ISEA Newsletter #99

++ ISEA Headquarters has a new address
Please note that effective immediately, ISEA has a new address:
Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts
P.O. Box 14760
1001 LG Amsterdam
The Netherlands
The previously published fax and phone numbers for ISEA Headquarters are no longer in service.

++ISEA Membership 2005
As mentioned in an email announcement sent to members on March 16, 2005, ISEA is currently in a phase of organisational restructuring. Due to the restructure we have suspended memberships for the year 2005. It is likely that there will be some structural changes that could affect the membership, so we are offering one year gratis membership while these changes are taking place. We will keep all members updated in future announcements.

++ 2005 Leonardo Journal Subscription Discount for ISEA Members
Please note that the discount for ISEA members on a one-year subscription to Leonardo in 2005 is still available. To receive the discount form, please contact ISEA Headquarters.

++ Call for Bids to Host ISEA2007
The Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts is now accepting bids to host ISEA2007. The deadline for letters of intent is April 30, 2005. For more detailed information and to read the full call for bids, please see the ISEA website.

++ Call for Proposals to Sponsor ISEA Headquarters
On April 5, 2005, the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) will be sending out a call to request expressions of interest from institutions with an interest in sponsoring and supporting its Headquarters activities. Please check your inbox and the ISEA website over the next week for the full call for proposals.

ISEA2006 News

ISEA2006 Calls for Participation

Currently, we are calling for projects in the Interactive City theme. In the next few days, we will be extending calls for Interactive Café and Community Domain. See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu for more information or subscribe to the ISEA2006 mailing list at http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006. And save the dates: August 5-13, 2006.

Interactive City Call for Participation

EARLY CALL DUE: 22 April 2005

ISEA INTERACTIVE CITY CFP http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ISEA2006
http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ISEA2006

This announcement is for the early call for proposals within the scope of the Interactive City.

The city has always been a site of transformation: of lives, of populations, even of civilizations. With the rise of the mega city, however; with the advent of 24/7 rush hours; with the inexorable conversion of public space into commercial space; with the rise of surveillance; with the computer-assisted precision of redlining; with the viral advance of the xenophobic, the contemporary city is weighted down. We dream of something more. Not something planned and canned, like another confectionary spectacle. Something that can respond to our dreams. Something that will transform with us, not just perform change on us, like an operation.

The Interactive City seeks urban-scale projects for which the city is not merely a palimpsest of our desires but an active participant in their formation. From dynamic architectural skins to composite sky portraits to walking in someone else's shoes to geocaches of urban lore to hybrid games with a global audience, projects for the Interactive City should transform the "new" technologies of mobile and pervasive computing, ubiquitous networks, and locative media into experiences that matter.

We are initiating an early Call for Proposals that manifest but are not limited to the spectrum of ideas below. Interactive City proposals should embrace aspects of the city of San José and/or the surrounding metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area specifically. We are seeking projects that are large in scale, require advanced or special planning and/or permissions, or projects seeking early review.

Let us experience your vision of the Interactive City!

Eric Paulos
Chair
Interactive City
ISEA2006

Introduction:
New Generation: 'Young Electronic Art'

by Guest Editor Molly Hankwitz

This issue of the ISEA newsletter started as a call for work on 'young electronic art' and was quickly responded to in numerous creative ways by emerging new media writers and curators working in net.art and with new media. I was interested in how new media technology and its culture was being absorbed and/or shaped by the young; what programs were on offer, what emerging festivals, prizes and education were arising as a result of the push of industry, culture, and economy. I was also interested in writers; not from so-called new media 'centres' but from other places and positions in cyberculture and some of the issues and concerns arising from being practioners in this field.

Thus as the issue came together, I highlighted the activist/art work performed and produced in a skilled new media context by Chilean artist, Ignacio Nieto, whose project 'Render' (in collaboration with Simon Schiessl) demonstrates a powerful new dimension for mobile technologies when paired with activism and the health of children and oppressed regions. Garrett Lynch's article sheds light on the emerging context of commercial new technologes such as Google as new arenas for art practice. And finally, Ana Boa-Ventura talks about what is available to younger artists learning new media in Portugal.

In the process of working, the original concept of 'young' has been used both literally and metaphorically to acknowledge the emergence of fresh ideas as well as to draw on populations of students and young artists toying with tools. (I thank Garrett for putting this spin on the topic!) And finally my section on a few new and emerging festivals, publications, projects and spaces barely covers the breadth of new work and new ideas popping up around the globe, but is a choice first sampling.

