Trendsetting Art for 2012

Mutual Art - It would be difficult to say that 2011 signified a full crossover success point for new media art, but this year certainly did see increasing momentum for mainstream awareness (both inside the art world and out) of art and artists that deal with new technologies, digital production, and the Internet. Here, ARTINFO looks at three trends that manifested themselves in 2011, and will continue to define new media art in 2012.  Read more.

Three Trends That Defined New Media Art in 2011

Art Info - It would be difficult to say that 2011 signified a full crossover success point for new media art, but this year certainly did see increasing momentum for mainstream awareness (both inside the art world and out) of art and artists that deal with new technologies, digital production, and the Internet. Here, ARTINFO looks at three trends that manifested themselves in 2011, and will continue to define new media art in 2012.  Read more.

Louvre and Nintendo aim to make art child's play

Agence France Presse @ Google News - The Louvre said Thursday it has teamed up with Nintendo to hand out 3D game consoles to guide visitors through its vast art collections, as part of a stepped up digital drive at the Paris museum.

Starting in March, the world's most visited museum will gradually replace its traditional audio-guides -- used by just four percent of its 8.5 million annual visitors -- with 3DS pocket consoles.  Read more.

Digital artist wins first CERN, Ars Electronica joint-residency competition

Symmetry Breaking - CERN and international cyberarts organization Ars Electronica declared Julius von Bismarck the winner of their first digital arts joint-residency program today. The 28-year-old German artist will spend two months at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, and a third month at Ars Electronica in Austria, collaborating with scientists and digital experts to create a physics-inspired artwork as part of the Collide@CERN program.  Read more.

Vast Vistas: Landscape in New Media

Press Release - Boston Cyberarts presents its second exhibition in Atlantic Wharf's new dedicated art galler,Vast Vistas: Landscape in New Media, an exhibition of work by four artists: Julia Hechtman, Georgie Friedman, Jane Marsching and Luke Strosnider.

Landscapes are more the product of culture than nature. When artists try to reproduce the world in its natural state, they create a vision of how they wish nature would be.  Read more.

Microsoft Tag combines technology with art

Ubergizmo - Technology has been used to create art in so many different ways – it’s nothing new. But it’s always refreshing to see it being used in a brand new way that hasn’t been done before – and I think the Tag: We’re It digital art installation pulls it off successfully. This digital art installation that was recently shown off in Austin, Texas; made use of Microsoft Tag technology to add a twist to the interactive art show.  Read more.

How flood led to digital art innovation at Coda Arts

The Journal (UK) - More than eight years ago, a flood hit Peter McAdam's flat, ruining many of his old photos. All the same, once he'd fished them out, he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

“I scanned them into the computer, because I was fascinated by the textures”, he said. “I did a series of films on them in 2007, and then I started thinking that it might be great if the images could somehow be sparked off by sound.”

McAdam has been working on the concept for Coda Arts for four years. The idea is to create a collage of images that react to sound. The user uploads certain background images, and as noises play, these images pop up around and on top of each other, creating a bubbling, flowing picture.  Read more.

Digital Darkroom: An Exploration of Altered Realities

ABC News (blog) - Images have been manipulated since the earliest days of photography. Techniques such as retouching, compositing and multiple exposures have been employed in the darkroom for generations, and with the advent of computer technologies, new styles have emerged. An exhibit at Los Angeles’ Annenberg Space for Photography showcases the work of 17 artists and explores the intersection of art and technology. “Digital Darkroom” opens to the public Dec. 17, 2011, and runs through May 28, 2012.  Read more.

New Digital Art and Media Projection festival opens in Eugene, Oregon

KVAL (Oregon) - From near the top of the parking garage at the Hult Center, a group turns on a projector and plays a reel.

In just moments, moving images like graffiti and recorded videos appear on the side of the Hult Center.

The images are all part of the first ever Digital Art and Media Projection festival in Eugene.  Read more.

Thousands Believe in University's digital showcase

Creative Boom - Nearly 3,000 people from Salford and Manchester enjoyed a stunning showcase of digital art and technology last weekend when the University of Salford threw open the doors of its new MediaCityUK building for a fantastic free multimedia event.

Entitled Believe, the event celebrated the latest in digital entertainment and creativity brought to life at the University's new MediaCityUK site.  Read more.

Ironbridge Gorge Museum to host Digital Art Installation As part of the London 2012 Festival

Wellington News (UK ) - The programme of events for the London 2012 Festival has been announced with leading artists from all over the world coming together in the UK’s biggest ever nationwide festival. Over 1,000 events will take place across the country with more than 10 million free opportunities for people to get involved through dance, music, theatre, the visual arts, film and digital innovation.  Read more.

Digital art presents preservation challenges for museums

Deutche Welle (Germany) - Museum guests can currently make their way through a jungle of digital art works at the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (ZKM). A giant bank of 50 television screens flickers as if someone is constantly zapping the channel. Next to it, visitors can pedal a real bicycle through a virtual world, steering their way through words projected onto an enormous screen. They can also use an iPhone App to create a random painting.

But despite the differences in when, how and why they were created, the works in this exhibition titled "Digital Art Works: the Challenges of Conservation" have one thing in common: They are all in danger of disappearing.  Read more.

Frequency Festival

Lincoln (UK) - Frequency Festival attracted 14,000 visitors to the city’s art venues as well as some creative locations during last week’s half term school holiday.

The LPAC, Collection, Usher Gallery, The Drill Hall and even the streets were taken over by digital arts that included...read more.

Digital Art Expands Opportunities for Young Artists in Romania Read more: http://www.globalpressinstitute.org/global-news/eastern-europe/romania/digital-art-expands-opportunities-young-artists-romania#ixzz1cgYyefRI

Global Press Institute (Romania) - Oana Livia, 26, is a mixed media artist. Livia, from Focsani, a city in eastern Romania, says she prefers to combine traditional and digital techniques to create her artwork.

To make her art, Livia first draws on paper, then retouches the pieces digitally. She says digital technology has improved her work.  Read more.

Desert "glacier" looks to mix art, science

CBS News - Is it a piece of art, or a groundbreaking water experiment in the desert?

Take the design of a leaf — nature's master at absorbing the sun's energy — and cover its 2,153 square feet surface with solar cells. Under the face of the elm leaf-shape structure are cooling condensers that soak up humidity from the desert air. Even in the hottest conditions, it will produce a layer of ice on the leaf's ridged underside — so the theory goes.

Ap Verheggen's vision of creating a "glacier" in the desert is a statement. It's not meant to solve the world's ever-worsening water problems, but to demonstrate, as he says, that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible.

For the Dutch artist, his sculpture will be a cry of alarm at the rapid pace of global warming. Impractical in itself...read more.

A child's eye for enchantment

Sunday Morning Herald (Australia) - When Sarah Davis sat down to visualise the story behind the alliterative verse penned by friend and children's fiction author Christopher Cheng, she put aside her sketchbook and watercolours.

Davis's brief from publishers Random House was to give Cheng's words, written a decade before, context and a unifying narrative.

Given the countless combinations of story and pictures that have been used, you'd expect there to be little room for innovation in children's book illustration. However, new illustrators are stretching boundaries, experimenting with art forms and using digital technology to interpret stories in styles that suit a book's mood and setting.  Read more.

Digital Art Works. The Challenges of Conservation

E-Flux - For a few decades now, digitalization in the art context has enabled and simplified the processing and distribution of data. However, the preservation of new media artworks, in particular those that are digital-born, but also those subject to digitalization after their creation, is rendered difficult by the rapid pace of technological change. This circumstance creates uncertainty concerning the preservation and transmission of the artistic products of our time.

The exhibition Digital Art Works. The Challenges of Conservation aims to shed light on the variety of questions that art institutions and artists...read more.

Canon launches Pixma Pro-1 flagship photo and artwork printer

Digital Arts Magazine - Canon has launched its new flagship Pixma Pro printer for gallery-quality prints of photos and artwork. The company says that the Pixma Pro-1 is the world’s first A3+ printer to feature 12 separate inks.  Read more.

Visual arts a hit at area schools

Bakersfield.com - Bakersfield will play host to art teachers from across the state early next month at a convention titled "Preserving the Arts Through Creativity and Advocacy." And considering what's been going on in local visual arts classrooms lately, it's no wonder.

"Things are better now that they have ever been," said art teacher Hank Washington, who has been teaching at South High School for 38 years.  Read more.

NEoN Digital Arts Festival 2011

List (UK) - Digital arts festival NEoN is once again transforming Dundee into an electronic playground for six days. With its series of film screenings, live music, DJ performances and workshops, NEoN’s main aim is to create works of art that couldn’t have existed before the computer age.  Read more.

Wall Street Journal (blog) - TheBlu is a virtual ocean, where audiences can use Wemo’s “Maker Media Platform” to buy user-created animals and plants to populate their screens and jump around to various oceanic vistas. Each of the creatures and items available for sale are designed by artists, animators, software engineers and developers from around the world, who receive a cut of the profits whenever one of their creations is bought. To date, over 100 artists have contributed.  Read more.

BMW Tate Live Will Explore Art in the Digital Space

PopSop - BMW and Tate Modern London have announced a major partnership called BMW Tate Live. The four-year project will explore modern performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space.

