New Reviews on Furtherfield April 07.

http://www.furtherfield.org

- OPERA CALLING by Bitnik Media Collective and Sven König.
- Review by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, aka Maria X.
On Friday April 9 (2007) I was at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich for the 
opening of the Opera Calling project. Opera Calling is an exhibition and 
performance created by the Bitnik media collective and artist Sven 
König, to be running at the Cabaret Voltaire till the 2nd of May.

"The artists describe Opera Calling as “an intervention into the 
cultural system of the Zurich Opera.” What they have done is secretly 
place bugs within the auditorium of the Opera House, and redistribute 
the performances not through public broadcasting, but through calling up 
individuals in Zurich, on their landlines. As soon as the opera 
performance starts, a machine calls out Zurich phone numbers. If a 
Zurich resident replies, what they can hear is a computerised message 
explaining what they are about to listen to, and then a live 
transmission of the performance taking place in the Opera House. The 
visitors of the gallery space witness this interaction: they can see 
which phone number the machine is calling, and what the outcome is: will 
someone answer? Will they hang up?"
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?From=Index&review_id=224


- The Sheep Market by Aaron Koblin.
- Review by Rob Myers.
The Sheep Market is a series of 10,000 simple images of sheep drawn by 
online workers. Stylistically the sheep range from the indecipherable to 
the extremely detailed and cute. You can view the sheep on a web site, 
buy them on stickers, or have them fill your field of vision as part of 
a gallery installation. They serve as a metaphor for the sharecropping 
masses of Web 2.0 projects. And their production speaks of the future of 
art and creative production.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?From=Index&review_id=220


- RAPIDFIRE.001 Montreal at Studio xx.
- Article by by Kyd Campbell.
The !RAPID!FIRE! Session was a 'first come, first serve' ‘sign-up and 
present’ formula, in which individuals were asked to put forward short 
presentations lasting 15 minutes each. The concept was proposed by Kyd 
Campbell and Angela Dorrer with the aim of providing a highly responsive 
environment for presentation, for dialogue about works in progress. This 
exchange structure stems directly from open formats such as what has 
been organised by program angels(munich), Upgrade! Munich and Upgrade! 
Salvador and the Pecha Kucha Network. The format provided a two way 
exchange, artists could ask questions and get critique from the audience 
and the audience had the opportunity to view some new works and techniques.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=223


- Scanpath by Catherine Baker.
- Exhibition at TheSpace4, Peterborough, UK.
- Review by Rob Myers.
Drawing is a record of looking. Learning to draw is therefore learning 
to see. Having learnt to draw, artists look at the world differently to 
non-artists. They spend more time looking at what they are drawing than 
at the paper, for example. This is not an elitist claim, there are many 
drawing instruction books that claim to help anyone improve their 
drawing by helping them learn how to look. And technology has allowed 
the act of looking to be quantified in ways that show exactly how 
artistic looking is different from everyday regard.

Catherine Baker's works in Scanpath have been made using such 
technology. Each piece is a record of the artist looking while drawing, 
but made by eye-tracking hardware and software rather than by hand. 
These systems track the eye's movements (saccades) and rests 
(fixations), with most of the show being devoted to work based on 
fixations. The use of these systems comes from a long-term collaboration 
with Dr Iain Gilchrist, Head of experimental psychology at the 
university of Bristol.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?From=Index&review_id=221

Other Reviews:
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreviews.php

About Furtherfield Reviewers:
http://www.furtherfield.org/reviewersbio.php

If you want to be a reviewer on Furtherfield,
contact - [log in to unmask]

**********
* Visit the Writing and the Digital Life blog http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/blogs/wdl/
* To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html
* To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE