New research chair in Social Practice and Community Engagement

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Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Social Practice and Community Engagement

Emily Carr University of Art + Design invites applications and nominations for the position of Canada Research Chair (Tier 2).

Subject to budgetary and final approval by the Board of Governors, this is a tenure track appointment governed by the Faculty Association Collective Agreement, commencing in 2012.

Emily Carr University enjoys an outstanding history of excellence that includes talented faculty and diverse and successful alumni. Located in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, we attract over 1800 exceptional students to our art, design, and media undergraduate and graduate programs from over 60 countries worldwide. With a rich tradition of highly successful visual art practice and research, Emily Carr is also generating great excitement with its design and media arts programs and its cutting edge digital facilities and research partnerships and opportunities. The Emily Carr research culture is a strategically important element of the University. The University leads the country in the contributions its makes to research in studio-based art, design and media. The research function is integrated with the community through applied research projects with industry sponsors, through vibrant co-op and internship programs and through a variety of other programs with galleries, museums and NGOs.

As Emily Carr’s Research Chair and in an environment of inspiring students and colleagues, this is an exciting opportunity for an exceptional, emerging researcher. We are seeking someone who is actively engaged in practice-based investigations and research within the areas of public art, community engagement, and social practice. Candidates should have experience developing sustainable community relationships and can collaboratively advance research in the visual arts, media arts, and/or design practice.

The successful candidate has demonstrated the potential to achieve international recognition in the area of practice-based interdisciplinary creative research. Working in the Centre for Public Art and Community Engagement s/he will utilize the established studio and academic strengths within Emily Carr and participate in regional and international research networks, building upon their own well established networks and attracting excellent calibre students and future researchers. The successful candidate must propose a high calibre, innovative research program and be able to attract high calibre, mentees/trainees, students and future researchers.

Candidates for this position should hold a recent (within 10 years) PhD, have teaching experience, a creative research profile and publication record. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply. Hiring will be in accordance with Emily Carr University’s hiring policy and the collective agreement. The application must include the following: a statement outlining qualifications for this position, a portfolio of professional work, current research programs and a future research plan, a curriculum vitae, a sample of relevant published writing, and the names and contact information of three referees. The University will seek permission from the applicant before contacting the referees.

Please send applications (quoting Competition #F001-2011) by March 18 2011 to:

Human Resources Department
Emily Carr University of Art and Design
1399 Johnston St
Vancouver BC V6H 3R9

Phone (604) 844-3824 Fax (604) 844-3885 Email hr@ecuad.ca

As an employment equity employer, we encourage applications from women, First Nations, visible minorities and people with disabilities. All qualified persons are encouraged to apply.

Art(ists) On the Verge 3

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Northern Lights.mn announces a third round of Art(ists) on the Verge commissions (AOV3). AOV3 is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. AOV3 is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

Deadline: April 11, 2011

Informational sessions (optional) will be held at the following times and locations:

More information.

url for Northern Spark submissions

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Post your submissions to Northern Spark here

http://submissions.northern.lights.mn/northernspark

Deadline March 7

midnight CST

Imagining Northern Spark

Imagining Northern Spark, maquette and photography by Rasun Mehringer

Northern Lights and our partners are sponsoring more than 20 calls for participation in the Northern Spark nuit blanche. Some are based on specific locations, some on specific media, and others are free form. The deadline for submitting proposals is March 7, 2011. Any artist – or in the case of some of the calls, curator or organization or business – may submit a proposal, but all projects must take place within one of the 6 Festival Zones.

Parasite

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“parasite is an independant projection-system that can be attached to subways and other trains with suction pads. parasite projects inside films inside a tunnel. these tunnels bear something mystic – most people usually have never made a step inside any of those tunnels. confusing the routine of your train-travelling-journey, your habits and perception the projections parallel worlds – mak — TheGreenEyl

Imagining Northern Spark

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maquette and photography by Rasun Mehringer | northernspark.org

Maquette and photography by Rasun Mehringer | northernspark.org

It’s always hard to imagine something new before it happens. Rasun Mehringer’s fanciful photo of Northern Spark taking place on the banks of the Mississippi with the downtowns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul on either side playfully hints at the transformation planned for the Twin Cities between sunset on June 4 and sunrise on June 5. See the cardboard construction maquette from which she worked her magic.

