DigitalCritic

My latest installment of Digital Practices is out in a-n magazine. It starts like this:

“One of the things that makes digital media so exciting is that they problematise many naturalised systems and spaces of communication. To put it simply, they offer tremendous opportunity to rethink all manner of cultural exchange. This year, two important books have been published on interrelated aspects of this ‘digital rethinking’.

Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook’s Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media addresses how curators and art audiences behave in light of digital/new media art, as well as how we can begin to conceptualise and work with these emergent behaviours. The book first looks at new media art’s history and themes artists in the field regularly address. Next, it focuses on different curatorial practices and how they are affected by new media artworks. Like much of Graham and Cook’s work with CRUMB (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss), there is an emphasis on assessing actual situations and providing – where possible – practical solutions. Indeed, there’s little heavy theory here, with the book offering user-friendly surveys of curatorial approaches operating today.” read more.

My latest Digital Practices news installment is out in a-n magazine. This time I reported on some recent work by Thomson and Craighead.

It starts like this:

“For the best part of twenty years, established artist-duo Thomson and Craighead have been experimenting with technology, producing installations and site-specific pieces involving video, sound and electronic networks. As well as the UK, they have exhibited worldwide, including in the US, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico and China. Their work is also featured in prestigious spaces including Tate Britain, ZKM and SFMOMA. But what their work repeatedly comes back to is an exploration of the way digital technologies shape our understanding of time. Over the summer, in a display of synchronicity impressive even by their standards, they have had major works simultaneously installed at opposite ends of the UK.” Read more…

My latest Digital Practices news installment is out in a-n magazine. This time I reported on an Art of Digital London event helping develop RFOs’ knowledge of digital publishing.

It starts like this:

“Art of Digital London is an Arts Council England programme designed to help London Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) develop strong strategies for connecting with audiences via technology. It features ten Digital Strategy Salons and Surgeries organised by OpenMute, IT4Arts and IT4Communities. So far, these have looked at: project planning, revenue generation and innovation, with the latest, entitled ‘Publishing – The Digital Word and the Arts’, taking on the evolution of arts publishing platforms.

The morning’s presentations included Chris Meade from ‘think and do tank’ Institute for the Future of the Book (if:book) who asked what ‘bookiness’ is in the information age, and looked at how digital technologies can reinvigorate the reading experience (after showing some all-too familiar images of people napping in libraries).”….read more

Here is my review for Rhizome of Mute’s book  Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Culture and Politics after the Net

Mute at its Meatiest

In 2009 the editorial team at Mute (in association with Autonomedia) published a collection of past magazine content under the title Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net. It was an exercise in content curation, but not, as they point out, an attempt to assemble a greatest hits album. Rather, it reorganises a body of Mute’s diverse output around a selection of themes that are perhaps more apparent (up to) fifteen years later.

In many respects – through the early newspapers, magazines, websites and recent print-on-demand journals – Mute has long engaged in providing content navigation systems for internet-inspired knowledge and the darker side thereof. And they have been doing so in an era defined by its obsession with charting and re-charting the information landscape. What Proud to be Flesh does, therefore, is offer up yet another entry portal to Mute’s rich and important net-knowledge while, in its very book-i-ness, commenting on the current upheaval in text interface products.

Read the rest here…

I am now writing an new regular feature in a-n magazine’s news section called ‘Digital Practices’. My first offering (on the AAH conference strand ‘Digital Continuities’) is out in the June edition.

It starts like this:

“Digital Continuities: from the history of digital art to contemporary transmedial practices’ formed a key strand at March’s Association of Art Historian’s conference. Organised by Nick Lambert from Birkbeck’s CAT project, his vision was to assemble a group of interested academics and think through some of the more contemporary aspects of digital arts activity.

Papers presented showed the true range of current research in the field, yet clearly interconnected through some relevant strands of thought around touch, software art, performance and hybridity….”

And keep your eyes peeled for future bulletins on the world of the arts and digital technologies…

On tomorrow night’s  Furtherfield.org on Resonance FM:

“Stewart Home art & cultural activist across a variety of media including performance, music, film, writing, installation, graphics etc. Within these practices continually reforging a passage between theory and practice, politics and art, the private and the social.

Richard Wright visual artist who has been working in animated media for twenty years, including many early pioneering digital animated films and interactive installations. A PhD in the aesthetics of digital cinema, has published nearly forty papers, articles and book chapters. The programme also includes various other treasures: noise-collages, soundscapes and exploratory music.”

Our last show (where I’d lost my voice) is now available!

On tonight’s show of Furtherfield.org on Resonance FM:

“Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead, artists working with video, sound and electronic networked space to create gallery and site-specific artworks and installations, and art specifically made for the Internet. Corrado Morgana is a Media artist, electronic musician and researcher. Currently a part time doctoral student at University of the Arts London. His research project examines arts and videogames crossover practice, specifically transgressive and subversive production within existing game engines. The programme also includes various other treasures: noise-collages, soundscapes and exploratory music.”

And don’t forget to check out past shows here!

Furtherfield.org on Resonance FM is back tomorrow night (Tuesday 4th May), in our usual slot 9.30-10.30)

This week’s show features interviews with Jim Prevett, Emergent technology Producer at SPACE Media, Hackney, London, runs the PERMACULTURES programme of residencies, workshops, talks and events. Kasia Molga, interdisciplinary artist based in London whose work combines traditional media and new media. Kasia is PhD candidate at University of East London and Senior Lecturer in Limkokwing University of Creative Technology. The programme also includes various other treasures: noise-collages, soundscapes and exploratory music.

And you can catch our last show here!