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Presented in conjunction with the Symposium The Ideology of Imaginary in the 21st Century in association with the 2007 Adelaide Film Festival.
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TANIA FRAGA Responsive Membrane
2 MARCH
- 5 APRIL |
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Responsive Membrane is an installation that includes at its centre an extremely sensitive, and thus responsive, artificial organism which is affected by computer stimuli. In order to build the installations Fraga creates simulations of 3D environments and develops prototypes of the responsive organisms, establishing kinetic systems to move the organisms. |
Computer interfaces invite affective user interactions which in turn allow the organisms’ manipulation. Responsive Membrane develops poetic, aesthetic and functional morphologies and metaphors for emergent technologies. The project represents a further step in the developments of responsive architectures.
In search for new metaphors to disclose potential functionality for responsive materials Tania Fraga has, by using nanotechnologies, built the Responsive Membrane installation as a first step to create a material thing that one day may be the precursor of mutable architectural buildings she has envisioned.
Tania Fraga will be one of the guest speakers at the Ideology of the Imaginary Symposium on Thursday March 1st.
Tania Fraga is a Brazilian architect and artist. She holds a PhD on the Communication and Semiotics Program at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC). In the course of 1999, Tania developed a Post Doctoral research project at CAiiA-STAR, UK with a research grant from CAPES, the Brazilian Agency for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel. She was Professor and Co-ordinator of the Graduation Studies of the Art Institute at University of Brasilia, Brazil, from 1987-2004. She was member of the Advisory Research Committee of the Banff New Media Centre in 2003, Canada. She was Visiting Scholar at the Computer Science Department at The George Washington University, Washington DC, 1991/1992 and Artist-in-Residence at The Bemis Foundation, USA, 1986, with a grant from the Fulbright Commission. She has been showing and publishing her work in many national and international exhibitions, lectures, workshops, seminars and congresses. Tania's current field of research is the creation of interactive cyber-worlds, for interactive stage performances and interactive art installations. They are based on 3D modelling, animation and VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language), JavaScript and Java 3D languages. Tania currently resides at Sao Paulo as freelance artist, thinker and architect and Researcher at the University of Brasilia, Brazil.
Image credits Tania Fraga 'Fluid Membrane'
 Artist's website http://planeta.terra.com.br/arte/lvpa2002
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LEV MANOVICH Soft Cinema
2 MARCH - 7 APRIL |
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Lev Manovich is perhaps the most influential new media art theoretician of our times. His central mode of thinking and acting is to find the raison d' être for the ticking of new media, the practice the concept emerges in, but even more so, the noumena driving it. Manovich has specifically attempted to articulate the actual processes of digital creation and how they affect production. |
In one of his first artworks, Little Movies, Manovich sets the theoretical ground for his aesthetic approach, which he defines as a lyrical project about the aesthetics of digital cinema and a eulogy to its earliest form, QuickTime™. He proposed that every new medium relies on the content of previous media, and therefore Little Movies features key moments in the history of cinema as its logical subject matter.One of the central themes he explored throughout the nineties was the database and its wider context. The Soft Cinema project specifically aims to interrogate the novel ways software and databases are shaping cinema and narrative. The project, which Manovich has developed together with Andreas Kratky, is a continuation of his theoretical exploration of what Database Cinema actually (or potentially) means and the kinds of narratives it does, and could, generate.
Melentie Pandilovski
Lev Manovich is Associate Professor, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego, where he teaches courses in new media art and theory. He is the author of The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001), Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture (Chicago University Press, 1993) as well as many articles which have been published in 28 countries. Manovich was born in Moscow where he studied fine arts, architecture and computer science. He received an M.A. in experimental psychology from NYU [1988] and a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from University of Rochester (1993). Manovich has been working with computer animation, digital cinema, digital photography, and interactive multimedia since 1984. He has been teaching digital arts since 1992. Manovich lectures widely on new media theory and aestetics - since 1999 he has delivered over 180 lectures in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. His awards include Mellon Fellowship and Guggenheim Fellowship (2002-2003).
Image credits Lev Manovich, 'Soft Cinema', screen grab
Artist's website http://manovich.net/ Soft Cinema on the web http://www.softcinema.net
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