October 05, 2006
Elektra
Posted by admin at 12:34 PM
November 14, 2006
Black Box
Topological Media Lab Open Studio
Concordia University
November 15-16, 2006
Engineering-Visual Arts Building, BlackBox (B2-845), 1515 St. Catherine West
Wednesday 15 November 2006
Open Rehearsal
2:30 - 4:00
Students and faculty are welcome to come to an open rehearsal of the TML working with movement and responsive media. There will be no presentations, but you're invited to witness some work-in-process with dance, calligraphic video, responsive soundscapes, and media choreography.
Thursday 16 November 2006
Roundtables on Movement and Architecture
5:00 - 8:00
5:00 Refreshments, Demonstrations
6:00 Roundtable 1: Movement and Responsive Spaces, Michael Montanaro, Harry Smoak, and Respondent Erin Manning
7:00 Roundtable 2: Responsive Environments and Poetic Architectures, Sha Xin Wei and Respondents Patrick Harrop, Brian Massumi
The Topological Media Lab offers an Open Studio featuring experiments in dance and installation art, and fresh work with responsive environments and real-time media. The informal conversations will be an occasion to publicly share and discuss the atelier-laboratory's new research oriented toward movement and the built environment.
Choreographer and Chair of the Dance department, Michael Montanaro, will present work with Harry Smoak, and Kirsten Wild featuring structured "conversations" between dancers and dynamic fields of light and video.
Sha Xin Wei, Associate Professor in Computer Science and Design / Computation Arts, and Director of the TML, will present work in calligraphic video and gestural sound with Louis-Andre Fortin, Jean-Sebastien Rousseau, Tim Sutton, Emmanuel Thivierge, as well as prospective work of the TML's poetic spaces and soft architecture research group.
Professors Patrick Harrop (Architecture, University of Manitoba), Erin Manning (Film and Studio Arts), and Brian Massumi (Communications, Université de Montréal) will join the conversations as Respondents.
The two Roundtables will be an opportunity to continue a conversation with artists, scholars, and technologists about the TML's emerging research programs in movement arts and in architecture.
The event is free and open to the public.
Supported by Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University; Hexagram; the Topological Media Lab, and the Canada Research Chair in Media Arts and Sciences.
Posted by tml at 01:29 AM
January 29, 2007
Black Box Residency
The TML is hosting three streams of on-going art research in the Hexagram Black box this month (Jan 24 - Feb 11).
Michael Montanaro is working with Harry Smoak in further exploring the subtle intertwining of dancers' agency with the agency of animated spaces, props, and media.
Mark Sussman is developing his puppet theater piece, SOIL DESIRE PEOPLE DANCE, inspired by a text by W.G. Sebald.
Sha Xin Wei is working with a team of research assistants to create OXYGEN, a new generation of a media choreography system based on continuous dynamics, and real-time media instruments. This media choreography system will be informed by Montanaro and Sussman's work, and instruments created to work with these hosted studies.
Posted by tml at 11:14 PM
February 06, 2007
The Sebald Puppet Group : Performance
The Topological Media Lab hosts Prof. Mark Sussman's puppet theater work with the Sebald Puppet Group,resonant with the TML's study of distributed agency.
Come this FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 18h00, to our open rehearsal research.
More details at : TML News & Events
Posted by tml at 10:11 PM
Topological Media Lab Campfire
Campfire Evening : Fire, marshmallow, camping!
Wed. FEB 7th - 19:30 - 21:30 at the BlackBox (EV-B2)
Who said we needed outdoors to make a great ‘camping style’ evening? We intend to prove him/her wrong, as we transform the BlackBox into a camping site for a night.
Bring your own real marshmallows, and virtual fire sources (!) and don’t forget your lumberjack outfit. We want this night to be remembered as the first ‘real’ TML Campfire.
Music, visuals, sounds, stories & legends about pixelated creatures will fill up the night.