I would like to thank all the contributors for their individual efforts and all the artists included in the works for their ongoing stimulating ideas and creativity. Thanks to ISEA for offering me this opportunity to guest edit and to Angela Plohman and Nina Czegledy.

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Biography: Molly Hankwitz
Molly Hankwitz is a new media editor/writer and media artist. She is working on a social study of mobile communications and its many illusory discourses for her PhD and is Contributing editor to Net Art Review and a researcher with Creative Industries Research Applications Centre in Brisbane, Australia.

Google and Art: A commercial / cultural new media art economy?

by Garrett Lynch

In the last three years, Google the search engine company have become a phenomenon. Their business has soared, range of services and products expanded and they have without a doubt begun to immensely influence culture. Online we can all feel their influence. With vast amounts af data in almost any area imaginable they single handedly list more webpages than any other search engine (8.05 billion as of November 2004) [A] and are fast becoming a working Borges library of Babel.

Yet beyond this goal of 'simply' indexing everything online and shaping the internet for general users, offline language, popular culture, science and many other areas have also been influenced by Google [B]. Prominent examples include their name becoming a verb in the English language meaning to search the internet using their search engine [C]. Googlewhacking has become the challenge to "find that elusive query (two words - no quote marks) with a single, solitary result" [D]. O'Reilly Media Inc. published a series of books dispelling mysteries around hacking culture, including one on how to hack Google. Nothing involving the heavily mediated misconception that hacking involves programmers infiltrating corporations computer systems for personal gain, instead handbooks on the use of existing tools, in ingenious unthought-of ways, by a cross section of people continually recombining them to suit their needs.

So why is it important to know about the developments of Google and its influences on society? What bearing has this on new media art? To date new media art has been an information based art form, but not necessarily an informed one. Information has been used in various ways, background noise, continuously flowing content, as a trigger to indicate a change from one state to another yet rarely has the information been used successfully as simply the information it is due to the complexity of presentation within the tools that access it and the difficulty to separate content from presentation other than how intended.

Developments, technical, commercial and social have opened the floodgates for a diverse set of people, artists included, to a mass of information and tools with which to access and use this information. Open source and non-proprietary formats have been crucial, but companies such as Google using these formats, providing the tools they do and controlling / leading whole sways of industry because of their ease of use are creating new economies around themselves which influence both the tools artists are using, how they think about and use them. We now have a rapidly growing information aware set of artists, self-trained and adaptable, working in / around / against this new economy. The new order has given them the ability to use Google's information, potential content with little embedded context; in anyway they choose allowing possibilities for an informed, contextualised and critical art. The ability to frame information as used in much of western society, a common commodity, has become a signature of new media art, net based art in particular, and this trend towards the use of tools such as Google, to create what we could call Google Art, while new, is far from unexpected or unique.

Live Query (2002) at Google Headquarters. Image courtesy of Aaron Swartz.

In November 2002 an article appeared in the New York Times on Google's ability to track search queries [E]. It suggested that Google had the ability to show current trends and foresee future ones. It's intro discussed an artwork at Google's headquarters entitled Live Query [1], which triggered much discussion on new media mailing lists. The piece consisted of a live feed of scrolling queries in many languages from the search engine's use all over the world, a sampling of what the world was asking, yet censored to ensure its appropriateness for presentation at such an important corporate location. A day later a posting appeared in mailing lists from a T. Whid entitled, When Google has achieved the net art masterpiece, what are the artists to do? [F]. Google seemed to be using culture, art works, to promote its business and in terms of this sort of hybridised networked art, a generative piece heavily reliant on a commercial tool yet paying particular care to presentation and context, unlike the online tool counterpart, it far exceeded anything the independent art world had created without the patronage of companies such as Google.

Googlehouse (2003) by Marika Dermineur and Stéphane Degoutin.

