Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, controversial photographer Bill Henson and Dutch art master Matheus Van Helmont walk into a bar. What do they talk about?…

WHAT: Storytelling: Tales from the Union Art Collection

WHO: Curated by Elyse Horan and Bethany Cannan. Featuring works by Bill Henson, Trent Parke, Terry Gilliam, Del Kathryn Barton, Hayley Linz, Gareth Sansom,  Noel Counihan, Richard Lewer, Maurice de Vlaminck, Matheus Van Helmont and Albrecht Dürer.

WHEN: Opening Thursday October 13, 6pm. October 10-November 4, Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm.

WHERE: Verge Gallery, Jane Foss Russell Plaza, City Road, University of Sydney. Australia

CONTACT: Greg Shapley on (02) 9563-6218, g.shapley@usu.usyd.edu.au 

Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, controversial photographer Bill Henson and Dutch art master Matheus Van Helmont walk into a bar. What do they talk about?…

Original artworks from these, and other artists, will be on display at Verge Gallery as part of an exhibition that playfully joins the dots between some of the University of Sydney Union’s most interesting art acquisitions. This century-old art collection contains a prestigious and eclectic range of works. Student interns turned curators, Elyse Horan and Bethany Cannan have selected works from this collection that are dying to be seen and heard. Each one beckons you in closer, throws an arm around your shoulder and whispers historic tales of intrigue and suspense. Collectively, they chatter away inviting audiences to become involved in the bigger conversation on the nature of art and the human condition. Visitors are asked to document what they hear on large scrolls that, in turn, become part of the show. Also involved in this grand narrative are works by Trent Parke, Del Kathryn Barton, Gareth Sansom, Hayley Linz, Noel Counihan, Richard Lewer, Maurice de Vlaminck, Albrecht Dürer and George Milpurrurru.

Professor Stuart Moulthrop Public Lecture – FREE – Make a Better Door: Or, How Does Digital Humanism Humanize? #games #robots #geekgirl

Make a Better Door: Or, How Does Digital Humanism Humanize?

An interesting image for 2011. …

A player/character in the most recent Portal game is literally locked out of her workplace and replaced by a pair of robots. From this resonant image of the human-computer interface a discussion will emerge to do with broader understandings of the digital humanities, media scholarship, and electronic literature. The focus for this approach will be the question famously posed by Richard Lanham’s: “how do the humanities humanize?”

Professor Darren Tofts (Swinburne University of Technology) will moderate a conversation with Professor Moulthrop following his presentation.

Date: Monday 10th October, 2011
Time: 6.30-8.30 pm.
Venue: Village Roadshow Theatrette
State Library of Victoria 179 La Trobe Street Melbourne (Conference Centre, Entry 3)
Australia

Stuart Moulthrop is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is an electronic literature pioneer, both as a theoretician and as a writer, and has published many of articles on the topic of games, network literature and digital media theory. From 1995-99 he was co-editor of the online journal Postmodern Culture and he is a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). His hypertext Victory Garden (1992) was featured on the front page of the New York Times Book Review in a (now famous) review by American literary critic Robert Coover. Moulthrop is also the author of the hypertext fiction works Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. His recent work engages with digital games and its interface with media theory, electronic writing and scandal. His current work in progress is “Sc4nda1 in New Media,” an Arcade Essay that converges philosophical meditation with an actual video game. It can be accessed at http://pantherfile.uwm.edu/moulthro/index.htm.

Professor Moulthrop is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life & Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology. This visit has also been supported by the School of Media and Communication, RMIT and Sydney University.

The Joy of Loss #QUT #multiplatform #ipad #geekgirl

BRISBANE: IDA PROJECTS PRESENTS THE JOY OF LOSS EXHIBITION

Artist/composer David Sudmalis brings his latest project, The Joy of Loss, to The Block with the support of IDAprojects and QUT from 16-28 September.

