Futurartes 2009

TALK Pedro Angelo

admin — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:37:32 +0000

The LCD - Laboratório de Criação Digital is an open space founded by Audiência Zero - Associação Cultural in Porto, Portugal where creative people meet weekly to work on their projects and share experiences and knowledge about art, technology and creativity. It was founded as a way to complement the creative tool workshops promoted by the association’s CCT project by providing people with work space, network structure and tools to bring their ideas to reality.
Working in a semi-autonomous self-managed structure, the lab participants have worked on projects like sensor-based clothing for performance work, bicycle power generators, web visualizations and computer vision installations, electronic percussion instruments and kinetic sculptures. The lab community also has a strong presence online and organizes regular activities outside the lab space, like presentations and theoretical discussion panels, and is now starting to branch out into other cities and helping to create new communities, like AltLab in Lisbon.

This talk will tell the story of the LCD project, describe how it is organized, show some examples of current projects and discuss some ideas for the future.

Pedro Angelo.
An independent research consultant for interactive software projects. He has been around coding and games since he got his first computer at age eight. Since then, he has been a DJ, drummer apprentice, record shop clerk, sound designer and somehow got himself a BSc. in Computer Science. After a brief experience as a researcher digging through 80’s Fortran code for astronomic simulations, his interest in the expressive potential of videogames and his love of the demoscene made him enroll in a MSc in Computer Graphics where he met a group of talented individuals with whom he founded his own startup, doubleMV - I&D.

As a Free Software and Free Culture activist, he has been involved in the foundation and organization activities of the PortoLinux user group, the Portuguese Blender community, the Audiência Zero cultural association, and the LCD lab.

His current research interests lie on building disruptive social and technological structures for participatory culture, coding as a form of fundamental literacy, the appropriation of videogame technology and concepts for expressive purposes, and do-it-yourself hardware/software musical tools.

TALK Catarina Mota

admin — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:52:42 +0000

Collaborative creativity: Altlab and OpenMaterials.

AltLab is a collective dedicated to independent research and experimentation in alternative media. Community-based and community-building by nature, it seeks to promote active participation, knowledge sharing, and collaboration among individuals such as artists, programmers, engineers, hobbyists, scientists, and all those who wish to freely explore creative and emancipatory uses of technology. Just like many other hackerspaces which have emerged all over the world in recent years, AltLab has also been founded on the notions of software/hardware libre and the belief in collective independent platforms for open and active knowledge-sharing and experimentation.

http://altlablx.org/

OpenMaterials is a collaborative research project dedicated to open investigation and experimentation with DIY production methods and uses of materials.
In the spirit of the open source software and hardware movements, we hope to promote materials to be researched and developed in a public, collaborative manner. We see materials as an open resource, and wish to establish an open process for exploring and sharing knowledge, techniques and applications related to materials science.
Inspired by Eric Raymond’s comment in ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’, regarding the bazaar style which he described as “a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches”, we hope to encourage discourse and experimentation with the broadest range of materials and processes possible.

http://openmaterials.org/

Catarina Mota.
Currently a PhD candidate at CoLab’s Digital Media doctoral program with a research focus on artistic physical interfaces and DIY culture.
Catarina holds a BA in Communication Sciences, with a major in Film, from the New University of Lisbon, and a master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where she was also a research fellow (fellowship sponsored by ITP and Interval Research Corporation). At ITP she specialized in physical computing and interactive installations. Her installations include a storytelling eye-tracking system, an immersive narrative environment, and a few sets of interactive portraits. Additionally,
Catarina has studied film at the New York Film Academy, photography at New York’s School of Visual Arts, and received training in video, documentary, and digital animation.
As a a multimedia consultant she has 10 years of experience in interaction and interface design, information architecture, and rich media content for both the web and physical environments. She has served as creative director, lead information architect and designer on numerous projects for museums, companies, schools, and governmental institutions based in Portugal, New York and Los Angeles.

http://catarinamota.com/

TALK Filipe Valpereiro

admin — Sun, 17 May 2009 10:44:25 +0000

Inmotion.pt
A small company focused on the research, development and production of innovative solutions for human interaction. We design interactive systems based on open source or commercial hardware. Through our expertise with real-time systems, sensors and hardware we build interactive performances, audio exploration and immersion environments and physical or near interactions. If you need any help with an Arduino, Phidgets or Sparkfun hardware contact us. We are the official resellers for Portugal.

Filipe Valpereiro
Filipe was born in France in 1977. He obtained a Degree in Computer Science at the Oporto University (2005) and in the same year started his career as a programmer in the industry working at EFACEC, IPP-Hurray and Qimonda. However, he never felt comfortable with his dull (but well paid) job. He missed the joy of working with his friends, and all the lovely people he met in the arts, music, performance and party scene. Many nights working with the Arduino and Max/MSP turned him onto the Physical Computing world. With the help of a friend he created a small company aimed to promote, sell and have fun with interactive hardware.