While immediately worrying for artists, Live Query was a perfect demonstration of what could be created by rethinking the use of online tools, what they can and could do. Not alone were Google predicting trends with their services but they were also creating them, generating them directly in popular culture through their listings but also covertly influencing them within culture through the inspiration to and patronage of art works. Artists realised that there was in fact much to do and in the last two years we have seen works including Googlehouse [2] and My Google Body [3] relying heavily on Google's image search for their content. The Google Adwords Happening [4], which uses Adwords the Google advertisement program and Newsmap [5] using the Google news stream. These are art works, which can be considered new media art of the highest calibre. 'Net works' which without the network simply wouldn't function, technically or conceptually. Their position to Google the search engine, Google the company and Google the pending worldwide trademark is considered by some artists as almost a patron / artistic one, not in the traditional sense of a monetary exchange but as a facilitator where art works can coexist with commerce, using it, questioning it. As the creators of Googlehouse, Marika Dermineur and Stéphane Degoutin explain, "Our position to them [Google] is like a kind of parasite, or a graft"..."If Google stops, the Googlehouse stops too. Googlehouse is the mirror of a data search engines activity".

My Google Body (2003) by Gerard Dalmon.

Art works such as these are certainly mirrors of our individual use of information technology but they also become maps, not topographical but social maps, collective and often collaborative, of the search engines content and ordering. The artist provides a framework, a context yet without both Google providing content, actual (text, images etc.) or subject matter and users to navigate through this content they would remain static empty shells. The relationship between artist / user which occurs in the majority of new media art as a result of interaction, a key term that necessitated a change in terminology from spectator to user with the advent of computers in art and media, is further complicated by a third party, Google, providing content. This split between context, content and narrative will no doubt cause continued concern to art historians and critics over the 'ever diminishing' role of the artist yet it continues a trend since the works and performances of Dada. Google is certainly providing the inspiration for new art works and new directions within these but since Google is a private company and like any other has financial demands and restraints, how true is the individual reflection, the social map of our societies use of its information? Are we really googling the internet, or in fact goggled, our field of vision restricted by business and one companies vision?

Works of Note:

[1] Google, 2002, Live Query. Image available from: http://www.aaronsw.com/photos/google/IMG_1559.JPG/view [Accessed 15th January 2005]

[2] Dermineur, M., Degoutin, S., 2003, Googlehouse [online]. Available from: http://www.googlehouse.net [Accessed 20th December 2004]

[3] Dalmon, G., 2003, My Google Body [online]. Available from: http://www.neogejo.com/googlebody/ [Accessed 20th December 2004]

[4] Bruno, C., 2003, The Google Adwords Happening [online]. Available from: http://www.iterature.com/adwords/ [Accessed 9th January 2005].

[5] Weskamp, M., 2003, Newsmap [online]. Available from: http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/ [Accessed 9th January 2005].

Reference and Notes:

[A] 2004, Wikipedia [online]. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google [Accessed 20th December 2004]

[B] Piper, P.S., 2004, Google Spawn: The Culture Surrounding Google [online]. Information Today Inc. Available from: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jun04/piper.shtml [Accessed 20th December 2004]

[C] Dictionary.com lists the word as a verb: "to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine" with the example: "We googled to find the definition of the new word".

2004, Dictionary.com [online]. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. Available from: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=google [Accessed 20th December 2004]

Offline dictionaries including Oxford, Cambridge and Webster have yet to list the word doubtlessly connected to the fact that Google the company are contesting their trademark name from entering the English language in America.

Duffy, J., 2003, BBC News Online [online]. BBC. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3006486.stm [Accessed 20th December 2004]

[D] A full history of searching for the "elusive query" or Googlewhacking is available here: Stock, G., 2002, Googlewhacking: The Search for 'The One' [online]. Available from: http://www.unblinking.com/heh/googlewhack.htm#20020108 [Accessed 20th December 2004]

[E] Lee, J. 8., 2002, Postcards From Planet Google [online]. Available from: http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?res=9D07E1DF1538F93BA15752C1A9649C8B63 [Accessed 9th January 2005]

[F] Whid, T., 2002, When Google has achieved the net art masterpiece, what are the artists to do [online]. Available from: http://www.endnode.net/pipermail/endnode/Week-of-Mon-20021125/000372.html [Accessed 20th December 2004]

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Biography - Garrett Lynch

Garrett Lynch is a net.artist / new media artist, lecturer in Digital Media at Canterbury Christ Church University, curator, critic and theorist of net.art currently living and working in England.

His works are hosted and documented at http://www.asquare.org/, the artists personal website. Principal curatorial output is Bannerart, a net.artist led initative to curate, exhibit and distribute free net.art online while critical and theoretical writing is distributed via Netartreview.

What options do youngsters in Portugal have to learn about digital art?

by Ana Boa-Ventura

Introduction

This paper discusses the options that Portugal offers youngsters interested in pursuing an education in digital arts. Given the shortage of courses in the field, I decided to include curricula in the broader field of digital media.