More details at : TML News & Events
Posted by tml at 10:24 PM
February 26, 2007
Exhibition - Winter/Spring 2007
9 EVENINGS RECONSIDERED:
ART, THEATRE AND ENGINEERING, 1966
John Cage, Luncinda Childs, Övynd Fahlström,
Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer,
Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, Robert Whitman
Commissaire Catherine Morris Curator
9 mars au 21 avril 2007
Vernissage le jeudi 8 mars 17h30
En présence du recteur de l'université/ in the presence of the University President
http://www.ellengallery.concordia.ca
Posted by tml at 10:06 PM
March 22, 2007
Dr. Helga Wild and Dr. Niklas Damiris at TML
The Topological Media Lab at Concordia University, and partners, invite two internationally respected scholars and long-time researchers from Silicon Valley Dr. Niklas Damiris and Dr. Helga Wild for a site visit capped by a public discussion.
Dr. Helga Wild and WaterCooler Logic's participatory ethnography mediates and catalyzes human relations and processes in the detailed life of complex organizations. On one hand it is practically embedded in everyday life, and on the other hand it draws on and reflects concepts and approaches from ethnography, anthropology, rhythmanalysis, and complexity theory.
Dr. Niklas Damiris continues his discussion of a model for valuing the work of vigorously incommensurate people in the co-production of social value. Although the model is quite general, it is particularly relevant and powerful for those artists and humanists who are trying to fund and value work that is not directly tied to, for example, technology development or entertainment industry, yet who aspire to adopt or adapt the same material technologies, sources of funding, or models of R&D work.
Monday April 2, 3:30-5:00 pm
A CRC conversation with humanists, artists, and universities in Canada's economies of culture:
Roundtable "Creative research and the co-production of values" with Dr. Helga Wild, Dr. Niklas Damiris and Dr. Sha Xin Wei
HEX-X Resource Centre, EV11-705 (Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex), 1515 St. Catherine West, Concordia University
Tuesday April 3, 5pm
Hexagram Tea with Dr. Niklas Damiris and Dr. Helga Wild
11th Floor Atrium, EV (Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex), 1515 St. Catherine West, Concordia University
Posted by tml at 12:23 PM
May 15, 2007
SPECTROPIA: Artist's Talk by Toni Dove
Friday, May 18, 2-4 PM
Engineering Visual Arts Building, ground floor auditorium EV1-605
Concordia University
1515 St Catherine West
"Dove aims to intensify the cinematographic experience and to link together observer and character in a radically new way." - Sabine Himmelsbach, The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, ZKM/ Center for Art and Media, Germany
Co-sponsored by the Topological Media Lab (Concordia) The Sense Lab (Concordia), Joint PhD in Communication (Université de Montréal/ UQAM/ Concordia) and the Workshop in Radical Empiricism (Université de Montréal), Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Concordia), Design Computation Arts Department (Concordia)
SPECTROPIA: Sneak Preview!
Spectropia, by writer/ director and responsive media artist Toni Dove, is both a feature film and an interactive performance. Dove will be present to discuss the project and perform excepts from her "scratchable" movie. This sci-fi hybrid, in development for the last six years, features time travel, telepathy, elements of film noir and the supernatural. Utilizing gaming technology and experimental theater strategies, performers can interact with the narrative, using motion sensors to control the performance oftheir on-screen avatars. The audience will be able to see through the character's eyes, hear their interi or thoughts, navigate their way through space, and even talk with the characters. Anything can happen.
SYNOPSIS:
Spectropia, a young woman, lives in the salvage district of an urban center of the future, a black market hub of retro object barter. Using a machine of her own invention to search the past for her father (lost in time looking for a vanished family inheritance), Spectropia is accidentally transported to NYC in 1931 when her machine short circuits and she finds herself in the body of another woman - Verna de Mott - an amateur sleuth.
Spectropia was made possible with the generous support of the Greenwall Foundation; the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology; the LEF Foundation; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; the Multi-Arts Production Fund; the New York State Council on the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York Foundation for the Arts; the Institute for Studies in the Arts at Arizona State University; and the Artech and Performing Arts Lab, Kent, UK.
