Scalable Relations (click here to visit) is a series of networked exhibitions that present media artworks by faculty of the UC Digital Arts Research Network (DARnet) across UC campuses from January 9 - March 14, 2009. The exhibition takes place at the BEALL Center for Art + Technology at UC Irvine as well as other venues at UCDARnet institutions. Scalable Relations brings together works that explore digital media’s capability of representing a growing amount of data in constantly evolving relations. Addressing a range of issues, the projects in Scalable Relations illustrate the complexities and shifting contexts of today’s information society.

One of the distinctive features of the digital medium is its capacity to establish relations between large quantities of data through filtering and processing according to different criteria. These constantly evolving, scalable relations affect both the production of meaning and a traditional understanding of aesthetics, which become subject to computational logic—the instructions given by algorithms—and a constant reconfiguration of contexts. The format of the exhibition itself, in its distribution across multiple venues, mirrors the relational theme of the exhibition and the inherent connectivity of the digital medium.

The projects presented within Scalable Relations address different themes, distributed across the exhibition spaces. The six works featured at the Beall Center explore patterns, complexity, and generative algorithmic process with regard to nature, organic processes, and urban development, as well as representations of online communication and sharing. UCSD’s gallery@CalIT2 exhibits three pieces that use the framework of computer gaming for exploring social and belief systems and expand the usually confined simulated world of a game to the ‘real world.’ The three projects in the exhibition either use paradigms of gaming and play for understanding phenomena and concepts that shape the physical world, or incorporate real world concepts that one would seldom encounter within a commercial game. The grouping of works at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA examines issues surrounding science, ethics, public health and social conditions. Taking various forms, ranging from sound installation to new media documentary, the projects in this category deal with the social and political implications of science or the impact of poverty, alienation, and addiction. The satellite exhibition at UCSB addresses complex behaviors and transmodalities, featuring three pieces that, respectively, investigate sensing and perception, the geometries of the invisible connections in our lives and our environment, and the multi-scale, multi-modal experience of revealing internal structures within genomics data.

Together, the works in the networked exhibition provide a sketch of the multiple forms and themes existing within the field of new media art and illustrate the relational qualities of the digital medium.

The UCSC Digital Arts and New Media Program is now accepting applications for its Fall 2009 MFA program. All those interested in furthering their work in these areas are encouraged to apply by February 15, 2009.

This two-year MFA program brings together faculty and students from across the academic spectrum to pursue interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly research and practice. The program includes core courses, collaborative research project groups and an individual thesis project culminating in publication of artistic and theoretical research and the opportunity to exhibit in the program’s annual MFA Exhibition.

Project groups are small clusters of students collaborating with professors and engaging in artistic, technical and theoretical research in one of three focused areas: Participatory Culture, Performative Technologies, Mechatronics, and Playable Media.

For more information on the program and application process, visit http://digitalarts.ucsc.edu or contact Felicia Rice, Program Manager, fsrice@ucsc.edu.

Invitation to November Open House
Please join us for an Open House on Thursday, November 6, 2008 (2-5:30). Attendees will have a chance to learn about the program and get tips on the application process, view the work of current students and alumni, and see a showcase of our project groups’ work in progress. To RSVP or get more information, email danm@ucsc.edu or call 831-459-1554.

New Digital Arts Facility
Check out DANM’s new home at http://danm.ucsc.edu/web/daf. DANM will occupy this new building in Fall 2009. New, beautiful space for students and faculty!

Announcing: Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow
by Victoria Vesna, editor

Electronic Mediations, volume 20. University of Minnesota Press, 2007

About:
Database Aesthetics examines the database as cultural and aesthetic form, explaining how artists have participated in network culture by creating data art. The essays in this collection look at how an aesthetics emerges when artists use the vast amounts of information as their medium. Here, the ways information is ordered and organized become artistic choices, and artists have an essential role in influencing an critiquing the digitization of daily life.

Seven members of UC DARnet from six campuses are represented in this volume!
Victoria Vesna (UCLA)
Sharon Daniel (UCSC), Steve Dietz, Lynn Hershman-Leeson (UCD), George Legrady (UCSB), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Robert F. Nideffer (UCI), Marko Peljhan (UCSB), Warren Sack (UCSC).

Michael Heim writes:
“This book ranges over a rich data bank of thoughts about and descriptions of digital media: from the software engines of video games to the conflicting interest of the cinematic narratives, from the many skins of the stock market to the artificially intelligent spy, from the design of chip implants for the human body, to the recombinant poetics of virtual worlds. Database Aesthetics claims the attention of anyone attuned to the design of current and incoming reality.”

Contributors:
Sharon Daniel, Steve Dietz, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Eduardo Kac, Norman M. Klein, John Klima, George Legrady, Lev Manovich, Robert F. Nideffer, Nancy Patterson, Christiane Paul, Marko Peljhan, Warren Sack, Bill Seaman, Grahame Weinbren.

UC Santa Barbara Professors of Art and Media Arts and Technology
Exhibit at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Marcos Novak and George Legrady, faculty from the Media Arts &
Technology and Department of Art programs at UC Santa Barbara, have
been selected separately to participate in a prestigious exhibition
of new media arts, to be featured throughout the summer in the
Rotunda Gallery at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC.
Fourteen internationally active artists representing the state of new
media arts will be showcased in this exhibition between June and
August, 2007. http://www.hfa.ucsb.edu/artsnews/

More info: http://www.hfa.ucsb.edu/artsnews/featurestory3.html

George Legrady
http://www.georgelegrady.com/

Marcos Novak
http://www.centrifuge.org/

UCLA ART|SCI CENTER PRESENTS:
TESLA: VISIONS + INSPIRATIONS

a symposium at The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)

570 Westwood Plaza, Building 114

JUNE 8TH, 2007, 5 - 8pm

NikolaTesla’s visions and inventions were at the core of the generation, transmission and use of electricity that has transformed our world. His genius and his importance to humankind is now only beginning to be fully appreciated, particularly as we become wireless and more energy conscious. Join us to hear about Tesla through the work of artists, scientists and engineers who have been inspired by his legacy.

Participants:
Greg Leyh, Nevada Lightening Lab - featuring a phased pair of Tesla coils, 122 feel tall. http://www.lod.org/LightningLab

Susan Joyce, director Fringe gallery, Los Angeles

Milos Ercegovac, Professor, Computer Science

Paulette Phillips, artist, Homewrecker electromagnetic sculpture

Gisèle Trudeland Stéphane Claude, AElab Sparks - experimental documentary on the life of Nikola Tesla.

Nina Czegledy, The Resonance project co-curated with Louise Provencher.

Organized by Victoria Vesna, Art | Science center director