(vida is telefonica's international competition on art and artificial life. image from telefonica.es.)

.. friday = calls and announcements.

in kind-of-chronological order..
- calls for papers, posters, performances for the generative art conference (01 september) 
- calls for papers, posters, performances, workshops for the third annual isim conference (01 september)
- call for submissions to scrapcycled supply for artists in need of everyday items (15 september)
- joint call for papers by theoretical computer science and natural computing regarding swarm intelligence (15 september)
- call for entries to telefonica's international competition on art and artifical life (06 october)

(we kept it short today.)

+ if you come across any more interaction-art-related calls, please let us know. thanks!

(radio action III is a collection of transmission art works. image from newmuseum.org.)

.. this week = interaction art events.

the can't-miss-thing-of-the-day is: radio action, which is taking place tonight at the new museum theater in manhattan. the performance will celebrate the release of free103point9's latest transmission art dispatch, radio action III. this radio program was produced for RWM and features five-minute collaborative transmission art works conceptually tied to the idea of radio as an instrument or theme.

we are particularly excited to hear works by alexis bhagat + sophea lerner (who utilize the transmission spectrum as a networked space for communication), lovid + michelle rosenberg + howard huang (who employ electromagnetic signal and interference as their sonic palette), and michelle nagai + kenta nagai + radio_ruido + ben owen (who explore transmission and reception as a means to map an interior space).

attendees will receive a complimentary copy of radio action III with admission, so be sure to make your way over to the theater for the show. if you can't, don't worry.. you can still tune in here.

(+ for more awesome transmission art recordings, check out the online archive.)

(this year's conflux festival is at the center for architecture. image from confluxfestival.org.)

.. this week = interaction art events.

the can't-miss-thing-of-the-day is: glowlab's conflux festival, which is a citywide psychogeography festival.

we realize that the festival isn't actually happening until september, but glowlab is currently looking for volunteers to help with preparation, installation, day-of, and deinstallation tasks ..as well as photographers and videographers for event documentation.

to help out, you'll need to fill out the application and be present at a mandatory volunteer meeting on september 4.

this year's festival is going to be a fantastic happening, so be sure to take part in making it happen.

(+ for more awesome situationist-inspired projects, check out fake is the new real.)

(tagallery is a folksonomic experiment. image from cont3xt.net.)

.. this week = interaction art events.

the can't-miss-thing-of-the-day is: cont3xt's folksonomic exhibition, which is an online exhibition curated via folksonomic tagging.

folksonomy is a method of categorization that utilizes the power of crowdsourcing. it's a less restrictive form of indexing, when compared with traditional methods, and is commonly used by social networking sites and online data-stores.

cont3xt views the exhibition as an exploration of and comment on the curatorial process. it references not only social sculpture, but also the increasingly important concept of data curation ..with such an inundation (and decentralization) of information nowadays, we actively curate reality for each other and for ourselves to a degree that was not possible decades ago.

the exhibition is open for public tagging until september 15, so be sure to take part.

(+ for more awesome crowdsourced events, check out the who wants to be project.)

(interactivos? is a hybrid of workshop, seminar, and showcase. image from medialab-prado.es.)

.. this week = interaction art events.

the can't-miss-thing-of-the-day is: interactivos? @ eyebeam, which is hybrid of production workshop, seminar, and showcase that usually takes place in madrid. this year, medialab prado is hosting two workshops in north america: better than the real thing at eyebeam in new york and technologies of laughter at the centro multimedia in mexico city.

the artists and projects selected for participation are generally heavily influenced by interaction design concepts and issues. and, moreover, the execution of the workshops themselves seem to prioritize the emergent nature of artistic collaboration.

from june 26 to july 12, eyebeam's main space became the site of the new york workshop. during this time, the workspace was opened to the public ..not only for viewing, but also to invite "[participation] in discussions, critiques of the works-in-progress, and other social activities investigating interactivity". the products of this intense two-week period are on display in the associated exhibition, titled double take, which runs until august 9.

be sure to make your way over to eyebeam for this free exhibition.

(+ for more awesome interaction design, check out karl d.d. willis's twelve pixels project.)

(lower manhattan cultural council's workspace program. image from lmcc.net.)

.. friday = calls and announcements.

in kind-of-chronological order..
- call for applications to elsewhere artist collaborative residencies for artists, writers, and cultural producers (24 march)
- sound network call for audio art works (28 march)
- european mobile lab call for participation (30 march)
- ccct interactive systems design call for papers (31 march)
- art in general call for project proposals (31 march)
- stuhltrager gallery call for entries for au courant (31 march)
- call for proposals for the electrofringe festival both online and offline (31 may and 31 march, respectively)
- drain journal call for essays, artworks, and creative writing about psychogeography (01 april for abstracts, 01 june for submissions) 
- call for applications to the ess residency program for sound artists (05 april)
- call for submissions to digit digital media exposition (05 april)
- simultan festival call for entries (10 april)
- acm multimedia call for proposals (11 april)
- dislocate international festival for art, technology, and locality call for submissions (14 april) 
- come out and play festival call for games (15 april)
- pan! peinture call for proposals (01 may)
- climate clock global initiative call for ideas (09 may)
- call for applications to lmcc's workspace (15 may)
- migrating reality call for papers (01 june)
- videoholica call for artists (30 june)
- call for video artists and electro-acoustic composers for the leonor hirsch award (01 july) 
- calls for papers, posters, performances for the generative art conference (01 september) 
- joint call for papers by theoretical computer science and natural computing regarding swarm intelligence (15 september)

+ if you come across any more interaction-art-related calls, please let us know. thanks!