An early version (and lighting test) of the maquette. | northernspark.org
Detail of maquette in process. | northernspark.org
Detail of maquette in process. | northernspark.org
Detail of maquette in process. | northernspark.org
Detail of maquette in process. | northernspark.org
Detail of maquette in process. | northernspark.org
Maquette and photography by Rasun Mehringer | northernspark.org

Imagined projects include Roman Verostko’s Three-Story Drawing Machine on the Gold Medal Silos where Debora Miller’s MURMUR will be projected; the giant white flag, which Piotr Szyhalski will raise at sunrise during the performance of “Empty Words” (Towards Surrender); Janaki Ranpura’s Egg & Sperm Ride; a sound installation from the top of the Foshay Tower; Barbara Claussen’s migrating phone booths; the glow of bioluminescent algae beneath a ceiling veil of living light; Andrea Stanislav’s Nightmare on the Mississippi; projections onto Landmark Center and the Saint Paul Public Library; and Jim Campbell’s Scattered Light. Just some of the more than 60 projects planned with our partners for Northern Spark.

Houseboat wanted

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"Lagoon," Photo Craig Simcox

"Lagoon," Photo Craig Simcox

The BodyCartography Project seeks houseboat for a performance commissioned by Northern Spark Festival. It is an intimate performance work for small audiences in a boat that travels on the Mississippi from Boom Island through the lock and dam and back again. Looking for a boat with character, electricity and a working toilet. Size of boat from 30-60 feet. The boat is needed for roughly a week, end of May until June 4th, with performances happening on one night only. We are looking for donation but can pay a rental fee if necessary.

Please see this web link for more details about the festival and performance:
http://northernspark.org/projects/houseboat.html?org=p

Please contact Otto Ramstad
otto@bodycartography.org
612 822 3397

Open call for Northern Spark projects

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Northern Spark Open Calls

Northern Lights and our partners are sponsoring more than 20 calls for participation in the Northern Spark nuit blanche twin cities. Some are based on specific locations, some on specific media, and others are free form. The deadline for submitting proposals is March 7, 2011. Any artist – or in the case of some of the calls, curator or organization or business – may submit a proposal, but all projects must take place within one of the 6 Festival Zones. More information here.

Northern Spark nuit blanche

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Northern Spark

Northern Spark homepage

For one night only, more than 60 regional and national artists together with the Twin Cities’ arts community will display new art installations at public places and unexpected locations throughout the city. Directed and produced by Northern Lights.mn, Northern Spark takes place this summer from sunset on June 4 (8:55 p.m.) until the morning of June 5, 2011 (sunrise 5:28 a.m.).

The Northern Spark event will include a wide diversity of art forms and projects including multi-story projections, audio environments with vistas, installations traveling down the Mississippi on barges, houseboats and paddleboats, headphone concerts, and the use of everything from bioluminescent algae and sewer pipes for organs to more traditional media such as banjos and puppets.

The event is a collaboration of more than 40 partners, each of which will sponsor one or more projects for the duration of the night. The goal is to showcase the urban splendor of the Twin Cities in a unique way, introducing a broad and diverse audience to innovative local and national talent in an inspiring journey through the night.

Participating artists

Participating artists involved in the nuit blanche include Christopher Baker, Phillip Blackburn, The BodyCartography Project, Bart Buch, Jim Campbell, Barbara Claussen, Wing Young Huie, John Kim, Suzanne Kosmalski, Debora Miller, MAW, Ali Momeni, Janaki Ranpura, Red76, Rigo 23, rolu, Jenny Schmid, Andrea Stanislav, Piotr Szyhalski, Roman Verostko, Diane Willow, Works Progress,  Marcus Young, and others.

Participating organizations

Northern Spark participating organizations include: 1419 Artists in Residence, All My Relations Art, American Composer’s Forum, The Art Institutes International Minnesota, Art Shanty Projects, Beijing Film Academy, Black Dog Cafe + Wine Bar, Burnet Gallery at Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis, College of Visual Arts, The Film Society Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Forecast Public Art, Franklin Art Works, The Friends of Saint Paul Public Library, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Intermedia Arts, Kulture Klub Collaborative, Landmark Center, Macalester College, MAW, McNally Smith College of Music, Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Museum of American Art, mn original, mnartists.org, Mpls Photo Center, Northern Lights.mn, Northrop Concerts and Lectures, Public Art Saint Paul, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Regis Center for Art, Saint Paul Public Library, Schubert Club, Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory,  Science Museum of Minnesota, Soap Factory, SooVac, W Minneapolis-The Foshay, Walker Art Center

Supported by

Northern Spark is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

Connect to Northern Spark

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Art in odd places – call

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Art in odd places - A festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life.

Art in odd places. A festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life.

Art in Odd Places aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas.

Art in Odd Places’ seventh annual festival will take place for the fourth year on 14th Street in Manhattan. AiOP is an art festival placing visual and performance art into the public realm, engaging pedestrians and passersby. AiOP’s mission is to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. We would like the curators to focus on the idea of Ritual and the concepts of ceremony, habituation. myth, obsession, liturgy. Selected artists should reveal in their work how these notions permeate our everyday life.

There is no curatorial honorarium. AiOP is an artist-initiated grassroots all-volunteer project and no one is paid, though this year we are applying for grants to not only cover festival costs but to have a modest honorarium for everybody in the team. Honorarium will depend on funding. This position requires enthusiasm, good humor and a collaborative spirit and provides, in return, the chance to place your stamp on the festival! Art in Odd Places will provide advice, postcard invite, program guide/map, website, marketing, PR, and general liability insurance for the festival. Please visit artinoddplaces.org for past festival projects, press and submission requirements.

Deadline is February 15.

Art in odd places – call

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Art in odd places - A festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life.

Art in odd places. A festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life.

Art in Odd Places aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas.

Art in Odd Places’ seventh annual festival will take place for the fourth year on 14th Street in Manhattan. AiOP is an art festival placing visual and performance art into the public realm, engaging pedestrians and passersby. AiOP’s mission is to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. We would like the curators to focus on the idea of Ritual and the concepts of ceremony, habituation. myth, obsession, liturgy. Selected artists should reveal in their work how these notions permeate our everyday life.

There is no curatorial honorarium. AiOP is an artist-initiated grassroots all-volunteer project and no one is paid, though this year we are applying for grants to not only cover festival costs but to have a modest honorarium for everybody in the team. Honorarium will depend on funding. This position requires enthusiasm, good humor and a collaborative spirit and provides, in return, the chance to place your stamp on the festival! Art in Odd Places will provide advice, postcard invite, program guide/map, website, marketing, PR, and general liability insurance for the festival. Please visit artinoddplaces.org for past festival projects, press and submission requirements.

Deadline is February 15.

The Responsive City – Fact or Fiction?

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Archigram, Instant City. In the exhibition Edge Condition, 2008 01SJ Biennial

Archigram, Instant City. In the exhibition Edge Condition, 2008 01SJ Biennial

CAA 2011 Conference

Thursday, February 10, 2011, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

On site at the Hilton Conference Center, 3rd Floor, Trianon Ballroom
Free and open to the public
http://conference.collegeart.org/2011/sessions/sessions.php?period=2011-02-10
http://www.newmediacaucus.org/wp/caa-2011-conference-nmc-events-and-activities/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=193076990718038

Chair

Steve Dietz, Northern Lights.mn

This panel will examine the experience of artists and presenters with large-scale, long-term interactive art in the public sphere and the pragmatic, conceptual and philosophical issues such projects engender.

There is a significant history of festival and exhibition-based public programming of interactive works but long-term and permanent installations are less common. The possibilities for large-scale, interactive art in the public sphere are increasing exponentially, however, and this panel will consist of at least two artists and a presenter, who will discuss their projects in relation to the pragmatics of production and the histories of public and new media art practices, as well as the intersection with civic and economic imperatives embodied in the notion of the creative city. A respondent will critique these projects in relation to issues of agency, free speech and spectacle.

Panelists

Barbara Goldstein
Public Art Program Director
City of San Jose

Barbara Goldstein will trace the evolution of interactive cities from early utopian concepts, comic books and Archigram’s “Plug In City” through the manifestation of interactivity in contemporary urban form and the unique role that technology-based art has played in the activation of space and place.

Barbara Goldstein is the Public Art Director for the City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs and the editor of Public Art by the Book, a primer recently published by Americans for the Arts and the University of Washington Press.  Prior to her work in San José, Goldstein was Public Art Director for the City of Seattle.  Goldstein has worked as a cultural planner, architectural and art critic, editor and publisher.  From 1989 to 1993, she was Director of Design Review and Cultural Planning for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.  From 1980-85 she edited and published Arts + Architecture magazine.  She has written for art and architectural magazines both nationally and internationally, and has lectured on public art throughout the United States, and in Canada, Japan, China, Taipei, Korea and Abu Dhabi.  She is currently Chair of the Public Art Network for Americans for the Arts.

Cameron McNall
Electroland

Cameron McNall will present 18 topics in 18 minutes, including: Tracking Basketballs; Everybody likes Chic; Hug a Sign; Mr. Zoggs Sex Wax; Restricted vs. Sterile; Fox Tossing; College Faces; Get Smart; Observers, Participants and Performers; RELAX; Urban Nomads; Don’t Try This in Boston; Avatars; Real-Time; Drive-By Disaster; Day and Night; DON’T FREAK OUT

Cameron McNall is an Architect and Principal of the group Electroland. Every Electroland project is site-specific and may employ a broad range of media, including light, sound, images, motion, architecture, interactivity, and information design. Electroland works at the forefront of new technologies to create interactive experiences where visitors can interact with buildings, spaces and each other in new and exciting ways. A pop sensibility, expressed through whimsy and play, helps Electroland to achieve projects that are accessible and that invite visitor participation.

