DACSO open meeting

All are invited to the upcoming meeting of the newly formed Digital Arts and Culture Student Organization on Monday, September 19 at 3:45 pm in
Johnston Hall, G24.

There will be cookies, and items to be discussed will be upcoming exhibitions, travel to the International Digital Media and Arts Association Conference, Elections, and Designing Publicity Posters.

If you are teaching a class related to Digital Arts and Culture, please announce to your classes. If you are a student, please ask the teacher if you could make this announcment. Or send this blog as an email to interested parties by clicking on that little envelope below this post.

DACSO approved

The Digital Arts and Culture Student Organization was officially approved by the Student Association Senate in July. Founding members Aaron Lunderville and Leah Jee were at the meeting where they spoke on behalf of the group whose purpose is to promote educational and professional advancement in the general fields related to Digital Arts and Culture. "I'm excited about the opportunity to bring creative students from all areas of the University together to create and share their work," said Bridget Gallagher, another founder.
"Now we have the possibility of bringing media professionals to UWM to share their expertise and experiences with the students," added Lunderville.
Anyone interested in DACSO should contact dacsoboard@uwm.edu.

Raking the Muck left by Katrina

Some of my favorite items in the media now are Kanye West's performance on live TV on NBC's Concert for Hurricane Relief, the captions accompanying the photo's that he described, and current.tv's blog entry entitled citizen rescue, maintained by Robin Sloan.

Vital Source Magazine Looking for Graphics Intern

Vital Source Magazine is looking for a graphics intern for the fall
semester. Applicant must have experience in Adobe suite and be
available 10-15 hours per week. Duties will include, but are not
limited to, creating ads, editing photographs and helping in layout.
The internship is unpaid but Vital does work with all area college and
university internship programs so you will receive credit for your
work.
Please contact esolochek[at]vitalsourcemag.com.

Evan Solochek
Assistant Editor
Vital Source Magazine

P: 414.372.5351
F: 414.372.5356
W: vitalsourcemag.com

MilwaukeeBeacon.com looking for a tutor on Webdesign

"MilwaukeeBeacon is a start-up newspaper with an online presence. At the present time, we are looking for a tutor to teach flash and dreamweaver. Our webmaster is going to school in Florida. So, we need someone in the Milwaukee area. To learn more about us, please check out the website: www.milwaukeebeacon.com. This website will give you an idea. If you are interested in this part-time position, please contact us:

Andrew Shaw
Milwaukee Beacon, Inc.
gtndigital[at]hotmail.com
www.milwaukeebeacon.com
414 535-7804

Compensation is $10.00/hr or $20 per lesson (You decide). We need someone who is located in the Milwaukee area. Finally, we need someone who wants to make a difference with his/her life."

Original URL: http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/art/92066835.html

Robert Moog, Creator of Ubiquitous Synthesizer Dies

There is a really nice audio slide show narrated by Allan Kozinn on The New York Times website detailing the accomplishments of this sound engineer who has influenced music from the Beatles to the Beastie Boys. See his company's website for a simple obituary, and to see the Moog Community.

Student Web Developer Employment Opportunity

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's College of Letters and Science web development team seeks a student web developer. Knowledge of css, xhtml, Dreamweaver, text editors, and Photoshop is required; knowledge of Cold Fusion is also desired. At first the employee would work approximately 12-16 hours a week (approx. half the time maintaining existing sites and half the time developing css for new sites. We would be particularly interested in students with Sophomore or Junior standing who are looking for longer-term work on campus and interested in becoming proficient standards-based web developers.

For more information on applying for the position contact Homer Hruby at
thhruby[at]uwm.edu.

CALL FOR VIDEOS: INPORT International Video-Performance Art Festival (Estonia)

From Paul Coulliard and FADO:
Performance artists all around the world are invited to send proposals for INPORT, International Video-Performance Art Festival, in Tallinn, Estonia on November 2005.

INPORT would like to bring artists from all around the world closer to Estonian audiences. This is non-profit Festival and unfortunately we have a very small budget so we can only show your video/videos on a single screen. We can't offer artistic fees, accommodation or travel expenses. After the Festival we will produce an on-line catalogue on the Festival web-site (http://www.inport.tk).

Last year we received nearly 260 videos from 19 countries; INPORT Festival presented 36 videos by artists from around the world.

Performance artists are invited to submit proposals for Festival in the following categories:

Video-performance (performances made specially for camera)
Video documentary (video documentations of performances)

Formats accepted: VHS (PAL only), miniDV (PAL only), VCD, DVD

There's no limit of length, but please don't send the masters!

There are no official entry forms or entry fees!

Enclosed with the video/videos you must send the following (with e-mail or CD-R/Word document):
Performance artist or group name
Performance title
Statement of performance
Performance date, venue, Festival or event where it was first performed
Brief resume of the performance artist
Contact info (e-mail, postal address, etc.)

Deadline: 15.September 2005 (postal stamp)

Materials will not to be returned, but will be kept in the Festival archive for the projects in the future and for interested curators and art festival organizers!

Send all materials to:
Gert Hatsukov
(INPORT curator and organizer)
Pikk 4-11
Paide
Estonia

All deliveries from international participants must be marked:
"NO COMMERCIAL VALUE - FOR CULTURAL PURPOSES ONLY"

If you have any questions, please contact: inport.festival@mail.ee

FedEx invokes Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against Unusual Blogger

There is some exciting legal back and forth between FedEx and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic, who is representing Jose Avila. He built all kinds of furniture for his apartments using only empty FedEx boxes and packing material. His friends encouraged him to document his remarkable work and publish a website, fedexfurniture.com and blog, that chronicles his odyssey . The Big Company didn't like that and tried to bring the wrath of the DMCA on the young artist Jose.

The Milwaukee Divide

The Union Art Gallery is located at 2200 East Kenwood Boulevard on the Campus level is free and open to the public. The gallery will be open for Gallery Night from 11am-9pm on Friday and 11-3pm on Saturday.

Union Art Gallery Director Andrea Skyberg has curated a smart bunch of artists in this exhibition that looks at divisions in Milwaukee. Coming from a myriad of formal and political perspectives the works seem to spark and sparkle- many works use video and invite viewer interaction.
In works like Jeremy Brown's, where any person walking into the space has their moving image projected but eerily divided by a wall that only exists as a digital construct.
Jamal Currie and Steve Wetzel's works uses antennae and video transmitters and receivers to describe an idiosyncrasy in Milwaukee's segregation: Where does Old World Third Street End and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Begin?
Marc Tasman's video work shows us in surveillance video a string of people trying to steal a John Kerry for President sign. In another video we see the haunting flames that dance as they devour a Bush/Cheney sign while the Music of a Belly Dancer's band plays the theme from Laurence of Arabia. Both videos come projected out of a four foot stack of firewood - atop the pile are the actual embattled signs from the surveillance videos.
Also highly intriguing is Nicholas Lampert's photos of North Avenue as it begins on the western outskirts and sketches all the way to Lake Michigan. Reminiscent of the work of Ed Ruscha, the photos also invoke other famous dividing walls, formerly in Berlin and now in the West Bank. This sixty foot long wall in the gallery, covered by this line of photos shows us the visual culture of the city in unique storefronts and street art.
The entire show is held together by stark panels of statistical data detailing the changes of populations of African American, Latinos, and Whites in Milwaukee.
Powerful. Not to be missed.

Additional artists include:

Jesus Ali
Jenny Plevin & Allison Westbrook
Armando Gallegos
Alisha Dallosto
Eliot White
Michael Maier

Runs through August 5. Open during summer Gallery
Night and Day on July 29th & 30th., with closing
performance on Friday, August 5th from 8-10:30 by
Lyrical Sanctuary (an open mic series that welcomes
poets, artists, and performers to express themselves
before a captive audience).

For more info see
http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/e-announcment/Untitled-1.htm
+
http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/index.html


From the press release:
The Union Art Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UAG) is pleased to present the exhibition The Milwaukee Divide from July 8 th –August 5 th , 2005. This exhibition tackles the issues of segregation and separation in Milwaukee through the mediums of video installation, photography, painting and sculpture. The topics of segregation and separation are being interpreted broadly to include racial issues, as well as geographical, political, gender and economic segregation in Milwaukee.

Photography Crime

I can imagine a pastiche of the 1971 film, Dirty Harry, where the alleged lucky feeling punk, who makes Detective Harry Callahan's day reaches for a digital camera instead of a gun. Milo sent me this link that once again poses the conflict between National Security and the essential rights of every American to Express Free Speech and Bear Cameras.

Is Photography Becoming Illegal?

Even though there's no law against it, you may be interrogated the next
time you snap a picture of the Empire State Building.

How Journalists and PR Professionals Use Blogs

A Forum sponsored by PR Newswire in the San Francisco Bay Area highlights how blogs are becoming more influential on mainstream media outlets. One major advantage sited in this forum of blogs over traditional print and broadcast media is the speed and ease of bloggers to correct mistakes online.
Panelist David Whelan, staff writer for Forbes, countered that mainstream media has one big advantage over blogs: "Most blogs are derivative; very few bloggers pick up the phone or look through documents. They do a lot of important analysis and commentary, but mainstream media will do more reporting."

Thanks to Steve Rubel for deriving this before me.

Call for Submissions: Enso and Lorg

From Andrea Fitzpatrick at the National University of Ireland (NUI) in Galway, Ireland.

Enso and Lorg call for work by performance, video & sound artists, dancers, musicians for collaboration at various venues around Galway during the Galway Arts Festival 2005.