Toni Dove is an artist/independent producer who works primarily with electronic media, including virtual reality , interactive video installations, performance and DVD ROMs that engage viewers in responsive and immersive narrative environments. Her work has been presented in the United States, Europe and Canada as well as in print and on radio and television. Projects include Arxheology of a Mother Tongue, a virtual reality installation with Michael Mackenzie, Banff Centre for the Arts (see the book "Immersed in Technology" from M.I.T. Press) and an interactive cinema installation, Artificial Changelings, which debuted at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and was part of the exhibition: Body Mécanique, at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, at the Institute for Studies in the Arts at Arizona State University International Performance Studies Conference, in "Wired" at the Arts Center for the Capital Region in Troy, N.Y., Book-Ends Conference. Her current project under development is Spectropia, a feature length interactive movie performance for two players also to be released as a linear feature film. It previewed as a work in progress at Lincoln Center in Scanners, the New York Video Festival 2006. A DVD ROM, Sally or the Bubble Burst, an interactive scene from the Spectropia project is distributed on the Cycling '74 label.
Posted by tml at 03:28 PM
June 23, 2007
Ouija Experiment on Collective Gesture in Responsive Media Spaces (June 21 - July 20)
The Topological Media Lab is conducting a series of experiments - called Ouija - regarding movement and intentionality this June 25 - July 18, at Concordia's EV Blackbox.
Choreographers Soo-yeon Cho & advisor Michael Montanaro, 9 dancers,and members of the Topological Media Lab, and collaborating scientists, will hold a series of experiments in structured improvisation exploring the emergence of collective intention in a field of movement. The field of movement includes un-prepared everyday "un-conscious" movement, pre-conditioned but un-rehearsed movement, as well as fully phrased movement. The experiments will include dancers and non-dancers, sometimes identified as such, sometimes not.
All these experimental events will live in a set of responsive substrate media supplied: with Oxygen's calligraphic media and gestural sound, WYSIWYG's sounding tapestries, and some proto-jewelry. See the TML Showcase of Cosmicomics, Meteor Shower, and WYSIWYG for some related media work.
We will invite expert collaborators to join some of the TML campfires that we'll hold during the Blackbox residency. Please see the Google calendar for the details of our experiment.
A public presentation will be held on Wednesday July 18. We will announce details of this event in the beginning of July.
Contact: info@topologicalmedialab.net
Posted by tml at 11:01 PM
July 13, 2007
Ouija public presentation: July 18, 5-7 pm
The Topological Media Lab invites you to see results from a month-long series of experiments in movement and intentionality on Wednesday July 18 from 5 to 7 PM at the Hexagram Blackbox (B2-845, EV building Concordia University, 1515 Ste. Catherine West).
http://www.topologicalmedialab.net/joomla/main/content/blogsection/8/73/lang,en/
Artists and research affiliates of the Topological Media Lab present results in the form of a participatory session, a performance-event, and a conversation among artists and guests.
