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ZeroOne San Jose / ISEA2006 press center
June 8: TEN ASTONISHING REASONS PDF Print E-mail
Press Releases
Written by Michela Pilo   
Jun 12, 2006 at 12:30 PM

For seven consecutive days this summer, nearly 200 juried artists from around the world will be converging on the Silicon Valley to showcase some of the most innovative, astounding art ever seen or experienced. It’s ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge and ISEA2006 Symposium. From August 7-13, ZeroOne San Jose will transform the entire city into the North American epicenter for the intersection of art and digital culture. It is a multi-dimensional, startling and brilliant event featuring exhibits, live cinema, performances, workshops, and youth activities. All are one-of-a-kind, many never-before, only-here experiences. Here are a handful of the amazing projects you will find at ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge:

 

ONE. PigeonBlog provides an alternative way to participate in environmental air pollution data gathering. The project equips urban homing pigeons with custom-made backpacks containing GPS-enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices. The devices will text message real-time location-based air pollution and image data to www.PigeonBlog.com. PigeonBlog is being developed in conjunction with Preemptive Media's AIR project. Artists: Beatriz da Costa with Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto.

TWO. Karaoke Ice is a delicious pop culture mash-up, an ice cream truck-turned-mobile karaoke-unit, deployed to unite people in a collective quest to transform the streets of San Jose into a space of community interaction. Participants karaoke for an audience while sitting in the transformed front cab of the vehicle, and use a customized karaoke engine to record a song for later broadcast, as the truck makes it way to a variety of festival locations. Free frozen treats lure prospective performers to participate, distributed by Remedios the Squirrel Cub, who drives the truck, Karaoke Ice is a commissioned residency project by ZeroOne San Jose, San Jose State University, and the The Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs at the Montalvo Arts Center. Artists: Nancy Nowacek, Katie Salen, Marina Zurkow.

THREE. Pimp My Heart. Cranked-up bass sounds blasting from pimped cars are a familiar annoyance of the city streets in the world, but what if the bass sounds are the drivers’ real-time heartbeat instead of beats of music? Does our relationship with the vehicle/driver and the pedestrians change? The HBBB system amplifies the heartbeat of the driver in real-time by interfacing the car audio with a heartbeat sensor. By hacking on the technology/hobby that is often used as psychological armor and a territory-marking tool, the project turns the body/vehicle relationship inside-out, addressing the vulnerability of the human body and emotion and aims to understand our obsession with automobiles and itheir modification. A group of local car enthusiasts will be involved in developing the design of the demo vehicle, as well as driving around to night cruises in their own vehicles with HBBB. Artists: Takehito Etani and David Tinapple.

FOUR. SimVeillance: San Jose. Let the games begin! The artists will recreate the Cesar Chavez plaza in downtown San Jose using the Sims 2, and will work from images captured by surveillance cameras trained on the square, to populate the simulated square with replicas of ‘real’ pedestrians passing by. Walk into the square and you not only become an appreciator of the art, but a player as well. On one display, the game will be running, populated with the “borrowed” characters taken from surveillance of real people. On the other, a slide show with paired images: surveillance photo and digital snapshot of the ‘Sim’ that was created in the likeness of the real person. Artists: Katherine Isbister, Rainey Straus.

FIVE. Soundbike is a portable sound piece that uses motion-based generators mounted to an ordinary bicycle to broadcast the sound of laughter as the bike is pedaled through the urban environment. The laughter is generated by playing sequences of short source clips that start when the bike reaches a cruising speed and then respond to the bike's velocity. Festival attendees will be able to borrow the bike and ride through San Jose, laughing all the way. By broadcasting sound directly as a result of his or her motion and gesture, the rider simultaneously occupies the role of controller, performer and audience, becoming part of the acoustic ecology of the city through technological intervention. Soundbike has been shown as part of Glowlab Open Lab at Art Interactive, Cambridge and as part of Art Projects at Art Basel Miami Beach. Artist: Jessica Thompson.

SIX. Secrets, told through the use of video and subtitles on mini-LCD screens, are revealed in hidden and unexpected spots scattered around the C4F3 Interactive Café. They are discovered by visitors to the café in places like under the salt, in the interior door of a bathroom stall, at the cocktail bar, or beneath the sugar dispenser at the coffee counter. The secrets themselves were collected by the artist in a multi-year project, and were found by her through posting calls on internet sites, as well as through distributing thousands of postcards about the project in cities all over the world. Participants were directed to www.seekingsecrets.com, where they sent their secrets without revealing their e-mail addresses. The artist set these secrets to her own video footage, resulting in a series of short, intriguing, and revealing films. C4F3 visitors are invited to participate in the project, submitting their own secrets, which will be made into videos by the artist and screened during the Festival. Artist: JD Beltran.

