesp space, the theater and the mezzanine of the cultural center that hosts the exhibition with interactive installations, games, machinimas, internet artworks, performances and workshops.

Media Art shows how to “soften” the rigidity of technology functionality and to create an environment of creativity and artistic thinking.

The World in 100 Years

The World in 100 Years
Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria
June 16th – September 19th 2010

“Everyone will have his own pocket telephone that will enable him to get in touch with anyone he wishes. People living in the Wireless Age will be able to go everywhere with their transceivers, which they will be able to affix wherever they like— to their hat, for instance …“
Robert Sloss: “The Wireless Century,” in: “The World in 100 Years,” Berlin, 1910

The new exhibition in the Ars Electronica Center Linz pays tribute to the creativity, courage and inventiveness of those men and women who have totally committed their energies, abilities and knowledge to a vision of the future. This exhibition surveys a 200-year time span: looking back at what people about a century ago anticipated for this day and age, and showcasing what contemporary thinkers foresee 100 years from now.

As proxies standing for all the visionaries and trailblazers who have worked on their respective „futures“ over the course of humankind‘s history, French writer, illustrator and caricaturist Albert Robida (1848–1926) and Belgian visionary Paul Otlet (1868–1944) occupy this exhibition‘s spotlight.

Bruce Herr, Katy Borner (USA), Wikipedia Visualization
Marjolin Dijkman (BE, NL), Wandering through the Future
Frederik De Wilde (BE), Hostage
Bruce Baikie (USA), Intelligent Solar Powered 3G-WiFi Broadband Access
Hans Frei (CH), Marc Böhlen (USA), Micro Public Places
Teresa Maria Buscemi (USA), electroStatic Architecture
Catherine Kramer (UK), Community Meat Lab
Ken Banks (UK), Frontline SMS
Open Sailing Crew with Cesar Harada (UK), Open Sailing
Tatsuya Narita (JP), Toaster to understand today’s weather
Doug Fritz (USA), Sajid Sadi (USA), Engaze
Brigitte Hadlich (DE), c.50p – 50. Breitengrad
Jonas Burki (CH), Sun_D
Takayuki Nakamura (JP), Wonderful World
Josh Schiller, James Tunick, Carrie Elston (USA), City of the Future
Martin John Callanan (UK), Location of I
Himanshu Khatri (IN), Aquaplay
shiftspace.org (USA). ShiftSpace
Martin Mairinger (AT), USED Clothing
Akio Kamisato, Satoshi Shibata, Takehisa Mashimo (JP), Moony

FutureEverything – Serendipity City

FutureEverything, taking place 12-15 May in Manchester UK. Expect world premieres of astonishing artworks, an explosive citywide music programme, visionary thinkers from around the world, and awards for outstanding innovations.

Serendipity City: The FutureEverything 2010 main exhibition, featuring architecture-inspired art, a curated selection of city-drifting iPhone and Android apps, jaw-dropping data visualisations including Martin John Callanan’s A Planetary Order, and a selection of FutureEverything 2010 Award nominees. The venue is The Hive (47 Lever Street, Manchester M1 1FN), a spanking new Northern Quarter location.

Off the Shelf

SLADE WORD/IMAGE FORUM will present OFF THE SHELF: PERFORMANCE, FILM, VIDEO, POETRY, MUSIC: an evening of live-events staged by the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, to take place in the Wilkins North and South Cloisters plus the Old Refectory, March 22nd 2010, 6.00-10.30pm.

Taking as its theme a re-examination of the Small Press Collection of rare magazines housed at UCL, this event will give you the chance to engage with the spirit of the alternative ‘avant-garde’ press, re-visiting early texts that straddle the divide between art and poetry – including artists and writers Vito Acconci, Sol Le Witt, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Derek Jarman and Bob Cobbing. These texts will be explored through various forms of performance and accompanied by film, video and documentation of the period. The evening will also stage new creative works by contemporary visual artists, writers and musicians, and students, and a ‘speaker’s corner’ with short talks by members of the Slade Word/Image Research Forum.

Photos from the event will be added to the special Off the Shelf Flickr group

Aglow

Aglow

Aglow was the first in a series of critical material encounters exploring an interdisciplinary approach to materiality, exploring luminescence as an electronic, synthetic and natural phenomenon at the macro and micro scale, as a scientific phenomenon and cultural material. This session was convened by Melanie Jackson and hosted by The Slade Research Centre at Woburn Square and the Material Culture Group, in the Department of Anthropology. This is an inter collegiate group from Birkbeck, Kings and UCL.

Mobile Research Station no.1

On a wasteland at the centre of Berlin there is a strange apparition – Mobile Research Station no.1 has landed.

If you happen to be in Berlin over the next month please drop by and see the researchers in their luxury pod.