Our structured improvisation experiments explore the emergence of collective intention in activity ranging from un-prepared everyday "un-conscious" movement, to pre-conditioned but un-rehearsed improvisatory movement, and phrased, choreographed movement. The dancers and non-dancers have worked with the latest synthesis of the TML's responsive media environment, in Concordia's Hexagram Blackbox.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Sha Xin Wei, TML Director
Soo-yeon Cho, Choreography
Dancers:
Mike Croitoru
Kiani del Valle
Veronique Gaudreau
Rebecca Halls
Marie Raurier
Joannie Pharand
Olivia Foulke
Oxygen
Jean-Sebastien Rousseau, Calligraphic video, videography, visual effects, production
Tim Sutton, Gestural sound design and programming, production
Emmannuel Thivierge, State engine, camera tracking, production
Filip Radonjik, Live ink animation
WYSIWYG
Marguerite Bromley (XS Labs), Tapestry design and weaving
Elliot Sinyor (IDMIL McGill), Tapestry mechatronics
David Gauthier, Tapestry mechatronics
Freida Abtan, Sound design & programming
David Birnbaum (IDMIL McGill), Sound design & programming
Doug van Nort (IDMIL McGill), Gestural motion feature analysis
Josee-Anne Drolet, TML Project Coordinator, production, videography, editing
Harry Smoak, TML Research Coordinator, production support, research advisor
Ma Zhiming, Production
Special thanks to Faculty Colleagues:
Prof. Michael Montanaro, Contemporary Dance, Ouija movement experiment design
Prof. Marcelo Wanderley, IDMIL, McGill University, WYSIWYG gestural control of sound synthesis
Prof. Joey Berzowksa, XS Labs, Interactive textiles
Thanks also to affiliates of the TML and the SenseLab for artistic and research support: Michael Fortin, Elena Frantova, Olfa Driss, Rene Sills, Raul Gomez, Paul Melançon, Antoine Blanchet, Younjeong Choi, Shermine Sawalha
Posted by tml at 03:40 PM
October 02, 2007
TML OPEN HOUSE: October 2, 5-7 pm
Please come visit the Topological Media Lab on the seventh floor of the Engineering Visual Arts building at Concordia University:
TUESDAY OCTOBER 2, 5-7 pm
Room EV7.725
We will celebrate the new year by reviewing fresh work, such as the COSMICOMICS / METEOR SHOWER calligraphic video installations, the WYSIWYG sounding, sensate woven tapestry, and the OUIJA movement and collective intentionality experiments with dancers in responsive media. For more information on these projects visit: http://www.topologicalmedialab.net/joomla/main/content/blogsection/9/75/lang,en/
Official flyer in pdf format can be found here:
http://www.topologicalmedialab.net/joomla/main/IMAGES_/news/OpenHouse2007_flyer.pdf
Welcome!
Posted by tml at 09:03 PM
November 07, 2007
Grotesque pertubations
Four days of experimententing in Soft Architecture[TML] / Dedale [Architecture, University of ManitobaSoft Architecture ] collaboration workshop studio in the Black Box will result in roundtable:
5 @ 7 Friday November 9th
Hexagram, Concordia: Black BoxS3 - 845, 1515 St. Catherine St. West, EV 11-455. Montréal, Québec. H3G 2W1
[See the flyer: http://topologicalmedialab.net/joomla/main/IMAGES_/news/grotesque.pdf ]
Posted by tml at 11:51 PM
March 02, 2008
Dr. Sha Xin Wei will present at two symposia coming April
Critical Digital: What Matter(s)? [ conference pdf ]
Webpage: www.gsd.harvard.edu/cdc
April 18-19, 2008
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Recoded: Landscapes and Politics of New Media [ conference pdf ]
Webpage: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/modernthought/recoded/
April 24-26, 2008
Aberdeen, Scotland
Posted by tml at 02:22 PM
March 17, 2008
REMEDIOS TERRARIUM EXHIBITION at FOFA gallery
MARCH 19 – APRIL 4
The Topological Media Lab invites you to the vernissage of Remedios Terrarium on MARCH 20 at dusk [7:06 pm].
Remedios’ Terrarium articulates morphogenesis in a space artificially augmented by green plants, light- or sound-bearing materials, and machinic memory.
The main Gallery acts as an alchemical vessel mixing multiple species of matter responding to activity inside and outside the space: calligraphic video and sound, plastic cells, structured light, and in certain moments, performers. Other chambers contain sculptural reflections on the terrarium.
We compose the exhibition as two and a half week long event breathing according to clocks as well as contingent activity, punctuated by a performance.
Remedios’ Terrarium features works by affiliates of the TML from the MFA Fibre arts program, Design Computation Arts, Computer Science, Electroacoustics, and the Architecture program of the University of Manitoba.
