She experienced at this time society as very conservative, traditional and limited, while feminism, conceptual art and other new art directions were completely novel. New ways of thinking, new disputes and consequently a strong conviction that one had to work with new media. And at the same time new media also meant that female artists could express themselves in a new way especially due to the lack of establishes conventions.

In celebration of the first two years of ArtistTalk project, MoTA has started a publication series MoTA Editions. We are proud to announce the first edition: Outerviews.

Outerviews. Conversations with artists is comprised of 17 interviews with artists, selected from the archive of the ArtistTalk project. Outerviews presents authors active in a variety of artistic fields, ranging from film, video, painting, sound, performance and many trans-medium approaches. The conversations included illuminate the processes behind the making of art works, which in have in our view proposed the most interesting challenges to the common conceptions of art.

From the foreword: »OUTERVIEWS presents a mosaic of different personas, hailing from different backgrounds and active in a large variety of artistic fields, some very hard to pin down. But we claim that what unifies these artists in their very different approaches, is a drive to contribute to social reality in a highly critical, yet constructive way. Our approach in these conversations was therefore in looking for world views – the underlying observations and individual positioning in the world, which is a prerequisite for any socially engaged artistic practice.«

Included artists: Zbig Rybczyński / Eyal Sivan / Harun Farocki / Piotr Krajewski / Jorge Rodriguez Gerada / Arjan Pregl / Societe Realiste / Zimoun / Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen / Emptyset / Plaid / Burnt Friedman / Julian Oliver / Roy Ascott / Joe Davis / Ion Sorvin – N55 / Biennale de Paris

Artists included: The pioneering works of experimental filmmakers to documentary/film essayists (Zbig Rybczynski, Eval Sivan, Harun Farocki); Jorge Rodriguez Gerada, visual artist known for numerous guerrilla public art and large scale public portraits using sand, charcoal, gravel, etc; Société Réaliste, whose works deal with political design, experimental economy, territorial ergonomy and social engineering consulting; Arjan Pregl, whose paintings combines three key elements: constructive criticism of art theory, humour, and political engagement; Zimoun, whose use of plain industrial materials, such as cardboard boxes, mechanical motors, create monumental sound architectures; Lilibeth Cuenca, who navigates the interspaces between different kinds of realities and extremes, between the perfect staging of music videos and raw reality of documentaries, between personal confessionals and political commitment; Emptyset, whose electronic music explores the legacy of analogue media, integrating aspects of rhythm, signal processing and spatial recording within the framework of minimalist composition; Plaid, who reinvented electronic dance music (Warp) and film scores (Tekkonkinkreet, etc); Julian Oliver, a critical engineer, programmer whose works expose and challenge mechanisms behind the products of technology we use in daily life; n55, the art collective whose projects blend art with every day life often creating situations and modular architecture systems that try to “rebuild the city from within;” Alexandre Gurita, who hacked one of the first art biennals in the world, Biennale De Paris, to reinvent its function and role in the now biennal flooded world; the artist, philosopher, and pioneering theorist Roy Ascott, who works with cybernetics and telematics; Joe Davis, the man who implemented a fragment of Heraclitus into the gene of the white eyes of fruit flies, who made bacteria listen to jazz, who grew the information about intrasitivity of human being back to the biological world…

The book is out and in circulation now.

The book was launched at the opening of 15th WRO Media Biennale.

Order your copy at: mota.museum@gmail.com

Price: 12.99 EUR!

On April 16th, Look, up in the sky! a mini-symposium with Honor Harger (art director Lighthouse, Brighton) and James Bridle (artist, publisher and technologist)) on art and drones in the age of ubiquitous technology will be held at BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels. The symposium’s debate will be opened by Bram Crevits, curator of the exhibition ‘Drones/Birds : Princes of Ubiquity’, and moderated by Michel van Dartel (V2_Institute for unstable Media).

The first series of The Digital Now, entitled ‘Drones / Birds: Princes of Ubiquity’, is inspired by the way birds are reflecting our contemporary relation with technology. For this, inspiration is drawn from the New Aesthetic with a focus on the ways we experience our digital condition: always on, always there. Drones or UAV’s (Unmanned Arial Vehicles) have been related to this New Aesthetic debate ever since it started. The New Aesthetic has been a remarkable and often intense debate for about two years now, spread across platforms, groups, scenes, blogs, catalogues, sprint-books and festivals in off- and online worlds.

‘Drones / Birds: Princes of Ubiquity’ taps into the debate of an increasing autonomous technology, connected to a machinic vision, the post-human and the New Aesthetic. Core to the exhibition are digital artifacts and instances of the computational or digital in nature.

The exhibition is curated by Bram Crevits (BE) and will present work by internationally acclaimed artists such as David Bowen (US), Theo Burt (UK), Paolo Cirio (IT),  Marcus Coates (UK),Christoph De Boeck & Patricia Portela (BE/PT), Dries Depoorter (BE), HC Gilje (NO), Esther Polak & Ivar van Bekkum (NL), Erica Scourti (GR), Addie Wagenknecht (US) and Zimoun (CH).

This talk was recorded at the ArtistTalk – Third Culture symposium at Sonica Festival in November 2012.

The participants looked at what art can contribute to society in a time when the forms, values and relations of creative and technological media are being reinterpreted. In order to create a cohesive view on these developments, the subjects were approached from various scientific, social, historical and artistic perspectives, on both a practical as well as a theoretical level. With the symposium we touched upon a series of topics that gave us space for discussion and information exchange.

The Symposium was organized by TodaysArt in cooperation with the International Cities of Advanced Sound and related arts (ICAS) network, the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT) and the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. The realization of the Symposium has been made possible by the support of the EU Culture Programme, the DOEN Foundation, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Zuid-Holland, Witteveen+Bos and Fonds1818.

Then he introduces amber Art and Technology Festival2011 which deals with the topic of ecology in broad sense, more concretely aesthetically and conceptual wonderful artwork called My first time to touch the clothes and interactive work Rain rain rain made all from paper. Later on, he reveals the background of the festival, the whole process from an announcement of open call, through selection of submitted artists to the running of festival itself. Lately he describes an amberPlatform project called Open Data Open City, which focuses on the cities, aims at disseminating the openness culture and suggests to let all the data open and accessible.

Later on, he mentions

• educational system in Norway
• impact of Woody Vasulka to his work
• several projects he is currently working on

She presents her recently published book called Dialog with demons tools: Steina and Woody Vasulkas, what is monograph more focused on Woody, but there is also mention about Steina, because their work is connected very tightly, especially at the beginning in sixties and seventies. The book is written chronologically as their life is easily divided into chapters according to where they moved, how they discovered the different tools and different media.