As a sculpture, Mobile Research Station no.1 is a curious hybrid – half hi-tech Antarctic Research Station / half rusty-broken-dumpster. Using a standard building-waste container as its basis, the station nevertheless forms a luxurious designer-pod provided for an eccentric set of researchers. Rather than researching the frozen wastes of Antarctica or the moons of Saturn, the invited artist/researchers have begun their research into the wilderness and urban zones of uncertainty that still lie at the centre of Berlin.

The invited researchers are: Martin John Callanan (London), Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson (Manchester/Berlin), Tim Knowles (London), Annika Lundgren (Gothenburg/Berlin), Katie Paterson (London), Esther Polak (Amsterdam)

Initial research can be seen on the Research Station Blog
Or, one of the researchers themselves can be found daily at the station anytime from now till the sept 20th.

Mobile Research Station no.1 at Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum
Research Communications Day: Sunday, September 20, 8 pm

The artists findings will be communicated in an evening of short presentations taking place in the park itself – drinks and snacks will be available from 8pm. [in case of bad weather mail for update…]

We hope to see you here in the wilderness.

Slade MA/MFA Fine Art Show ’09 from 11–17 June

Thursday 11, Friday 12 June 10am–8pm / Saturday 13, Sunday 14 June 10am–5pm
Monday 15–Wednesday 17 June 10am–8pm

Edward Atkins, Katerina Botsari, Stephanie Conway, Patrizio Di Massimo, Nisha Duggal,
Jamie George, Ella Golt, Ananú Gonzales-Posada, Iain S. Hales, Jung-Ouk Hong,
Benjamin Jenner, Da Kyoung Jeong, Do Kyoung Kim, Joshua Kim, Susan Kordalewski,
Rebecca Kressley, Paolo Lonzi, Leah Lovett, Sarah Macdonald, Allison Maletz, Janne
Malmros, Kate McLeod, Katherine Murphy, Kjarten Abel, Gianni Notarianni, Hye Joung Park,
Sion Parkinson, Kate Keara Pelen, Robert Phillips, Matthew Robinson, David Rule,
Sepideh Saii, Ed Saye, Somayeh Seyed Mohseni, Kristin Sherman, Gunwoo Shin, Lisa Smithey,
William Stein, Helen Sturgess, Masako Suzuki, Damian Taylor, Melis van den Berg,
Patrick Ward, Richard Whitby, Tessa Whitehead, Sally Wright, Ben Youngman

The Slade School of Fine Art
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel +44 (0)20 7679 2313

www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/degree2009

Slade BA Fine Art Show ’09 from 23–28 May

Saturday 23, Sunday 24 May 10am–5pm / Monday 25–Thursday 28 May 10am–8pm

Tomoko Aoki, Hazel A. Atashroo, Helen Carmel Benigson, Anna Cronin, Thomas Dawson, Mélanie de Quincey, Benjamin Doherty, Sophie Eagle, Jacob Farrell, Aaron Fickling, Lewis Fox, Luey Graves, Amy Howard, Will Hurt, Oscar Jamieson, Natasha Malherbe, Georgina Nettell, Francesca Owen, Ethan Pollock,
Candida Powell-Williams, Matthew Richardson, Jennifer Rush, Lias Saoudi, Nick Spiers, James Taylor, Zak Yeo Zhixiong, Thomas Yeomans, Esther Yuan

The Slade School of Fine Art
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel +44 (0)20 7679 2313

www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/degree2009

A Planetary Order – Extraordinary Clouds

The UCL Environment Institute, Slade School of Fine Art, and David & Charles Publishers invite you to an evening reception to celebrate

the unveiling of Martin John Callanan’s A Planetary Order (Terrestrial Cloud Globe)

and the publication of Richard Hamblyn’s Extraordinary Clouds

on Tuesday 30th June 2009, 6:30-9:00pm
at the Main Quadrangle, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

Eye of the Storm

This two-day symposium brings together scientists, artists, social scientists and policy-makers to explore scientific controversy from an interdisciplinary perspective. From esoteric arguments over the structure of the universe to highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells, Eye of the Storm will touch on brilliance and ego, dissent and whistle-blowing, big science, high finance, deviant science, the reliability of knowledge and the legislation of uncertainty.

Martin John Callanan as Artist in Residence at UCL Environment Institute, alongside Richard Hamblyn the Writer in Residence, will be presenting.

Organised in collaboration with and supported by The Arts Catalyst and Tate Britain in association with Leonardo/OLATS

Tate Britain Auditorium (booking required)
Friday 19 June 2009, 10.00–19.30
Saturday 20 June 2009, 10.00–17.30

Slade Technology Fayre

Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, Thursday 7th May 5-9pm

Loosely modeled around a science fayre, Slade Technology Fayre is an informal event, seeking to gather skills and experience informing the conversation around work that makes use of computer technology.

At the Fayre all participants become both learners and teachers. For people used to presenting work in a critical context this is an opportunity to share information about the often-invisible activities happening in the computer. For those less engaged with a critical sphere, the Fayre is an opportunity to get involved in a discussion about how the work is operating critically as well as technically.

more on the website

Top