last week in Oaxaca I had the chance to check out ALTER, a gallery devoted to VR experiences near the city center. I got to check out 2 amazing pieces produced by Flatsitter: “Las Olas,” inspired by a novel by Virginia Woolf, and “El Ramo,” inspired by a story by Octavio Paz and conceived as the first in a series of collaborations with artists around the region. if you’re in the area I recommend making the time for this one! both pieces are totally stunning, and I’m looking forward to seeing more. it was also just cool to see a VR experience primarily in Spanish with a Mexican audience in mind. you can reserve a visit on AirBnb or email directly about booking a private viewing party with food and drinks (it was a very chill experience to decompress from some intense VR while sipping mezcal on a rooftop).
tambien, la experiencia es gratuita para todos los mexicanos! puedes mensajear a Whatsapp para hacer una cita: +52 951 589 7688.
resource roundup!
ANTImateria is a platform and exhibition space for new media by Latin American artists, curators, and art promoters, founded by Doreen A. Ríos. it’s worth a deep dive! the site includes artist profiles, academic resources, events, exhibition documentation, and more, in both Spanish and English. definitely worth following on Facebook as well for additional links to news articles, artist opportunities, and more.
looking to dig in on computer vision with Vue.js? via reddit, here are some links to some Github projects worth a look! Popbot is a webapp that applies a pop art filter to any photo using AI, and Vusion can simply make a quick analysis of the objects in a photo.
Erin Spiceland is building a list of Native Americans & First Nations people in tech on Twitter. you can check it out here!
another Github project worth a look – here’s a simple motion detection library in JS. you can easily control how many frames per second to capture, the size of your grid for detection, your threshold for change, and a Canvas element to show changes. looks like a fun lil thing to play with and expand into bigger projects!
here’s a friendly overview of the current state of CSS, as well as a look towards the future. a quick lil read if you want to have a better sense of what’s what!
h/t to friend-of-the-newsletter Reed Spool for passing me this link to the latest issue of (Hello World), a magazine for computing & digital making educators. this issue has a particular focus on computing and the arts, with examples of cross-curricular projects. I’m saving this one for a lunch break this week!
opportunities!
opportunities have been stacking up, so I’m going to abbreviate some of the older ones! for more details, check the past few weeks’ newsletters.
School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe has a fresh new l3wk, all the better to feature their upcoming programs for this summer and fall. topics include data and society, physical computing for beginners, bots and machine learning, a history of money, citizen forensics, and much much more! you can check out their web makeover and learn more about their programs here.
if you’re a woman based in London, the BBC is offering a free 14 week software engineering training course to jump start a career change. no previous experience required, this is aimed at anyone who wants to work in software engineering but needs to start with the core skills. apply by July 5! more info here.
Solitude & ZKM present an open call for web residencies on the theme of “Rigged Systems,” curated by Jonas Lund:
The Rigged System open call is looking for submissions that aim to subvert the power structures in contemporary network systems and corporations. Works that wish to reclaim a sense of agency within the systems where it feels like there is none. What would suitable infrastructures, needed for public opinion-forming and by extension political debate, look like? How can we imagine new forms of political debate and places for political communication?
submissions can be in just about any well-documented, shareable, open-source format, including text, performance, documentary video, 3D objects, apps, and more. applications are due on June 28 so get a move on! more info here.
LAST DAYS to apply to Eyebeam’s 2020 Residency before June 21, New York NY USA,, more info here.
LAST DAYS to apply to Experiential Space Research Lab before June 23, San Francisco CA USA, more info here.
Bartlett Creative Coding Summer School, London UK, happening Sept 9 – 20, apply here.
Toronto New Wave open call, Toronto ON Canada, deadline to apply is July 2, more info here.
DIGITAL SPRING open call, Salzburg Germany, deadline to apply is June 30, more info here.
Google Arts & Culture Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants, deadline to apply is July 15, more info here.
? upcoming events!
tomorrow, June 18! Wythe Hotel! Brooklyn, NY USA: Eyebeam is turning 20 with a “Fête of the Future” benefit at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn this June. it’s definitely a splurge, but the event includes visuals created by THE FAMILY with art direction by Eyebeam resident Yo-Yo Lin, artist-led experiences up for auction from alumni Zach Lieberman, Lauren McCarthy, and Taeyoon Choi, as well as a live performance from Jasminfire. tix are available on Eventbrite.
Thursday June 20! Corsica Studios! London UK: Algorave Elephant is down to its second release of tix for the event this Thursday! this will be a two-room party with top-notch live coders and algorithmic producers. you can check out the full line-up + get tix here. I hear that discount code ILOVEREPETITION will get u 1/3 off on tix.
also Thursday June 20! Supplyframe/Hackaday! San Francisco, CA USA: Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic is back with a night centered around mechanical and electronic ephemera. the night includes talks by Shaun Meehan and Summer Hamm, as well as demos, community announcements, and socializing. RSVP on Meetup.
also also Thursday June 20! Espronceda Center or Art & Culture! Barcelona, Spain: stop by on Thursday at 7 for the opening & artist talk or drop by anytime before June 29 to check out SPECULATIVE SPECIES – VR Art in the Age of the Anthropocene.
Using the possibilities of the virtual space as a room for experiments, artists reflect and speculate on characteristics and future developments of this new era of human interference with the environment and its creatures. They ask about the development of flora and fauna and how living conditions of different terrestrial species change. What kind of interrelation between humans and their environment will occur? The artists engage with the interconnections between humans and their fellow living creatures today and in speculative futuristic settings. This discussion/debate/speculative approach is transferred into the virtual space, in which the visitor immerses into.
more info here.
Friday June 21! Wonderville! Brooklyn, NY USA: LIVECODE.NYC is hosting Algorave, an evening of digital art and music at Wonderville! this edition will feature performances by f00f + s4y, Shelly Knotts + johnLP.xyz, and RGGTRN [Jessica Rodríguez + Ruffles]. get ur tix here and goooooooo!
June 25 – 28! Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza! New York, NY USA: TRANSFER Download is an immersive exhibition format showcasing simulation artworks, including virtual reality, video games, algorithmic art, video and experimental media, in conjunction with Christie’s ART + TECH Summit on AI. the exhibition will feature works by LaTurbo Avedon, Lawrence Lek, Eva Papamargariti, Theo Triantafyllidis, Alan Warburton, and Pinar Yoldas, so you’ll seriously be missing out if your in the NYC area and don’t make time for this. you can learn more here.
just for lulz!
want an excuse to tinker with Adafruit’s MakeCode Arcade? this new tutorial guides u thru both the hardware and software for this game inspired by that raccoon that climbed that skyscraper last year.
*~housekeeping~*
as always, submit to the open artist call if you have anything in the works that you are excited about! I swear I’m actually going to read through them and start pinging people (lol). and if you have an event or opportunity to promote (anywhere), please send me all the details. the next newsletter will cover the week of June 24 to 30, but I’m happy to promote events further in the future as well and keep them on the calendar.