SEVEN. Sonic Fabric is a textile woven from recycled audiocassette tape that has been recorded with a collage of sounds collected from a wide range of sources, including music, ambient nature and urban noise, spoken word, etc. The material can actually be made audible by running a tape head over its surface. A dress made from the fabric was worn and "played" on stage by Jon Fishman, former drummer of the band Phish, on April 16, 2004. . Artist: Alyce Santoro.

EIGHT. VJ Tulse Luper began life as a journey on film, in 92 suitcases, created by Peter Greenaway. In the three years since the first of three planned films premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Tulse Luper, has become an international network, an online game, the source for television programming currently in production, and the luminal point of access to the evolving world of the VJ experience. In June of 2005 VJ Tulse Luper made its debut in Amsterdam as a live re-mix performed by Greenaway and crossed into a new sensory threshold that generated shock waves through contemporary art and club audiences. Greenaway conducts and composes live edits of his film, drawing from all 92 suitcases, sending cascading and alternating images in real-time across multiple screens to the accompaniment of pulsing dance music. The North American Premiere of this incredible multimedia performance is happening at ZeroOne San Jose on Friday, Aug. 11 at 9 p.m. at Parkside Hall. Tickets are $30 ($24 before June 15).

NINE. SVEN is a system consisting of a camera, monitor, two computers, and custom software, set up in public places. The software consists of a custom computer vision application that tracks pedestrians and detects their characteristics, and a real-time video processing application that receives this information and uses it to generate music video-like visuals from the live camera feed. The resulting video and audio are displayed on a monitor in the public space, interrupting the standard security camera type display each time a potential rock star is detected. The idea is to humorously examine and demystify concerns about surveillance and computer systems not in terms of being watched, but in terms of how the watching is being done - and how else it might be done if other people were at the wheel... Artists: Amy Alexander, Jesse Gilbert, Wojciech Kosma, Vincent Rabaud, Nikhil Rasiwasia.

TEN. Survival Research Labs. Some things are purely mythic like SRL, which springs from the shell of abandoned buildings, monster robotic history, and fire. An interdisciplinary mash-up like no other, SRL brings a newly conceived performance to ZeroOne San Jose, full of its legendary machines, flame-throwers, and bombastic sound. Humans are only present as audience or operators; in this show it’s all about the machines. As described by founder Mark Pauline, an SRL performance is comprised of “ritualistic interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices." Whatever else you call it, (and the title won’t be announced until just before the show), we call it big fun, exciting, and something you won’t want to miss. This one is definitely for more than the brainiac crowd – it’s monster machine, meets hovercraft, meets huge sculptural creatures, meets fire. Friday, Aug. 11 at 10:30 p.m. behind South Hall. Tickets $25.

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About ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival of Art on the Edge

ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival of Art on the Edge is an innovative, ground-breaking biennial art festival in the Silicon Valley designed to show exhibits, performances, workshops, and events that have been created using the newest developments in contemporary art practice. The festival’s themed projects examine and reflect issues and experiences of everyday life. Artistic and revolutionary digital culture elements are woven throughout. A serious art event, ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival of Art on the Edge provides academics, artists, and technology enthusiasts an inside look at new territories in creative imagination and inventiveness. However, the event is also designed with facets of learning, play, and virtual technology that make it an enjoyable experience for families, students, teens, underground culture enthusiasts, and explorers of new millennium digital culture alike.

The inaugural ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival of Art on the Edge takes place in 2006 in conjunction with the ISEA2006 Symposium. With a record number of artistic submissions from around the world, festival and symposium attendees have the opportunity to make live contact with the most distinctive, astonishing and startling contemporary art of the new millennium. The festival will take place through-out downtown San Jose from August 7-13, 2006.
For more information, visit http://01SJ.org.

For further media information, please contact:
Hawkins Public Relations; 4640 Admiralty Way, Suite 500, Marina Del Rey, California 90292
tel: 310-496-5858/fax: 310-496-5701

Download TEN ASTONISHING REASONS TO FIND YOUR WAY TO SAN JOSE THIS SUMMER .pdf
Last Updated ( Jun 12, 2006 at 12:42 PM )
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