Ben Rubin
Ear Studio / New York University

Beacons, Semaphores, and Panoptical Spires:  illuminating the urban skyline

Ben Rubin presents his public illumination projects and discusses the ways changing light technology has altered the fabric of urban life for more than two centuries.  With the explosion of LED and other dynamic (and potentially interactive) lighting technologies on city skylines, what is the future of night in the city?

Ben Rubin (b. 1964, Boston, Massachusetts) is a media artist based in New York City. Rubin’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Science Museum, London, and has been shown at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. Rubin has created large-scale public artworks for the New York Times, the city of San José, and the Minneapolis Public Library.  He is currently developing a site-specific sculpture called Shakespeare Machine for the Public Theater in New York, and just completed Beacon (2010), a luminous rooftop sculpture commissioned for National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Respondent

Mark Shepard
University at Buffalo

Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose post-disciplinary practice addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network culture. His current research investigates the implications of mobile and pervasive media, communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism. Recent works include the Sentient City Survival Kit, a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city; and the Tactical Sound Garden [TSG], an open source software platform for cultivating virtual sound gardens in urban public space, both of which have been presented at museums, festivals and arts events internationally. In 2006 he organized Architecture and Situated Technologies (with Omar Khan and Trebor Scholz), a symposium bringing together researchers and practitioners from art, architecture, technology and sociology to explore the emerging role of “situated” technologies in the design and inhabitation of the contemporary city. In 2009, he curated Toward the Sentient City, an exhibition of commissioned projects that critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing and the city. He is the editor of Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture and the future of urban space, published by the Architectural League of New York and MIT Press.

Links

Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture and the future of urban space.

Sentient City exhibition
An exhibition critically exploring the evolving relations between ubiquitous computing, architecture and urban space. Organized by the Architectural League of New York in 2009.

Situated Technologies Pamphlets Series
A series of pamphlet-length publications that examines the implications of contemporary mobile, embedded and responsive systems for architecture and urbanism.

First skyscraper – design fiction?

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The world's first skyscraper was proposed by British architect Charles Burton in 1851

The world's first skyscraper was proposed by British architect Charles Burton in 1851. via Gizmag

via Gizmag

In “Design Fictions: From Props to Prototypes” (Build Your Own World: 2010 01SJ Biennial), Julian Bleecker writes:

“Design fiction is a way to speculate seriously. It’s not quite brainstorming, nor is it ideating. It is design that tells stories. It creates material artifacts that force conversations and suspend one’s disbelief in what is possible. It’s a way of imagining a different kind of world by outlining the contours, rendering the artifacts as story props, then using them to imagine. The prototyping activates the idea, giving it a few material features and some density, and forcing the refinement that comes from making something.”

I don’t know how fanciful Burton’s proposal was in 1851, but it was one heck of a story.

Tools for (accessing) action

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Actions: What You Can Do With the City Canadian Centre for Architecture Actions: What You Can Do With the City presents 99 actions that instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world.

Actions: What You Can Do With the City Canadian Centre for Architecture Actions: What You Can Do With the City presents 99 actions that instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world.

I didn’t see the exhibition but part of what caught my attention is the symmetry between the web interface and the proposed/enacted actions in the city, which is nevertheless not merely literal. Clicking on the ball identifies 5 actions from #79 Paint Grows Soccer Field to #48 Ping Pong Connects Neighbors.

Football Field 1. Maider López. Sharjah Art Museum, United Arab Emirates, 2007. © Maider López

Football Field 1. Maider López. Sharjah Art Museum, United Arab Emirates, 2007. © Maider López

You can combine tools as well, so that the coveralls link to 8 actions from #61. Bicycle Plants Wartime Gardens
(Futurefarmers’ Victory Garden project) to #40 Wheels Give Superpowers. But if you add a bench to your toolset, you get Foamy Velour Suits Challenge Authority.

The integration of interface and concept may or may not change the world, but it’s refreshing to see a site that still tries to be an experience for the experience, and the projects are great to browse through. I’m thinking of taking up #41 Guns Seed Vacant Lots this spring.

Plant the Piece is a symbolic seed-bomb production project.

Plant the Piece is a symbolic seed-bomb production project.

Participate in Storefront’s Co…

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Participate in Storefront’s Competition to design and build Temporary Outdoor Structures for the Festival of Ideas… http://fb.me/E268q9zm

Beauty. Happy New Year.

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Untitled (corrupted data, 67,4 Mb, mpeg, file date : 23.03.1997) (2009) - Sean Snyder

Sean Snyder, Untitled (corrupted data, 67,4 Mb, mpeg, file date : 23.03.1997) (2009)

via Rhizome