Please send samples of work to ensoart[at]yahoo.ie or to
Enso, c/o Artspace,
7-8 Addley Park,
Liosban Industrial Estate,
Galway, Ireland
www.ensoart.com
Closing date: 13th of June 2005

Once Hactivist Hero Now Called Fraud

Spanish University Lecturer Forced to Resign Over P2P -- Now discredited by the Spanish Blogoshpere that gave him his rise, Jose Cortell has come under attack for his crudentials.

Cortell had been teaching about "Intellectual Property" among other subjects in the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV (Spain) for more than 5 years, when he tried to organize a Conference to defend the legal use of Peer to Peer Networks in Spain. What followed were claims that pressure was applied by the Spanish Recording Industry Association, and even the Motion Picture Association of America to the Deans and Directors at the University for Cortell's resignation. Then the stories of a fake C.V. emerged. See Comments.

Bill Moyers on Media Reform

The National Conference for Media Reform, organized by Free Press convened last week in St. Louis. I picked this up from Grace Hanson, writer for the Utne Reader Online. Be The Media, blogging from the audience, hallways and streets of the conference collected and commented on some pretty substantial content, even some audio files of speeches, including Bill Moyers rousing speech, his first public appearance since leaving PBS six months ago (transcript here). He quotes Jason Miller on corporate corruption of mainstream media "...the real hope [for Journalism] lies within the Internet..."

Tess Gallun's Women Combat Photographers

Documentary filmmaker Tess Gallun, while pursuing her MA in The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at UWM, is doing some amazing work that draws on her own experiences, as well as the timely subject of Representation of War.

What I like about Tess' work is that it is very active, having an activist quality to it, but the call to action does not seem partisan. This call is to examine closely the experiences, feelings and actions of female photographers shooting (their cameras) in the midst of killing. How do these photojournalists justify their subject/object relationships in very raw situations where death, brutality, compassion, and ambition spill out and pool together in dramatic scenes?

Tune in to find out, Gallun is presenting a paper called Death's Conflicted Responsibility: Female Photojournalists and Front-line Ethics, to the International Communication Association Conference in New York, at the end of the month.

Visual Culture in Music Culture

Louisville based Peter Berkowitz writes music critcism and interviews artists.
He just showed me his blog where his two most recent reviews are of Louisville bands and musical combos named the Photographic, Instant Camera, and VHS or Beta (groovy website).
Berkowitz on Instant Camera:
What gives Instant Camera an edge on similar groups is its ability to draw inspiration from yet another source: hints of the theatrical German cabaret style emerge in the last songs, "Terrorvision" and "Hearing Is Disbelieving."

What I find amazing are these Louisville bands' referncences to Visual Culture and Photography. Louisville is where I came from, and before me, Muhammed Ali, Hunter S. Thompson, and Louis Brandeis. But what is going on down there, now?

Jon Stewart Burns Corporate TV on Blogs

Jon Stewart did a nice bit of scathing news on the news on the news. It's getting hard to see the parody through the truth anymore. In any case, here is the link to the clip describing the lackluster job that mainstream Television News does in reporting from the Blogosphere (from the May 9, 2005 Daily Show).
Thank you Lisa Rein.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: "Open City" Video Pool (Winnipeg)

Paul Couillard maintains this FADO elist with lot of amazing intermedia performance calls:

Artists are invited to submit works for an art exhibition during the 2nd annual Open Source Cultural Exchange called OpenCity, taking place August 17 - 20, 2005 in Winnipeg's Exchange District. We are looking for art in any media which responds to the idea of a Cultural (and Technological) Commons, Free Software, Open Source and the creation of shared-culture alternatives to corporate-controlled culture.

OpenCity believes that creativity always builds on the past, and that unrestricted, unbalanced copyright law wielded by powerful media conglomerates can stifle an artist's transformative re-use of material. If you are making artwork which explores these ideas, submit 10-20 slides, a CD or DVD, video, audiotape or URL, plus a curriculum vitae and a brief artist's statement. OpenCity invites submissions of: New
Media, Experimental Electronics, Video, Performance, Installation, Audio Art, Painting, Sculpture, Digital Art etc. The jury will consist of professional artists and OpenCity programmers.

Artist fees will be paid. Deadline for submissions: June 10, 2005

Send submissions to:
OpenCity Exhibition
c/o Video Pool Inc.
300-100 Arthur Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada R3B 1H3

Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope if you would like your material returned. Only artists selected for the OpenCity Exhibition will be notified. For more information on OpenCity please see http://www.freeculture.ca

Morgan Freeman Wins Control of morganfreeman.com

From Yahoo!News AP:
Arbitrators for the World Intellectual Property Organization ordered the transfer of the domain name to the American actor, who had complained that it was being used in bad faith to divert Internet traffic to a commercial search engine.