(the point utilizes the power of social media. image from thepoint.com.)

.. this week = some neato tools for interaction artists.

our final neato thing to report this week: the point, which is a site that transforms social media into a direct and powerful tool for change.

the name makes reference to malcolm gladwell's first book, the tipping point, which details the key properties of epidemics. gladwell focused on social epidemics, defining the tipping point as the "level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable" ..what we generally refer to as the critical mass or threshold. the point allows a sort of anonymous aggregation to take place until that tipping point is reached, making use of the fact that humans find strength in numbers.

the site describes itself as a way for frustrated consumers/employees and concerned parents/citizens to campaign, which we certainly don't argue with. but it could also be used to organize something like a flashmob or some other form of public art.

you can learn more about this fantastic free tool here, or go ahead and start a project right now.

+ for more awesome sites to stumbleupon, click here.

(mrmr can enable your iphone or ipod to act as a real-time controller.
image from poly.share.dj/projects/#mrmr.)

.. this week = some neato tools for interaction artists.

the neato-thing-of-the-day is: mrmr, which is an open source project to "develop a standardized set of protocols and syntax conventions to control live installations and multimedia performances via mobile devices".

to quote ths site, it's "the brainchild of eric redlinger, researcher-in-residence at brooklyn polytechnic university’s integrated digital media program". and, after seeing his dorkbot presentation last month, we were immediately excited about its possibilities.

but.. i mean.. what does it DO anyway?!?
...............to be (annoyingly) short (and vague): anything you want.. er.. design.

vade from createdigitalmotion described it as a way to "dance around like a lunatic while still controlling your visuals from the dance floor", which sounds awesome and fun. but we think it's much more than that.

the beauty is in it's versatility. you can design an interface for your next improvisational performance or social experiment and have it available for export to any enabled devices. this would allow the interaction between a group of several users to control the sound/video/movement/what-have-you on display. (maybe something similar to jenny torino’s dance performance at exit art, which was the collaborative result of the audience's control of her movements via neuromuscular stimulators.)

of course, this would only be possible once mrmr catches on (or if you supply the attendees with your own enabled devices) ..but it's so darn fun and useful, how could it not?

it's an ongoing project, but you can install it on your iphone or ipod by clicking here, assuming you have the apptapp installer or something like it. (and have jailbroken your iphone/ipod using, for example, conceited software's appsnapp.) or, if you're still not sold, you can watch the video below for more information:

(+ usually there would be a "for more awesome fill-in-the-blank" statement here with a link to some sort of related cool thing, but we're at a loss for comparison.)

(cytoscape is a bioinformatics platform developed for the visualization and integration
of interaction data, and is a useful tool for network-artists. image from cytoscape.org.)

.. this week = some neato tools for interaction artists.

today's neato thing is cytoscape. to quote the site, "cytoscape is a bioinformatics software platform for visualizing molecular interaction networks and integrating these interactions with gene expression profiles and other state data."

it was created several years ago by trey ideker and colleagues in collaboration with the institute for systems biology. you can view their 2002 publication here. trey was a graduate student of leroy hood, a scientist credited with "[unlocking] much of the mystery of human biology" through his early development of DNA- and protein-sequencing tools.

biomedical folks might recognize cytoscape as a platform used to map protein-protein interaction networks, for example. but network artists and analysts have recently begun to utilize its many features and plugins.

aside from fast filtering and rendering capabilities (like being able to quickly filter by interaction partner or perform k-core analyses), it also makes pretty pictures:

for more awesome network visualizations, visit visualcomplexity.com.

(flocking simulation programmed by robert hodgin using processing. image from nervo.tv.)

.. this week = some neato tools for interaction artists.

up first on the list of neato things: processing, which is a programming language and environment that grew out of some ideas developed by the aesthetics and computation group at MIT media lab.

the still pictured above is from a commercial designed by nervo with the help of barbarian group's robert hodgin. you can view the full animation here. (scroll down to the sixth pane and click.)

other projects developed using processing include tom carden's time travel tube map, aaron koblin's sheep market, microsoft's operation smile by firstborn media, and the fidg't visualizer by protohaus.

the language, which is still in beta, is described by the writers as "a software sketchbook and professional production tool". you can find an online reference page and discussion board on their site. in addition, there have been a few guides (e.g. here and here) published recently that are widely-available.

for more awesome open-source software, visit artsoftware.org