Informal discussions in listservs based in Portugal were conducted. Arena was one of these: a Portuguese-based mailing list fed by an enthusiastic community digital artists, as well as researchers, teachers and those curious about digital art. These interactions were followed-up by email exchanges with students pursuing their education abroad. Furthermore, contacts were established with faculty members, administrative staff, instructors and students on the several institutions mentioned in this article.

Does it matter where one lives?

We often hear that "digital art" is global and that are no countries or borders to consider. My participation in a Conference on "Globalization: consequences for digital artists" in 2001 in Caracas, Venezuela was a harsh reality-check: 60 young digital-artists - mostly in the field of net-art - candidly noted that laptops, digital video cameras and Adobe / Macromedia licenses cost money, and that national telecommunications infrastructures differ from country to country.

Likewise, while Portuguese youngsters are no exception to the interest that youth around the world has developed around emergent technologies and art, they are victims of the same injustice: arguably, the decision to pursue an artistic career is jeopardized by down-to-earth considerations of economic nature, and these differ from country to country.

During the 4th trimester of 2004, Portugal had the highest rate of unemployment in six years (source: I.N.E. "Instituto Nacional de Estatística" -National Institute of Statistics - Portugal. URL: http://www.ine.pt/prodserv/Indicadores/indic2.asp). Hence, and if indeed the lesson I learned in Caracas is valid - it does matter where one lives - Portuguese economy does not make it any easy to opt for venturing into an artistic field.

Furthermore, for reasons that in Portugal are both social and economic, Portuguese youngsters are family-dependent longer than in many other countries in Western Europe. This dependency does not make things any easier either when the time comes to choose where to invest in training for a career: while parents clearly show a bias towards 4 and 5 year degrees - that is: a "traditional" education - the youngsters trust those curricula that are in sync with emerging tendencies and with the industry's demands.

Finally, Portugal suffers from yet another problem: the weight of centuries of tradition of the "universitas". With the first Portuguese university dated from 1290, this academic tradition often involves a slugglish bureaucracy, where any new plan of studies must undergo a complex and lengthy process before it can be offered. In the case of new, emerging areas, this can be fatal to the institution by affecting its ability to keep up with an ever-evolving field. So, and paradoxically, it is the very tradition of the university that jeopardizes its capacity to quickly respond to rapid evolution of the digital media field.

Training in digital media - the options in Portugal

So what options does the Portuguese youngster interested in working in the field of digital art have?

When thinking strictly of digital arts, the options are very limited. Most students interested in working in this field seek training elsewhere through State-funded and other grants, such as Fulbright, Gulbenkian - a prestigious Portuguese grant - or Leonardo - an European program. These programs are highly selective though, and the option of studying abroad with no financial aid is virtually impossible for the average Portuguese. Hence, most students seek indoors a general education in digital media that may lead later to the pursuit of an artistic career.

Instead of doing a comprehensive description of courses, I opted for underlining one or two examples in each of the types of institutions that allow the pursuit of education beyond high school: public universities, private universities, "Escolas Superiores" , private specialized schools, and "Centers/institutes".

Public Universities

The University of Aveiro (U.A.) located in the North of Portugal offers 2 licenciaturas (4 year degrees) in the field of digital media through its Department of Communication and Arts: New Technologies of Communication and "Technologies of Information and Communication". While the Department represents the Arts in that University, the degrees offered in the field of digital media do not seem to have been able to escape the strong tradition in Engineering that the University of Aveiro has in the Portuguese higher education landscape.
Site: http://www.ca.ua.pt

The Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (College of Social and Human Sciences) of the "Universidade Nova de Lisboa" offers "sciences of communication", which include theoretical and technological aspects of the study of communication.
Site: http://www.fcsh.unl.pt

Both the DCA and the FCSH offers strong MA and PhD programs in the field and have excellent faculty elements teaching these as well as the courses for undergrads.

Private Universities

"Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias" (Luso University of Humanities and Technologies). Located in the heart of Lisbon, the "Lusófona" as it is commonly called offers four 4 year degrees - Science of Communication and Culture; Cinema, Video and Multimedia Communication; Communication in the Organizations / Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations; and Design. The "Lusófona" launched a bold marketing campaign, as it is well apparent from its Cinema, Video and Multimedia Communication course's home page that displays all the private entities that collaborate with the course. The "Lusófona" is the preferred option for students in Lisbon who can afford a private university and privilege a "safe" 4 to 5 year program in digital media.
Site: http://www.ulusofona.pt/default.asp

Home page of the degree in Cinema, Video and Multimedia Communication of the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias showing the private entities that collaborate with the course.

