Futurefarmers, Auctions speak Louder than words on Vimeo.

On Saturday (September 4), Futurefarmers will present (perform) Auctions Speak Louder Than Words, the culminating event of their month-long residency A People Without a Voice Cannot Be Heard. Bring your stories – and 3 objects.

Here is how it works:

Objects on Blankets

11 am–1 pm
Futurefarmers invite us to consider what our possessions say about us in this unusual auction. Bring a blanket and three objects from home and spread out on the Field prepared to share a story with others. Throughout the morning, Futurefarmers will collect these stories as special “vocal” guests roam the field.

Auction and Drawing

1–2 pm
An auction commences where you may be invited to have professional auctioneers Glen and Dale Fladeboe auction one of your objects by retelling your story in their own inimitable voice. Futurefarmers will be making interpretive drawings of the selected auctioned objects and the owner of the object can choose which to keep—drawing or object—and which one is awarded to the winning bidder.

LevelFive is a live role-playing event organized by the artist Brody Condon, which is focused on critically exploring self-actualization seminars from the 1970s. The 3 day physically and psychologically participatory performance will loosely follow the structure of early Large Group Awareness Training sessions like Erhard Seminars Training, but it is not a re-enactment.

[clip from “Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis, LevelFive inspiration.]

This open-ended live role-playing environment with up to 75 players will provide a space in which players are free to explore self-actualization issues with varying degrees of personal intensity, but via an alibi or fabricated character. Players from the LARP, experimental theater, academic, and performance art communities are encouraged to participate.

When/Where

LevelFive will be organized twice: At the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles on September 3-5, 2010 (50 spots); and at the San Jose Convention Center on September 16-18, 2010, during the 01SJ Biennial (75 spots).

Who

This performance is created and organized by the artist Brody Condon. The live game mechanics and management are being developed by the Scandinavian based progressive live game designer Bjarke Pedersen, along with character and workshop development by Tobius Wrigstad and Monica Traxl. The event has been commissioned by ZER01 for the 01SJ Biennial and Machine Project in conjunction with the Hammer Museum residency program in Los Angeles, along with special thanks to Southern Exposure in San Francisco.

More Information and Sign Up

WWW.LVL5.ORG

via Artworld Salon

Michael Silverberg, "Creating Digital Worlds of the Future, Fast Company, September 2010

“Under the theme “Build Your Own World,” more than 100 artists are creating fanciful universes in the hopes of prompting civic engagement at this arts-and-tech biennial in San Jose. We peeked at six intriguing projects.”

via Fast Company

Luzinterruptus - "little birds inhabiting scaffolding'

Some images of Angel’s design from the 01SJ publication (designed by Matthew Rezac).

He writes in the catalog.

Some Principles

Working Space

The architectural concept for Out of the Garage, Into the World should be as close as possible to that of the exhibition itself, to what the curators are trying to achieve, and to what the artists themselves are doing. We should achieve the transformation of the exhibition into a working space, in which the processes are transparent to the public. Its architecture should not rely on dividing and blocking parts of the space, but rather should help bring work and public together.

Public Space

The public should experience an atmosphere that involves them, that places them in the space of work and empowerment. This atmosphere should produce the fascination and anticipation of entering a good restaurant through the kitchen.

Exhibition Space

Agglomeration, juxtaposition, sharing, decking, groupings, and, in general, the renegotiation of the limits of the artwork should give way to a rethinking of what it is to organize an exhibition and offer a new paradigm of how these elements and actions can be understood. From schemes that suggest the master plans of suburbia, we would like to propose exhibitions that evaluate more dense, collaborative, and diverse urban and architectural strategies.

Of course, the urban nests are also reminiscent of Misako Inaoka’s Red Bird, which is included in the Small Wonders wundkerkammer curated by ZER01 for the amazing public art program at the San Jose airport. You gotta fly into there sometime.

Small Wonders installation view, San Jose airport. Photo Jaime Austin

Small Wonders installation view, San Jose airport. Photo Jaime Austin

Small Wonders flickr set by Jaime Austin.

Paul Martin Lester, Urban Screens: the beginning of a universal visual culture
Scott MQuirce, The politics of public space in the media city
Lev Manovich, The poetics of urban media surfaces
Anthony Auerbach, Interpreting urban screens
Rekha Murthy, Story space: A theoretical grounding for the new urban annotation
Wael Salah Fahmi, The urban incubator: (De)constructive (re)presentation of heterotopian spatiality and virtual image(ries)
Tore Slaatta, Urban screens: Towards the convergence of architecture and audiovisual media
Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Towards an integrated architectural media space
Julia Nevárez, Art and social displays in the branding of the city: Token screens or opportunities for difference?
Raina Kumra, Hijacking the urban screen: Trends in outdoor advertising and predictions for the use of video art and urban screens
Giselle Beiguelman, For an aesthetics of transmission
Vera Bühlmann, Intelligent skin: Real virtual
Kate Taylor, Programming video art for urban screens in public space

First Monday

This should be interestiing reading for  a panel I am chairing at the CAA conference in February.

The Responsive City – Fact or Fiction?

Steve Dietz, Artistic Director 01SJ Biennial and Northern Lights.mn
Cameron, McNall, Electroland
Ben Rubin, Ear Studio
Barbara Goldstein, City of San Jose Public Art Program
Mark Shepard, SUNY Buffalo

“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.”

Olive Bieringa Gulf Oil meditation SEEDS|Earthdance. photo: Brune Castos

The BodyCartography Project will present a week-long collaborative classroom on “ecosomatics” in the Flat Pak House as part of Walker Art Center’s Open Field programming.

“This collaborative classroom will function to implicate our very cells/selves in how we interact with and understand the environment. It will create the conditions for a new model of transdisciplinary learning across systems and as a result imagine alternate futures in relationship to the issue of sustainability through behavioral re-patterning.

“We will begin each day with a simple movement practice to open up our awareness to ourselves, the group and our environment. A local scientist will facilitate daily sessions with different environmental foci.  Together we will pursue somatic research as a first person embodied science, utilizing ones own body as a tool for understanding emergent properties of whole systems, developing empathy and rewilding ourselves and those around us.

“The week will be facilitated by Olive Bieringa with scientists John Schade (Ecosystem Ecologist  St. Olaf College, Biology and Environmental Studies), Bonnie Ploger (Behavioral Ecologist, Department of Biology & Artist in Residence, Center for Global Environmental Education, Hamline University Environmental Education, Hamline University), Ben Jordan  (Biologist, Harvard University) and Bryce Beverlin II (Biophysicist, University of Minnesota Physics Department).”–BodyCartography Project.

ecosomatics schedule
What is ecosomatics?