A series of artist performances created specifically to be broadcast ‘live’ online will mark the launch of the project.  Read more.

The Digital Art Economy: How is the internet changing the way art is made and distributed?

Financial Times - Unlike the music or publishing industries, the art market hasn’t really felt the nudging negative effect of the digital world on its traditional financial model. The art world’s conventional structure is based around objects and a pyramidal model of exclusivity, neither of which lend themselves to virtuality.

But clearly the digital domain, with its increasing technological possibilities, has to emerge as an alternative and credible platform. Among the Frieze Projects, newly commissioned work shown during Frieze Art Fair, and this year supported by...read more.

Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc. dies at the age of 56

Washington Post - Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., passed away on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at the age of 56.

Born on February 24th, 1955 in San Francisco, Steven Paul Jobs was adopted as an infant by Paul and Clara (née Hagopian) Jobs. While attending Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, Jobs began working at Hewlett-Packard where he met Steve Wozniak.  Read more.

Iconic Kodak struggles in digital age

USA Today - Buffeted by foreign competition, then blindsided by a digital revolution, photography icon Eastman Kodak is fighting for survival after a quarter-century of failed efforts to find its focus.

The 131-year-old company that turned picture-taking into a hobby for the masses and became singularly synonymous with capturing memories has tried to bat down sudden talk of bankruptcy. But concern about its grim prospects has hit fever pitch after it enlisted a legal adviser to explore ways to revive its sagging fortunes.  Read more.

Pratt Institute Department Of Digital Arts To Present Fall 2011 Lecture Series

Animation World Network - The Department of Digital Arts Lecture Series is a seasonal series organized by the Department of Digital Arts in the School of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. The series features critics, artists, and curators of digital art. The guests include both emerging talent and established pioneers in the fields of digital animation, motion arts, interactive artwork, and digital imaging. Please see below for this semester's full line-up, followed by more information on each of these acclaimed artists and writers.

September 28, 2011 - Takehito Etani - "Transmutation of Life"

October 12, 2011 - Paddy Johnson - "Reviewing New Media"

November 2, 2011 - Man Bartlett - "Hashtag Space"

November 9, 2011 - LoVid (Tali Hinki and Kyle Lapidus) - "Wirefull Living, Synchro Schedule"

November 16, 2011 - Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky) - "Sound Unbound"

This lecture series is free and open to the public; however, seating is limited.  Read more.

Samsung Aims to Replace Art Canvases with SM’ART Gallery Panels

Chip Chick - Samsung’s SMART TVs and smartphones might be all the rage nowadays, but the company is about to head into a new frontier of SMART devices, and these are the first of their kind. Samsung’s upcoming SM’ART Gallery Panels are essentially digital canvases that are designed to display fine art. The panels themselves are high resolution LCD panels that have been created to accommodate works of art.

Samsung has teamed up with Planar to develop this new display technology which they have actually been working on, for as far back as five years. The two display manufacturers have been working together to develop panels that are much higher in resolution than your standard television display, and that are able to reproduce the artists original colors and vision – down to even the texture of the display.  Read more. 

"Pixel Craft" show features digital art in Oregon

Gazette Times (Oregon) - This year’s Fall Festival is going digital, with “Pixel Craft,” its first all-digital arts show featuring artists who create their artwork entirely digitally, using computer programs such as Painter and Photoshop.

The director of the festival, Cynthia Spencer, wanted to add something new and different to the arts portion of the weekend event, and worked to create “Pixel Craft” with mid-valley artist Patricia Smith, who told Spencer about an all-digital arts show she attended in Lake Oswego.  Read more.  

Remastered' exhibition gives art classics a new digital life

Telegraph UK - For more than a decade, the Intel Inside logo has been one consumers look for on computers. Increasingly, however, it’s one that might as well be appearing on art galleries too.

Intel Remastered Showreel from jotta on Vimeo.

The computer chip manufacturer has found in recent years that demand for so-called “digital art”, both from artists and from gallery visitors, has mushroomed. Often quirky, sometimes agonisingly pretentious projects now include computers in a range of ways, and the genre has moved rapidly on from the straightforward video installation to interactive, demanding works.  Read more.

Japanese commuter paints iPod art on train to work (VIDEO)

Telegraph UK - Using just his finger tips and a cheap application, Seikou Yamaoka carefully builds up strokes of colour on a 3.5-inch screen to create an image resembling more an oil painting than a digital artwork.  Read more.

Richard Rinehart on digital art

Bucknell University - Richard Rinehart, director of the Samek Art Gallery, discusses the importance of digital art and the Gallery's collection.