The Universidade Católica (Catholic University) offers in its delegation at Oporto (North of Portugal) a 5 year licenciatura in "Sound and Image" with an innovative plan of studies, as the 4th and 5th years branch into 1 of four areas: sound, television, drama/script, and digital arts. http://www.artes.ucp.pt/si/ This is in fact the only literal reference to "digital arts" that I found in the realm of public and private universities.

"Escolas Superiores" (part of the Polytechnic Institutes)

The ESAD - "Escola Superior" of Art and Design - is part of Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, and is located in Caldas da Rainha. The ESAD covers a major region of the country to the North of the capital, which is underserved as far as options in higher education. The region has a strong tradition in folk art, as well as in old industries such as blown glass that the community was able to modernize. The school offers an excellent 4 year degree in "Sound and Image" with an extremely crafted curriculum with a holistic style of training with a focus on artistic production in areas so different as Theater, TV, Photography, Cinema, and Multimedia, and where I found one of the few references to the format of "atelier" as ideal class format.
Site: http://www.esad.ipleiria.pt

Private Specialized Schools

"Escola Técnica de Imagem e Comuniçao" or ETIC
The ETIC - Technical School of Image and Communication - is a private school of enormous impact in the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. It is one of the few schools mentioning mobile technologies (as "cell phones" and "wireless") in the very courses' designations or "atelier" as the methodology associated with at least one of the courses offered (video-art). "Communication" means for ETIC areas such as "digital security" and "E-business".
Site: http://www.etic.pt

The bold and aggressive image of ETIC is well apparent in the school's home page. The text of the large picture reads "Reborn. Pursue a course with ETIC".

Centros/Institutes

Atmosferas
Atmosferas is co-financed by ETIC (and a governmental program) and was created to address a serious limitation in Portugal: content production. Atmosferas created what is probably the best archive of who is doing what in the realm of "artes tecnológicas" (technological arts) in Portugal: 13 television programs that were broadcasted in 2004 by a TV channel geared to youth - SIC Radical.

Although training is not the main activity of Atmosferas, its dynamic team monitors what is happening internationally and regularly brings to Lisbon the leading international voices in the field. This is clear in the topics of recent workshops, such as the use of the Korsakow freeware system in non-linear narratives, Kim Cascone¹s sonic process or computational design and generative art (with Marius Watz).
Site: http://www.atmosferas.net

Concluding remarks

In Portugal, the options for training in the field of digital arts are very limited in traditional academic educational settings. Overall, the curricula of both private and public universities show a strong theoretical component or alternatively a concern with what is immediately applicable - to the educational, management, and the telecommunications fields - with little attention to the artistic realm.

The pace of change in the field is unforgiving: the nature of anything "emerging" is per se incompatible with lengthy processes of recognition of plans of studies. The "escolas superiores", and the smaller, private specialized "schools" and Centers offer a fresh alternative. The "escolas superiores" offer a middle ground situation: 4 year degrees, fully credited by the Ministry of Education and up-to-date, applicable training. Private schools and Centers have the greatest flexibility in adapting plans of study and shape them in tune with a genuinely "emerging" digital arts scene that may one year emphasize the incorporation of mobile technologies in performance and in the next, advocate the use of flash in generative art.

Acknowledgements: The author wishes to thank Possidónio Cachapa, Ana Carvalho, Cid Fonseca, Teresa Fradique, Sahra Kunz Gomes, Sofia Oliveira, Joao Paulo Silva, Luis Silva, Diogo Valério, and Helena Vieira for their important contributes and help with this article.

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Biography - Ana Boa-Ventura

Ana Boa-Ventura went to Austin, Texas as a graduate student in new media. Before that, she taught about interactive narratives to sophomores at a Portuguese University. She pursued this work in the U.S., with a more production-oriented class in Digital Media at the University of Texas at Austin. In her dissertation she is looking at representations of presence in digital environments and working with the School of Architecture at U.T. She has maintained an interest in digital art contributing with writings for online journals and with participations in panels and workshops around the world (Venezuela, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany, Canada, U.S.) - she is interested in the relationship between the gendered body and the machine. To the extent that creating always informs one's reference models and curating practices, she produced some installations that mostly involve physical interfaces, such as human-size surfaces of projection, bar coded "body maps" and sensors that she matches with found-objects.