Remedios Terrarium webpage
Remedios Terrarium process
Address:
FOFA GALLERY, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
1515 STE. CATHERINE ST WEST, H3G 2W1
Posted by tml at 01:47 PM
May 12, 2008
Conference: Recoded: Landscapes and Politics of New Media
Download of the summary article from the Rhizome Digest is available:
"The Medium and Its Shadow : Reflecting on recorded" by Finn Brunton, May 7, 2008
Posted by tml at 10:45 AM
January 29, 2009
Concordia CISSC talk January 29, 7PM : Money Markets and Alchemy, Niklas Damiris, Stanford
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at Concordia University, the Topological Media Lab, and the Workshop in Radical Empiricism are happy to invite you to this event on Thursday, January 29:
January 29, 19:00
1455 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Room: H 767
Economics, Systems Theory, and Philosophy
Dr. Niklas Damiris, Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, will present a lecture entitled "Performing Value: Money, Markets, and Alchemy."
Dr. Damiris is a theoretical physicist turned eco-economist and social entrepreneur. For many years, Dr. Damiris was a research affiliate in research institutions around Silicon Valley: Stanford University, Xerox PARC, Apple's Advanced Technology Group, and more recently at IBM'S Almaden Research Center. At Stanford University, he was a member of the philosophy of quantum mechanics seminar, and has been one of the long-standing members of the Philosophical Reading Group.
He was a special advisor to the Dean of Humanities at UC Santa Cruz for the Knowledge Societies project. Currently, in addition to being a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, and a consulting lecturer at the Swiss Center for Banking Studies. He is co-founder of the start-up Capitalizing Communities, which helps transform social networks into economically sustainable practices.
He has co-written a monograph with Helga Wild and Stefano Franchi called The Passion of Life, and is now working on a book about money, virtuality, and ecology.
Posted by tml at 02:48 PM
May 13, 2009
HARVESTWORKS INSIDE CONCERTS: Gestures and Responsive Media
MAY 14 - 16, 2009, 8.30PM @ ROULETTE
20 Greene Street, (between Canal & Grand), NEW YORK
$15 General Admission, Roulette members FREE
$10 Harvestworks members, students, seniors and under 30
“…lustrous sonic landscapes using [her] highly trained vocal cords”
-The San Francisco Chronicle
“…the naked freedom of jazz improvisation and the alien crunch of digital mechanisms”
Pitchfork Media
Produced in partnership with Roulette’s Mixology Festival, the 2009 Harvestworks Inside performance series presents “Gestures and Responsive Media”, three concert programs focusing on modern experiments in performance technology. Central to this series is the exciting way that live performers are exploring the use of gesture to control computers and building technological environments for free, improvisatory play. From Pamela Z’s gesture-based vocal experiments to Sha Xin Wei’s phenomenological experiments with movement and media, the presenting artists not only expand the boundaries of traditional performance and instrumentation, but also humanize electronics through creative means.
Thursday May 14 - Pamela Z / Elliott Sharp
Friday May 15 – Zach Layton / Sha Xin Wei
Saturday May 16 – Sawako / Bill Hsu & James Fei
About Harvestworks:
Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies. Our programs are made possible with funds from New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Jerome Foundation, media The foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, The New York State Music Fund, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, The Argosy Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, The NY Community Trust, The Andy Warhol Foundation and the Friends of Harvestworks.
About Roulette:
Roulette Intermedium is an Experimental and New Music presenting organization dedicated to the development of emerging and established artists. Since 1978, our ongoing purpose has been to provide opportunities for innovative composers, musicians, sound artists and interdisciplinary collaborators to present their work in accessible, appropriate and professional productions. Roulette hosts over 100 New Music concerts each season, with our annual spring Mixology Festival focusing on new and unusual uses of technology in music. Please visit roulette.orgfor more info or to stream recordings from our free online archive as well as learn more about your favorite artists through interviews, sound clips, and videos now available on our new Blog.
Posted by tml at 02:46 PM