Q. What exactly is digital art and why is it important?

A. Traditional art in the Western fine art tradition would be those media that we are all familiar with: sculpture, painting, photography, printing and printmaking. Nontraditional art is any practice or form that doesn't fit into those standards, so anything from conceptual art or performance art, installation art. More recently, video art is a nontraditional form that has been around long enough to be on the cusp of becoming more of a traditional art.

Digital art is not digitized art, that is to say...read more.

Transy's new digital art festival promises plenty of 'be-boop-bop'

Kentucky.com - Transylvania University music professor Tim Polashek, who is planning the school's first digital art festival, has fielded several questions along the lines of: "Is this going to sound like real music, or be-boop-bop?"

"I'd say the latter," says Andrea Fisher, director of Transylvania's Morlan Gallery, and Polashek quickly adds, "which I consider real music."

That gets them both laughing. They're familiar with the resistance that digital art can occasionally meet.

That's what will be on full display Friday and Saturday at the inaugural Studio 300 Digital Art and Music Festival.  Read more.

Basquiat meets Mario Brothers? Digital poet Jason Nelson on the meaning of art games

Guardian UK - The phrase 'art game' means very different things to different people. True, some dismiss the whole idea as pretentious nonsense, the cynical appropriation of a mass entertainment platform by opportunist design students. But we'll ignore those views for now.

For others, it's about the sometimes disturbing experimental games produced by the likes of Jonatan Söderström and Jason Rohrer. Titles such as Clean Asia! and Passage have the trappings of sophisticated commercial releases, but often comment on the game development process or use game structures to explore much darker themes and ideas.   Read more.

Mendel Art Gallery: Digital Arts Group Pulls Out Bid

The StarPhoenix (Canada) - The group backing a digital arts centre for the Mendel Art Gallery building has pulled out of the running to occupy the space, leaving only the children's museum bidding.

The organizers behind the Frederick Mendel Digital Arts Centre of Excellence said Friday after a summer of consideration, the city's concept for the building and the Kinsmen Park area doesn't fit its plans.

"We still want our project to go forward in some form," said Anand Ramayya, owner of Karma Film, a Saskatoonbased production company involved in the bid.  Read more.

Analyst: While HP Reassesses Its Options, You Should Reassess HP

Read Write Enterprise - It's often said that business leaders make their companies in their own image. In that case, no two images ever stood in starker contrast with one another than the Hewlett-Packard of former CEO Mark Hurd, and the Hewlett-Packard of present CEO Léo Apotheker. Whether for better or worse, HP is becoming a different company than the one many enterprise clients signed their contracts with just a few years ago.

That fact has led one Forrester analyst to recommend this to his firm's clients: not that they dump HP, but that they make a careful re-assessment of their business relationship with the firm, taking into consideration whether a contingency plan for switching vendors might be in order.  Read more.

The Art of Imaging

DAN - Architectural and Design Photography: The Art of Imaging is graphics and fine art print exhibition co-hosted by The Washington Design Center and Dodge-Chrome, a premier print-services company in Washington DC.  It's a six-week exhibition

The six-week exhibit will include innovative display and “environmental décor,” in which photographic images are printed on a interesting and unusual substrate, including acrylic panels, metal and wood.  Read more.

HP exits the PC market

Wall Street Journal -Hewlett Packard Co.'s planned exit of the personal-computer business will leave Dell Inc. as the last big American supplier of both PCs and other hardware for corporations, as companies find it increasingly difficult to focus both on consumer and commercial sales.

But Dell isn't expected to follow suit with its own spinoff. The Round Rock, Texas, company on Friday argued that H-P's move largely validated a strategy it was already pursuing. Read more.

Cybersounds Electronic Music series :Boston Cyberarts teams with Atlantic Wharf

DAN ; Boston Cyberarts has partnered with Atlantic Wharf to present Cybersounds.  It's a new series of free concerts, which explores "the creative and cultural potential in the convergence of music, sound and technology to Boston's Waterfront."  Read more.

Cultural Bits: Empowering Art of the Future

Asia One - Here's an unusual art exhibition where you, the audience, can help "create" the works of art on display.

Art connects with science in the fascinating genre of digital media art, which uses a combination of video, computer animations and interactive art to express concepts and ideas.

For instance, in the exhibit, The Art of Zen 2011, you can pick up digitized 3-D features such as mountains, water, trees, flowers and man and place them on the screen showing sansui, a traditional landscape ink painting dating back to 5th Century China. An original landscape is this created.

Bulgaria launches its annual Digital Art Festival

DAN - In their third successive year, Bulgaria's National Academy of Art (NAA) will host its Digital Arts Festival--known as the DA Fest.  The event welcomes artists from around the world working in the field of digital art and new media--presenting the Bulgarian public with Internet art, sound and video art, live performance and installations.  Read more.