New Media: Chilean Edge

"Render"

by Ignacio Nieto

The production in Latin America, in terms of new media is very recent. As local antecedents, I'd recall two facts:

- the use of video, called video-art in the 80s, which criticized television experimenting in the support of the tape;

- the incorporation of data projection in the moving image at the end of the 90s, which provoked the jump from analog to digital, with a predominance, in general terms, of videos made by editing and post-production software with pre-established tools.

Recent exhibitions such as Festival 404 made in the city of Rosario, Argentina are worth considering. You will realise that there is a huge distance in terms of technical solutions, when it comes time to balance the works between the first and the third world. The first ones will be usually focused in the building of technologies for the making of pieces of art, and the others will work with pre-established tools by the owner softwares. In that sense, and twisting a bit this adverse situation, Render is a project which, besides of having predefined elements, as digital graphic, electronical board palette, and moving sensor, it also had a controller made specifically for the exhibition. Nevertheless it was made in EUA by Simon Schiessl, a German artist and engineer, it couldn't have been in another way, because the production of these pieces in a Latin american level is not possible. Only, and inside the chain of production in Spanish-America, in the manufacturing of components but not in the creation of pieces. This could be considered as a limit from the economi politic of the first world, which prevent the development of other areas of production.

"Render" - (the artwork)

This piece was site-specific. The place was the gallery "Ojo del Desierto Center of Art", situated in the city of Calama, a town in the very north of Chile, with a population of a bit more than 100,000. It is located in the driest deserts on the planet. This city mainly functions as a "bed-city" to an area with the highest production of copper in the world, while providing a number of services to the big mining companies running in the region.

One of the significant problems that has arisen because of this relationship between the mining industry and the town is a high degree of pollution. This has created major disagreement between the market (the production and then the selling of copper)and the local population with concerns for its health.

The exhibition can be seen from outside, through the gallery's window, during December of 2004, in the form of an electronic paddle board showing, in green characters, and continuously, the following sentence:

WELCOME TO THE EXHIBITION

Inside the gallery, a thin wall has been built, parallel to the window, at a distance of approximately 3 meters. On the side of the wall, facing the big window,is a light box with this paragraph:

"To the most important copper company of the world, a vision of the future encompasses a challenge for the development of the international markets, including a defensible and efficient way to work with resources, so that the market can address the needs of advancements for contemporary civilization: high conductivity, data transmission and manufacturing of microprocessors. Investigation and innovation are essential conditions to develop strategies for technological support, where the market doesn't offer an integral answer." *

* Text has been edited, from the internet site of Codelco.

In front of this light box, and over the electronic paddle board, a moving 'sensor' connected to a controller, created by German artist and engineer Simon Schiessl, acts as an interface between the moving sensor and the paddle. Each time someone is in front of the light box, the sensor activates and changes the sentence that is on the paddle board, for 25 seconds. The new quote, in capital letters on black background, was, for example:

THE PEOPLE YOU ARE WATCHING HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO HIGH AMOUNTS OF ARSENIC

After a while, when the sensor wasn't activated, the sentence changes again to:

WELCOME TO THE EXHIBITION

To further arrange this dichotomy between economics and health, a graphic piece was created with an apparatus - not readily available - to measure arsenic levels in the human body.

In front of this graphic element, there was a desk with information forms for the public about the arsenic detector. The forms were available to be taken and sent by visitors to the exhibition to the department of Public Relations of the North Division of Codelco, Chuquicamata.

(Original Spanish Text) "Render" - par Ignacio Nieto

Esta obra fue pensada como sitio-específico. El lugar es la galería del Centro de Arte Ojo del Desierto, ubicada en la ciudad de Calama, poblado al norte Chile, con un poco más de 100.000 habitantes, y emplazado en el desierto más árido del mundo. La función principal de esta ciudad es la de servir como ciudad-dormitorio a la zona de mayor producción de cobre del mundo, y además proporcionar un sin número de servicios a las grandes compañías mineras que existen en el lugar.

Uno de los problemas que han surgido a raíz de esta relación entre la industria de la minería y la ciudad, es su alto grado de contaminación ambiental, dejando entrever el gran desacuerdo existente entre el mercado (la producción y posterior venta del cobre), y la salud de la población local.