As a technical consultant, he designs and creates interactive systems with wireless technologies, bridging physical computing with audio and video.
Sometimes you can find him working with the soldering iron or designing interactive systems for emerging artists.
He was also a researcher on Real-Time Operating Systems and has a large experience with hard and soft real-time systems. In 2008 Filipe joined the Universidade Fernando Pessoa to teach Operating Systems and started to write is MsC thesis on Parallel Computing. Current interests are: interactive audio concepts, physical computing and real-time systems. Since 2007 he gives regular workshops in Physical Computing, teaching artists how to code for the Arduino.

http://inmotion.pt/

PERFORMANCE Diat0m

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:47:49 +0000

Diatoms are photosynthesizing algae, most are unicellular, although they can exist as colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons.
They are considered the basis for much of the life in the oceans. Their unique property are rigid shells that can be used to create order in a natural way at the extraordinarily microscope level of nanotechnology.
The observation in a personal artistic way of science elements like diatoms nano-structures, behaviors and their present use in technology, are the basis theory for electronic sound and graphic open structure composition.
As a unique cell in stage, the artist presents this performance surround by different midi surfaces programed to send data to the virtual diatom structures inside the computer. Every data is reorganize inside the computer in different time pulses modules that some times can be really fast. The amount of data that starts in the performer gesture and cross all the system until a final result of sound and image , is so much multiplied that you can find nano-structures in a group of numbers that pass thru in 0.0001 sec.

Rui Monteiro.
Born in Coimbra 1976. Rui graduated in Graphic Design at Oporto University of Fine Arts in 1999 with a video art composition for 7 screens and live musicians interpretation. Followed by his first public performance with live experimental video for the muscian Jon Rose at Co-Lab improvise music festival.
The same year he sets up a group for artistic collaborations in Oporto, which successfully brought together several interested artists and projects.
In 2000 he began to work with computer and midi technology, using Director, Big Eye and Videodelic to create solutions for interactive audio-visual installations. 2001 he was part of the team that started the Digital Art Lab in Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal.
2002 his emerging Vj activity took him to Paris to perform with French and Russian musicians.
In 2003 Rui was invited by the “Fundação Ciência e Desenvolvimento” to collaborate on a audio-visual concert for the very young, (0 to 3 years old), using Raymond Scott Compositions.
2005 Rui creates his first solo project “d-.-b“. His work is awarded by the Paris Festival VisionR in 2007.
From 2008 he has been developing the diat0m performance: where he focuses on the relation between nature and science to create future technology.

http://www.diat0m.com

PERFORMANCE Bikini Kill

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:39:15 +0000

Bikini Kill is the name of this set and is an homage to the punk girls band with the same name.
As a VJ set, Bikini Kill is a visual mix of collected objects, represented in film and played live during the performance. These objects are part of the performer’s personal history, collected during travels, that represent a thought, an encounter or celebrate a moment. These objects are sometimes also allusions to a dream. During the performance objects are transformed in to a unique story, made up to the sound track of the music. This set is a personal and practical reflection regarding technology, its uses, misuses and creative uses, reason for the turntable as the central device on the creation of images.

Biography
Magenta Interior
Magenta Interior tells stories sometimes as visual performances and some other times as texts. She tells stories about all colors of the chromatic palette, all genders between feminine and masculine and all emotions of her heart. Magenta is inspired by popular and secular ways of passing knowledge, through story telling. These stories are neither prose nor poetry, between reality of every day life and fiction. Live performances are result of improvisation, resulting in surprising visuals for the audience but also sometimes for the performer.
Portfolio

PERFORMANCE Burning The Sound

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:37:07 +0000

Burning the Sound (2007: Rudolfo Quintas) is a visually amplified sound art performance about the nature of rituals and the relation they establish with the state of power and control. It is used the fire from a regular fire lighter and matches to subvert patterns of rhythm, “exorcising” the sound as a spiritual strategy.
The performer gesture in relation to its instrument, not only shows the performer emotional state, but it brings the instrument to live and makes it to exist. Is from the flame that a sound is shaped. This intensifies the synesthesic quality of the sound being perceived as burned by the flame. Since later 2007, Quintas, has been creating and developing the performance, which aims to push the ritualistic primitivism, gesture and body to technological mediated computer sound performances.

(1) I talk about “visually amplification” because the generated image is not the main medium or the motivation for the performance but it works as dialog component and a visually amplification of the flame impulse. It is a visual metaphor that amplifies the flame generated by the minimal act from the fire lighter and matches. A flame burns because there is oxygen to be burned on the air. If our perception could visualize this event, for sure our comprehension about this event would change radically. Thus, the visual dimension on the performance aims to express this phenomena expanding it trough a plastic and artistic vision. This establishes a relation with the sound intensifying the performed gesture expressiveness.

(2) It was aimed to research and explore a performative act, starting for a primitive point. This means that the idea of “performance” was attended as a couple of symbolic actions without pre-established ideas on composition from dance, music, image or movement. This way how to develop a ritual, whose actions manifested a spiritual transcendence act under the cyclic exploration of sound, able to dramaturgically guide the production of meaning in a sound composition.

Rudolfo Quintas and Collaborators 2000-2008
Rudolfo Quintas SwapArticle 2008

WORKSHOP Visualizing LKL with Processing

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 01:45:36 +0000

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

Please send an email with your contact details to info at futurartes dot com, to show your interest in participating.
The number of participants is limited.

This workshop will teach the basics of drawing and animation in Processing and will focus on the creation of realtime visual interpretations of the LKL kinetic sculpture’s form.

WORKSHOP Making audio for LKL with Pure Data

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 01:32:41 +0000

Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time visual dataflow programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. It is the third major branch of the family of patcher programming languages known as Max (Max/FTS, ISPW Max, Max/MSP, jMax, etc.) originally developed by Miller Puckette and company at IRCAM. The core of Pd is written and maintained by Miller Puckette and includes the work of many developers, making the whole package very much a community effort.
This workshop will teach the basics of control processing and sound synthesis in Pure Data and will focus on building realtime sonic interpretations of the LKL kinetic sculpture’s form.

Please send an email with your contact details to info at futurartes dot com, to show your interest in participating.
The number of participants is limited.