The Joy of Loss is a multi-platform investigation of the emotional terrain sculpted through loss, transformation and transcendence. Immersive sound, silent interviews, live performance and an iPad orchestra come together in this exhibition to develop a shared emotional understanding of loss and its joyous cathartic qualities.  Presented by IDAprojects and QUT Creative Industries Precinct.

You can follow the project with David on his blog www.thejoyofloss.blogspot.com or submit your stories via Twitter with #TheJoyOfLoss.
16 – 28 September 2011

‘The art of Hacking’ with all my favourite gurls #hacking #ethics #code #geekgirl

With works by: Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, moddr_, Cornelia Sollfrank, The Yes Men, ÜBERMORGEN.COM <http://xn--bermorgen-p9a.COM> and Nancy Mauro-Flude / Mez Breeze / Sara Platon. 
 
‘The art of Hacking’ focuses on the artistic side of hacking. The artists in this exhibition highlight the imperfections of our surroundings and daily lives. The projects subvert, improve on or circumnavigate ‘official’ systems and practices and offer alternatives. Superficially, hacking is often associated with spreading online viruses and other digital attacks. Officially these criminal activities are not really known as hacking, but as ‘cracking’. The real practice of hacking is done based on far more positive and artistic motives. It’s a state of mind and there are elaborate ethical codes within the hacker community. 
 
In short creative hacking combines artists’ technical skills with the optimism to solve problems and the urge to overcome artistic limitations. The basis for these works lies in a technical, online methodology that spreads into the physical world through the tangibility of the artworks. 
 
About the works:
The British artist Heath Bunting gives insight into the networks at play that constitute an identity, like banks, health care and education. By using these different networks Bunting creates new synthetic identities. In his ‘Identity Bureau’ one can purchase official and legal UK identities. This project has been made possible in collaboration with SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain. http://irational.org/ 
 
The American creative activism duo, a pair of notorious troublemakers The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) targets leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else in order to publicly humiliate them, a practice that they call ‘identity correction’. Next to displaying a few projects by The Yes Men, NIMk collaborates on a ‘Yes Lab’ together with the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, the Dutch Theatre Festival, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, and Partizan Publik. http://theyesmen.org/ 
 
The office installation “DOUBLETHINK Knowledge Bureau” reflects and demonstrates both the Austrian art collective UBERMORGEN.COM’s artistic actionism as well as the necessary tools and rules for any clandestine media hacking operation today. http://www.ubermorgen.com/ 
 
The Rotterdam based lab moddr_ has hacked digital ‘footprints’ with projects like ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ and continues to do so more recently with the ‘Bin Lover’ project; a new piece by moddr_ residence artist Philipp W. Teister. ‘Bin Lover’ gives trashed files a new lease of life. The piece cleverly uses the apparent security of desktops, and will be shown alongside a number of related projects. http://moddr.net/ 

The German artist Cornelia Sollfrank presents three works in which art hacking strategies are being used to deconstruct myths about genius, originality and authorship. http://www.artwarez.org/ 
 
And by using the work by the Dutch artist Harmen de Hoop, you yourself can get started as an activist by copying and spreading pamphlets containing the text ABOLI$H CAPITALI$M NOW! in the public domain. http://www.harmendehoop.com/ 
 
Error_in_Time(v.t_3)_ sister0, Ko66 and Netwurker_Mez give us insight into geek space from the perspective of a female hacker. This isn’t a work about identity – its about identity theft. Nancy Mauro-Flude: Artistic and Conceptual Director, in collaboration, like any good homebrewed craft, with Australian artist Mez Breeze explores environments that involve online socializations or encounters. http://unhub.com/netwurker
 
Swedish/Dutch Sara Platon founder of www.genderchangeracademy.com deals with computers the hard way, demystify its senses, follows the busroute to the CPU and touches it innerparts.