Desde el exterior del centro de arte, a través de la vitrina se observa durante el mes de diciembre del 2004, una paleta electrónica que mostró, en letras verdes, y contínuamente la siguiente frase en letras altas:

BIENVENIDO(S) A LA EXPOSICION

En el interior de la galería, se construyó un muro de tabique, que se ubicó de forma paralela al ventanal, a una distancia de 3 metros aproximadamente. Por el lado del muro, que mira hacia el ventanal, existió una caja de luz que contuvo la siguiente frase:

"Para la principal empresa productora de cobre del mundo, una visión de futuro implica un desafío de participar del desarrollo de los mercados internacionales, contando con recursos y medios para funcionar de forma eficiente y sustentable, y asi poder atender las necesidades que reflejan los avances de la civilización ontemporánea. Súper conductividad, transmisión de datos y fabricación de microprocesadores. Según esto, la investigación y la innovación son condiciones esenciales para desarrollar estrategias con base tecnólogica, en donde el mercado no ofrece una respuesta intergral". *
* Frase extraída de la página de internet de Codelco, y editada posteriormente.

Al frente de esta caja de luz, y sobre la paleta electrónica, un sensor de movimiento conectado a un controlador, producido por el artista e ingeniero alemán Simon Schiessl, que servía como interfase entre el detector de movimiento y la paleta alfanumérica. Cada vez que la persona estaba al frente de la gráfica con la caja de luz, el sensor de movimiento se activaba y cambiaba la frase que estaba en la paleta electrónica, por 25 segundos. La sentencia decía en letras altas con fondo negro:

LA(S) PERSONA(S) QUE UD(S) ESTA(N) VIENDO HA(N) SIDO EXPUESTA(S) A ALTAS CANTIDADES DE ARSENICO

Al pasar el tiempo, y si el sensor no estaba activado, la frase cambiaba nuevamente a:

BIENVENIDO(S) A LA EXPOSICION

Para remendar esta dicotomía entre la hacienda de economía y la de salud, se elaboró una gráfica que promocionó un aparato - inexistente en el mercado -, para medir los grados de arsénico al interior del cuerpo humano.

Al frente de esta gráfica, un mesón contuvo una serie de formularios para que los espectadores pidieran mayor información a cerca del sensor de arsénico. Los formularios podían ser retirados y enviados por el público que asistía a la exposición.Para finalizar, el remitente era dirigido al departamento de relaciones públicas de la División Norte de Codelco, Chuquicamata.

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Festival 404
http://www.404festival.com.ar/eng/cronograma.htm

URLs of Codelco
One in Spanish and the other in English.
http://www.codelco.com/index1.asp
http://www.codelco.com/ingles/index2.html

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Biography - Ignacio Nieto - Principal artist and writer

Born in Santiago, Chile. He studied Fine Arts in Finis Terrae University in Santiago and worked as an independent designer since 1997. From 1998 he participated in exhibitions in galleries of Chile and USA. Since 2002 he has participated in several symposiums in Santiago and in Cordoba, Argentine. Also 2004 he wrote articles and interviews appearing for NetArtReview about or on electronic arts.

Biography - Simon Schiessl - Collaborator on the project

He works between Berlin and Boston. He studied engineering and his artisic material is the technology itself. He uses tech to perform new aesthetic expieriences and is developing a project for the Media Lab at the Michigan Institute of Technology. His works have been exhibited in various festivals of electronic arts such as: Transmediale, VIDA, Ars Eectronica and 'Sonar' in Barcelona.

SPOTLIGHT on New and Emerging Projects and Publications - 2005

Organization: Streetside Stories
http://www.streetside.org
Project Title: Tech Tales
Principal Artists: 300 San Francisco public middle school students
Funding Body: U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant

Description:
During the Tech Tales workshop, 7th grade students create 1-2 minute digital stories in iMovie using autobiographical stories, drawings and photographs. During the first two weeks of the workshop, the students write their autobiographical story, convert it into a 125-175 word script, create storyboards and choose 3 sound effects. The second two weeks of the workshop, students record their voiceover and edit their digital story. The curriculum is standards based.

The workshops take place during the school day as part of the students' language arts class (45-90 minutes long). During the 2004-05 school year, 300 students in 12 classes and 5 schools will receive the Tech Tales program. The classroom teachers also receive training in how to use digital storytelling in their classroom for future projects. The schools selected to receive Tech Tales have a high percentage of low-income students and reported below average test scores.

