Andrew Lowenthal is a media and technology activist based in Melbourne, Australia. He is the co-founder of EngageMedia, a video sharing site focussed on social and environmental issues in Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific. EngageMedia also produce Plumi, a free software video sharing platform. In 2006 EngageMedia coordinated Transmission with Rome’s Candida TV, a global meeting of social justice online video distribution projects.
In his other work Andrew collaborates with the Tactical Technology Collective producing a series of free and open source multimedia toolkits. His video work has screened at the National Gallery of Indonesia and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow among others.
The last couple of days we worked to get the Argos ground floor ready for the upcoming events. This is what it looks like.
The space is rather limited, so please register for the two international conferences (‘Video Vortex’ on the 5th and ‘Media memory and The Archive’ on the 6th) via info@argosarts.org.
We’ll be publishing video registrations of all events online, via this blog. So please come and visit us regularly.
Keith Sanborn is a media artist, theorist and translator based in New York. His work has been the subject of numerous one person shows and has been included in major survey exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, and festivals such as OVNI (Barcelona), The Rotterdam International Film Festival, Hong Kong Videotage, and Ostranenie (Dessau). His theoretical work has appeared in a range of publications from journals such as Artforum and books, such as Kunst nach Ground Zero to exhibition catalogues published by MOMA (New York), Exit Art, and the San Francisco Cinematheque. He has translated into English the work of Guy Debord, René Viénet, Gil Wolman, Georges Bataille and Napoleon among others. He has also acted as an independent curator, working with such institutions as the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Exit Art, Artists Space, the Pacific Film Archive, CinemaTexas and others. He teaches at Princeton University, where he is a Lecturer in the Program in Visual Arts.
“Since it has existed, the net has displayed a dialectic of potlatch and recuperation, followed by detournement. Intelligence and generosity are exploited for fantastic profits, but the exploited can be hijacked as well. My work intersects the current phase of exploitation of user-supplied content on Youtube.com, etc., where 15 nano-seconds of fame are exchanged for consigning the aura of individual subjectivity to the ads framing it; in becoming part of a network of interchangeable, equivalent elements, selfhood is sold as commodity. In a necessary irony, my work functions by translating the offerings of Youtube to other contexts, repurposing them as commentary upon that context. Since this violates the principle of “host” ownership, they may not be, nor do I necessarily wish them to return directly to the scene of the crime. In place of one-way broadcast communication, the “new” spectacle offers inter-passivity, pseudo-agency. Creating resistance requires bringing forward the background. “Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain,” indeed; pay attention to the curtain.”
1. Miss South Carolina on Ms. Teen USA answers a question:
2. Her text as a song:
3. Call2prayer or Why they hate us (i.e. the US)4. Sex Machine
5. Japanese game show Lenin’s body
6. In my Language:
7. Thriller by Prison Inmates:
8. Sarcasm
9. Kate Moss Dancing
this video has been deleted on most videosharing sites, but you can still watch it here
Angelo Vermeulen (BE) is a visual artist working with photography, video, new media and installations. He obtained a PhD in biology in 1998 at the University of Leuven (Belgium), together with a degree in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts of Leuven. After his studies, he moved to London to collaborate with Nick Waplington. Back in Belgium he became an artist in residence at HISK in Antwerp. His bio installations, experimental setups incorporating living cells, organisms and sci-fi references are his most well-known works. On eof his recent projects is “Drumlander”, a creative platform on game culture set up in collaboration with Canadian gamer and artist Louis Blackburn. He is preparing his first book on the relation between art, technology and spirituality in partnership with art philosopher Antoon Van den Braembussche.
ROADSIDE PICNIC GONE HAYWIRE
“This selection consists of a series of machinima clips showing bugs, glitches and breakouts in the computer game “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl”. The game is situated in the radioactive zone around the nuclear reactor of Chernobyl and is loosely based on the novel “Roadside Picnic” by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky in 1977. The production of the game took over five years to complete, and was plagued by a seemingly endless delay of its release date. In March of 2007 the game was finally released, however it still contained many bugs and glitches. Subsequent patches have partially resolved them, but the game still contains a relatively large number of design flaws. Gamers have been recording these flaws for various reasons. Some show off by heavily editing the footage and adding music, and others use the footage to ask for help with a particular technical problem. In some clips the bugs are very obvious, in others it’s almost impossible to figure out what exactly is going wrong, and sometimes the player mistakenly posts a bug that is actually a functioning part of the game. Breakouts are a third kind of clip apart from bugs and glitches. They are unscripted routes that players discover where they can leave the predefined boundaries of the game for a virtual area that is not supposed to be accessible to the gamer. Gamers post breakouts to boast about their knowledge of the game and to share the information so others can go and explore these realms as well. All of these clips are examples of the game’s hypermedial approach and illustrate the tongue in cheek attitude of gaming subculture.”
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – break out of the level boundaries
S.t.a.l.k.e.r. Bug #1 – Radioactive death
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Bugged AI – Freedom massacre
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in “W.T.F. ?”
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is D.U.M.B.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. nOObs
S.t.a.l.k.e.r.: Flying Stalker
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: How to open the secret door without decoder!
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl – funny bug
STALKER – Some bug just make me angry.
Strange S.T.A.L.K.E.R. car glitch
The infamous Stalker Alpha Build 1154 flying car bug
Floris Vanhoof (BE) makes films and music, lately with old/modified electronic instruments and 16mm camera tricks.
he plays in the collective R.O.T., whose recordings are distributed by (K-RAA-K)3 and other independent labels,
made film programmes (for the international film festival of rotterdam a.o.) and teaches audiovisual arts. www.geocities.com/sirolffoonav/endlesswebsite.html
“Youtube to compress and control the horizontal and the vertical… and youtube as an archive for media on other media, experiments gotten out of hand, interactive tv by prank calling, tv series you’ve never heard of and video game endings.”