Nancy Mauro-Flude exiled co-founder of Moddr_&  a Genderchanger Academy convert, is based in Tasmania and continues her performance-based collaborations&  interrogations of the possibilities and constrictions of media technologies. http://sister0.tv/ 
 
  With:
 • An artist talk by Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, and moddr_ on
 Sunday the 11th of September at 15.00 hrs.
 • A panel discussion on the subject of hacking moderated by Jaromil
 and Cecile Landman with Rop Gonggrijp, Karin Spaink, Patrice Riemens
 and Heath Bunting taking place in October.
 • moddr_ presents several workshops within the framework of ‘The Art
 of Hacking’. 
 
 Information about these activities will be announced on www.nimk.nl and via other social media. 

Science Graduates – Stop Explaining and Start Dancing! 2011 Dance Your Ph.D Contest #geekgirl @alexburns

_Science Graduates – Stop Explaining and Start Dancing! _  _2011 Dance Your Ph.D Contest :: Closes 10 October 2011_ 

The dreaded question: “So, what’s your Ph.D. research about?” You take a deep breath and launch into the explanation. People’s eyes begin to glaze over. At times like these, don’t you wish you could just turn to the nearest computer and show people an online video of your Ph.D. thesis interpreted in dance form?  Now you can. And while you’re at it, you can win $1000, achieve immortal geek fame on the Internet, and be recognized by Science for your effort.  This year, Dance Your Ph.D. is sponsored by TEDxBrussels. The creator of the best Ph.D. dance gets a free trip and hotel stay in Brussels to be crowned the winner at the TEDx conference on 22 
November 2011. http://gonzolabs.org/dance/

Media Art History REWIRE Conference #mediaart #rewire #UK #geekgirl

   _MediaArtHistory REWIRE Conference _  _28 – 30 September 2011 :: Liverpool, UK_
  
The Rewire conference will increase the voltage and ignite key debates within the internationally distributed network of histories, and will illuminate the global phenomena of media art by discussing new paradigms for media art histories including Science and Technology Studies and Cybernetics, the connections between such histories and those of new technologies and computing, the relations between media art and craft, media archaeology, and institutional and curatorial responses to media art. Rewire will be supplemented with performances, book launches, workshops and special events, and runs concurrently with the AND Festival which will be hosted at numerous sites across Liverpool. http://www.mediaarthistory.org/

6th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games #games #players #imagination #geekgirl

_6th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games_ _29 – 31 January 2012 :: Madrid, Spain :: Abstracts due 1 October 2011_ 

 The call to  submit papers to the 6th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games is now open. The conference theme is The Nature of Player Experience. Over the past decade, the topic of player experience has attracted attention from a multitude of disciplines and practices focusing on computer games. Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games and will refer to specific examples from computer games rather than merely invoke them in general terms. Papers should examine the philosophical underpinnings of player experience from a variety of perspectives. Some papers may be accepted for alternative forms of presentation, such as poster sessions, workshops, or demonstrations.  http://2012.gamephilosophy.org

Maturity: PROJECT – Laith McGregor #masculinity #bogan #geekgirl

maturing_still6

Maturing is a satirical social commentary about masculinity and the absurdity of what popular culture perceives as the definition of masculinity. McGregor uses facial hair as a ‘signifier of male authenticity’ and proceeds to metamorphose into an ϋber male. Through this process he transforms into various male role models; sportsmen, movie stars and the family father figure. By contorting his face into various expressions, he satirises stereotypes that personify society’s ideals of masculinity, including that of the quintessential Australian bogan.

In filming a close-up of his face, McGregor evokes a sense of voyeurism. The intimacy is immediately uncomfortable as the viewer is privy to a personal moment of self exploration and reflection.  The artist examines his face; pouting and contorting, trying on different personnas, contemplating as if deciding what character he will become next. Using his face as a blank canvas, he starts to draw facial hair using a pen and begins his transformation into a myriad of male personalities. It is a mesmerising journey of self discovery and an in-your-face mockery of the male – a mockery that resulted in a rash that persisted for three days after the work was completed.

Exhibition and further info on at the Art Gallery of Ballarat

Runs until Sunday, 25 September 2011

Night Projection Window
Admission: Free
Street Address
40 Lydiard Street North
Ballarat VIC 3350