At the end of the workshop, each student receives a CD-ROM with all of stories from their class. At the end of the year, each student receives a DVD anthology that includes a quarter of the stories produced by all of the students in the program.

Contact: Britt Bravo, Program Director
britt@streetside.org

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Organization: Straight Out of Brisbane
http://www.straightoutofbrisbane.com
Principal Artists: Independent and emerging artists of Brisbane and South Queensland
Funding Body: Brisbane City Council, Queensland Government, Creative Industries

Description:
Straight Out of Brisbane'(SOOB) is a multi-arts festival of independent and emerging arts, culture and ideas. It takes place in Brisbane, Queensland annually, in the first week of December.

SOOB is one of Australia's largest gathering of young and emerging artists and creative industries practitioners. The goal of the festival is create a platform to build audiences,showcasing and professional development opportunities for young and emerging artists, artsworkers and creative entrepreneurs - especially in contemporary and emerging art practices not funded or supported by the broader cultural sector.

The 2004 SOOB featured more than 1,000 local and inter-state artists and creative practitioners across 200+ events. An estimated 10,000 people attended.

SOOB is programmed independently. It is an artist-run and artist-programmed initiative. It seeks to create a new critical culture that will inform and be informed by independent thinking and contemporary ideas and current events. Our aim is to improve the public climate for contemporary and independent arts and ideas.

Artforms represented in SOOB's program include:
- Music
- Film and video
- Performance
- Visual arts
- New media
- Game design
- Writing
- Urban theory
- Ideas

The exact dates for SOOB's 2005 festival are yet to be confirmed. Visit our website for updates.

Contact: Susan Kukucka, Festival director
management@straightoutofbrisbane.com

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Organization: Net Art Review
http://www.netartreview.net
Principal Artists: Lora McPhail, Editor-in-Chief, Eduardo Navasse, Founder/News editor, Molly Hankwitz, Contributing Editor, NetKru contributors (see website for list)

Description:
Net Art Review is an online collaboration that was launched in February of 2003. The online resource focuses on net-art and its crossover to other areas in new media. It was founded on a community based approach, which means that anyone can become a Contributing Writer, given that the person has a strong understanding of new media and net art. After two years of online activity the resource has delivered reviews of online and offline art, books, as well as occasional interviews, conference reports and exhibition reviews. The website's focus has changed from its early days; at first the content consisted of short commentaries on web-based and Internet art; then, with time the focus became more open,and diverse content as mentioned above began to be included.

Net Art Review publishes writings in various languages. The material is not always translated into English. This is done to show the diversity and complexity of online activity, and to give contributors a choice in what language they prefer to communicate with our readers. Our contributors live in different countries, which include Australia, Chile, England, France, Italy, Netherlands, the United States, and Sweden. Currently, Net Art Review is in being redesigned. So make sure to visit the online collaborative in the near future.

Contact: Lora McPhail, Editor in Chief
lora.mcphail@verizon.net

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Project: spatial
http://www.nga.gov.au/spatial
Images: Fluid Bodies/Glen Murphy

Description:
'spatial' is the new online environment for displaying networked art at the National Gallery of Australia. Placing an emphasis on experimentation, spatial showcases single web works for period of 9 weeks from both emerging and established Australian and global networked artists. Recent exhibitions have included mesmerising code-work by emerging Melbourne artist/programmer Glen Murphy who explores organic approximations of nature"inspired by the flow of a thick brush on canvas, the motions of planets around suns, the tendrils of smoke from an extinguished match". Fluid shapes made by the trail of an asymmetric wave of two hundred independently moving particles are created with java and programming scripts. More can be found at http://www.bodytag.org. Other exhibits have been: Chris Henschke's "hyperCollider" 3d net work, sound artist Thembi Soddell's "flicker" ," rest", and "repulsion", and e-poet geniwate's award winning "concatenation".

ISEA Newsletter Contributors: Molly Hankwitz (Guest Editor), Ana Boa-Ventura, Garrett Lynch, Ignacio Nieto, Simon Schiessl, Melinda Rackham, the ISEA2006 Team, Nina Czegledy, the ISEA Board.

ISEA Newsletter Online Design: René Paré (MAD).

ISEA Board Members:

Peter Anders, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Nina Czegledy, Gunalan Nadarajan, Anne Nigten, Julianne Pierce, Wim van der Plas, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Mark Tribe.

ISEA HQ:

Angela Plohman, Coordinating Director

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