For map and directions please visit http://digitalarts.wits.ac.za/artworks/
and see under “contact us”.
Archive for the ‘software’ Category
Trespass(ing) Digital Soiree
July 16th, 2008 by TeganDaniel Hirschmann prints on exhibition in Johannesburg
July 7th, 2008 by christo
Daniel Hirschmann, the ATjoburg contributor (and provider of hosting space for this blog) will be returning to South Africa to exhibit his recent digital prints as part of a three artist show at the Resolution Gallery in Johannesburg which opens on July 10th 2008. This is Daniel’s first show of prints and from the evidence of the images on his Flickr page should be really interesting viewing.
Daniel writes:
The prints are made using software created in Processing that allows gestural manipulation of photographic images - resulting in these rather densely textured prints.
Google take on the skies
August 23rd, 2007 by christo
Google Earth & Google Maps have given us god-like views of the entire surface of the world, from the security of our computer screens. Now The Guardian outlines how Google are launching an upgrade of Earth with a feature called Sky which allows the computer user to survey the entire heavens: with a mouse and the arrow keys:
Google Sky, developed with some of the world’s leading observatories, lets surfers tour a virtual cosmos at will.
The service is an add-on to Google Earth, the virtual geography program which lets users access a computerised 3D map of the planet. Surfers who download the new Sky application will be able to look to the heavens from any point on Earth.
The service allows them to zoom through more than 200m galaxies and take a detailed tour around 100m individual solar systems.
The Google Earth site promises to reveal "a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies" to the human eye. Do I hear an echo of the original Google search epigraph? The total and growing number of web pages - reaching the billions - that were scanned during the few seconds of search. Apparently, Google’s other ambition is to digest all the information from the human genome project and make that available for people to use as they see fit.
The good news is that Google Sky is immediately available in OSX and Linux, as well as the usual Windows.
the Upgrade! Johannesburg presents our first Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits
October 2nd, 2006 by nathanielthe Upgrade! Johannesburg presents our first Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits
Friday October 6, 2006 @ 3pm:
Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits
Friday October 6, 2006 @ 3pm:
Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits
WSOA Digital Arts. Map: http://digitalarts.wits.ac.za/artworks/contact/map.htm
This panel and discussion on the possibilities and problems with collecting new media art will include presentations by:
- Warren Siebrits - founder of one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious contemporary and modern commercial art galleries
- Franci Cronje - curator of several collections & competitions, including Sasol New Signatures
- Nathaniel Stern - digital and interactive artist, in several public & private collections
- Clive Kellner - Director of the Johannesburg Art Museum
About Upgrade! Johannesburg
About once per month a group of new media students, artists and curators gather in Johannesburg, South Africa. At each meeting one or two artists present work - theirs, or a favorite’s - in order to foster critique, dialogue and collaboration in our growing digital arts scene. The Upgrade! Joburg grew out of Professor Christo Doherty’s (WSOA Digital Arts; Map ) regular Friday ‘Digital Soirees’ at Wits School of the Arts, and artist Nathaniel Stern’s atjoburg initiative, both founded between 2002/3 and still ongoing. They wanted to invite a larger, participative audience into their space, and be plugged into a more diverse and international network. Our first official Upgrade! featured Daniel Hirschmann, a South African Wits alumnus who alsostudied at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and went on to help shape the Physical Computing studio at Fabrica. At number two, Stern presented MTAA’s brilliant work remotely (with their permission), rather fitting given their initial involvement in the first NYC Upgrades….
Turbulence and Gavin Jantjes
April 8th, 2006 by nathaniel
helen thorington of turbulence.org @ upgrade! johannesburg showing off net.art commissions: Shape of Song by Martin Wattenberg (that’s Jo Green on the far right, too)
Yesterday was probably the most crowded and exciting, diverse and collaborative, Soiree / Upgrade! event Johannesburg has ever seen. There to hear a kind of biased history of net.art from turbulence, and to briefly learn about Gavin Jantjes’ plans for Trans Cape, the audience ranged from WSOA and Digital Arts students, to top-notch and rising-star artists; we had a full house! Most pleasing was the engaging and intellectual/curious dialogue that progressed, including potential collaborative links made between, not only our two presenters(!), but also most orgs and artists who wanted to be involved in future. Turb’s talk went through, among others, the following works (in chronological order, both historically and in their talk - from 1996 - 2006!):
helen thorington of turbulence.org @ upgrade! johannesburg showing off net.art commissions: SMS-Tokyo (Stop Motion Studies) by David Crawford
turbulence.org - the net.art commissioning hub
networked_performance blog - Millions of visitors monthly, one of the best new media art blogs around
Grimm Tale: Chapter 7 and Grimm Tale: Chapter 10 - their first ever commissioned net.art, by my grad supervisor at ITP, Marianne Petit!
Snuff - early interactive java art that pulled content from live sites
FT2K - quirky "promise of a greater tomorrow" type net.art
Radio Stare - Beautiful, linear, non-narrative piece that pulled from live police frequency streams for its soundtrack; note that some technology on this piece is obsolete and therefore no longer working
Solitaire - random narrative constructions
Culture Map - clever mapping of how we surfed aol and yahoo! back in the day
Imprimatur - make a poster through the web, and print it offline
Shape of Song - beautiful and clever look at visualizations of popular and historical music
Secret Lives of Numbers - Golan Levin’s infamous work that charts the popularity/use of all numbers online - from zero to one million
Data Diaries - Cory Arcangel converts his RAM into video
SMS-Tokyo [1] [2] - gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous stop motion studies on subway trains in Tokyo
1 Year Performance Video - MTAA’s brilliant Sam Hsieh update that I have written about extensively on this site
<event> - slowed down and mediated news to "look at"
Tap Evol-The Setup - interactive, evolutionary visual applet that pulls from a database of tiny movies to produce odd moving imagery on the fly
IN Network - long distance relationship via a blog and podcast
Grafik Dynamo - live blog feeds creating a dynamic Lichtenstein-like panel comic strip; the images and text are a web zeitgeist!
And the list goes on… Discussion ranged from interrogations of performance, art and activism, to questions about access, influence, and surfing habits.
Gavin Jantjes presenting Trans Cape
This was actually a great transition into Gavin’s presentation of his plans for what has come to be known as the kind of new mega-exhibition of South Africa, due up this September. From the sound of it, he’s very interested in focusing on the African diaspora, contemporary African art, education and involvement of local communities, and empowerment through knowledge and creativity. Keep up to date, here. More to come….