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In The Beginning Was Cybernetics. Relation Between Science & Artists

Teresa De Feo
What relationship is there between digital art and cybernetic science? Surely more than one can imagine. The concept of the system, the research of process patterns, the importance of interconnections and the relationship between system and environment (be it a machine or living organism), the centrality of information, the phenomenon of retroaction and self-management, the importance of code, are the terms of cybernetic research, but it could also be said that this is true for the research of any artist who works with new technologies.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 49, November 2009

Cinematography Of The Stone Age: Woyzeck By William Kentridge

Annamaria Monteverdi
The South African artist William Kentridge is one of the most renowned contemporary visual artists and proposes a poetic view on ancient taste where art and technique come together in the original value and significance of techné: the shows are based on his original filmed animations and recalls those theatres from the beginning of the century that experimented with the rudimental techniques of luminous animation (drawings on pieces of mobile glass, projected thanks to a Magic Lantern), promoting a primitive form of optical art.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 49, November 2009

Kenneth Anger And The New American Cinema

Francesco Bertocco
The New American Cinema - NAC, represents one of the most meaningful artistic experience within the indipendent cinematography of the 60s, free from Hollywoodian empires and a mythopoetic all-engaging Star System. A group of directors - whose patroness and inspirer was Maya Deren - which included i.a. Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage and Michael Snow - began to meet at the margins of the official cinematography, deteriorating the visual monopoly of great producers. Through poor means which seemed to be a stylistic manifesto, they created a series of experimental films on the wave of the first vanguards, by then still half-asleep in the story of the audiovisual world.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 49, November 2009

Climate Justice Action: Precarious United For Climate Action

Alex Foti
The economic crisis has heavily hit the precariat -- the sum of those working non-standard, temporary, part-time contracts in services and industry -- worse than any other social class. Millions of precarious youth, women, immigrants are being made redundant by the Great Recession. Unemployment has skyrocketed from the US to the EU, from Iceland to Japan. Those responsible for the crisis -- big banks, investment funds, free-market economists and policy-makers -- whitewash and greenwash without shame as if nothing happened and go on with business as usual. Governments are giving trillions to the bankers and peanuts to the permatemps.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 48, October 2009

Facebook’s Slackers

Loretta Borrelli
Imagine you have a Facebook account. It isn't difficult at all. Imagine you are Danish and live in Copenhagen and someone asks you to share a cause aiming to defend the Stork Fountain, the city symbol, which is going to be knocked down. If you were a citizien who belives in the historical identity of the city where you live, you would probably share the cause without problems and maybe you would also widespread the idea among your friends. There is only one thing: this piece of news is totally false. Nobody has ever thought to knock down the most important sightseing of the Danish capital.... READ MORE...
ActivismArticlesDigimag - Issue 48, October 2009

The Uncertain Human Quantum Mechanics

Jeremy Levine
Werner Heisenberg's famous 'Uncertainty Principle' articulates the idea that we cannever completely eliminate the influence of the subject from any description of quantumparticles. The reason is simple: because we are part of the very system beingdescribed. It is impossible to accurately predict exactly how an electron will behavewhen we measure it because of the sensitivity of its wave function to our presence orthe presence of a detection device, which we put into place. The act of measurement causes an uncertain change in the thing being measured.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 48, October 2009

Voom, By Robert Wilson:the Surface Of A Myth

Francesco Bertocco
There is a figure which seems to stop the time, move with care along its borders, fly above it, go through it but then sit outside it. It is a man who wears only his slips and stand in front of us, fixing us. Above us the rain begins to fall. The light is steered by a blinding intense blue which looks like a chemical color lent by Klein's imagination or by the fluorescent lamp of a sleazy club.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 48, October 2009

Wodiczko’s Video Shadows Between Visible And Invisible

Silvia Casini
Despite all promises of more attention to figurative arts and above all to painting, the 53° Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Biennale di Venezia (International Art Exhibition in Venice) focuses again on video installations and expanded cinema, which does not necessary mean experimental. In most cases it is a revisit of the exposition space after the typical experience within the cinematographic field. The screen becomes a wall or a plasma TV and the installation assumes the features of a real projection in which all typical cinematographic devices are deconstructed - think only to the loop movement enphatized by Douglas Gordon or to the decomposition of film into monitors dispayed in a row (Chantal Akerman).... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 47, September 2009

E-partecipation: Paradoxes And New Ways To Discover

Gigi Ghezzi
The Directorate of Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe organized in March 2009 a seminary reserved to young researcher, policy-makers, youth organizations and young people coming from 47 European countries. This seminary had as topic the new partecipation methods based on Information and Communication Technology (e-participation). The results were collected in a document, which can be consulted online (http://www.coe.int/t) and fitness an open structure of encounter, where all partecipants had the opportunity to live a practical experience of cooperation in an important field within the Council of Europe.... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDigimag - Issue 47, September 2009

Non-locality: Myths And Metaphors In Networked Art And Quantum Systems

Jeremy Levine
Quantum particle systems seem to possess the ability to communicate instantaneously with each other, defying our classical understanding of space and distance. This feature of the quantum world, known as non-locality, is often used to describe the World Wide Web, and particularly interactive networked art, which seems to collapses space into mouse clicks and links. But is it really applicable?... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 47, September 2009

Derek Jarman’s Visual Painting

Francesco Bertocco
The incredibile influence of Derek Jarman's cinema is considered as an unavoidable background for every research on the new visual languages from the end of the '70s. His ability to survive and fall always on his feet in a vogue of indipendent cinematographers, outside the main channels of cinematographic production made him a kind of living god (Holy Derek). He is a survivor in a generation which spent all its energies and attention in the visual research and representation methods.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 47, September 2009

Vlogging, Networked Cinematic Poetics

Mark Hancock
Hegemonic systems of mainstream culture depict the World Wide Web as host to a number of large, central (but none-the-less global) sites controlled by a few corporate bodies. The names are ubiquitous for anyone trying to explore the modern media world: Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, YouTube, and others that have either fallen by the wayside or are just bobbing below the surface of our awareness. These platforms all have their place of course, and most of us are making use of them.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009

Ephemeral Physicality: Quantum Particles And Digital Art

Jeremy Levine
Just as a quantum particle has both a virtual and a physical dimension, so does a work of digital art, which exists as both invisible code and visual display. The dual nature of matter in quantum mechanics is mirrored by the dual nature of a work of digital art. Just as a photon is both a particle and a wave, a work of digital art is both a set of instructions and the execution of those instructions. Digital art, software art, or any work of art that utilizes media as its medium- is both a set of structural relations (a system of process) and a set of discrete objects in space. This is conceptual dualism rather than physical dualism. But how does one make sense of diametriclly opposite models of the same thing without suffering a bit of cognitive dissonance? Neil's Bohr, one of the father's of quantum mechanics, points the way out: embrace the paradox... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009