ArtCamp – a spot of liveblogging

10:53am – got here at ArtCamp quite late. Sat in on the tail end of Jason Vanderhill’s session on an art olympics.

11:15am – Julie Andreyev’s project *glisten) is very pretty. Self-organization and emergent patterns remind me of Rudy Rucker and his discussions of cellular automata in The Lifebox, the Soul and the Universe. There was a Found Object Puppeteering session next door and they made a story! Hopefully they’ll be able to show their video over lunchtime; Jason is hunting for a USB cable.

11:56am – Phillip Jeffrey is talking Facebook and art through the graffiti application.

• I am often astounded by the sorts of things people draw on their Superwalls.
• I am also hoping to step out at some point to go to the storytelling session in the smaller room.
• Fastest growing demo within Facebook is over 25.
• My profile page is so sparse compared to other people’s pages – perhaps I’m not making it as inimical to my identity as I should be.

re.

• Groups have been created to share graffiti drawings. Also using tablets – using the mouse seems unbelievably complex, touchpads more so!
• That is one crazy iPhone bill. 300 pages.

12:25pm – I went a little too late to the storytelling session to make too much sense from it, though it sounded like a good time. A little science vs. direct knowledge debate. I always think it’s interesting how science and nature is set up as opposing forces. I like to topple dichotomies, especially that one. They are systems of inquiry with different ends in mind, and I take them as they are.

12:32pm – on to Emotional New Media Portraiture, talk by Steve DiPaola, prof at School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU.

1:07pm – Mapping walk is leaving soon! And mobile clubbing at quarter to two. I’m going to the public market for pesto pasta smelly potato salad. Had a pleasant discussion with Andrew Feenberg, whom I’ve never met despite his being his in the School of Communication at SFU since 2003.

2:41pm – The mobile clubbing was great! Dancing with kids is always awesome. Dancing to Sigur Ros…let’s just say I really was in my own little world. Went to Sara Coffin‘s presentation (on behalf of Diego, now in the Philippines) on Open Source Dance, and now in a presentation from Nimble Technologies based on ideas of Digital Minimalism from a very smart sounding chap from Chicago, Patrick Lichty.

3:00pm – His new media art pieces are a little cerebral, as could be expected, but strangely interesting. He works with single processors and creates pieces questioning our reliance and relationship with video displays and how tightly bound our relationship is with information and electronic displays.

3:08 – a good question about ahistoricity in digital culture, in terms of most people using tools that they may not know the history of. It seems to me that the faith that we ask people to have in technology cripples them in some way, because we make the tool inimical to work, a specific purpose, instead of making the tool an instrument of empowerment through which people can solve problems. This is a bit of a generation gap as well, where digital tools are now tools for living in a sense rather than just tools for doing.

4:01 – The Interactive Narrative session was pretty interesting. Must check out that HBOVoyeur site, which allows people to “edit” a narrative based on raw material unfolding through a Flash web interface (you can even time-shift it a bit by going forwards and backwards in the time of the video. It’d be neat if you could get it to play backwards, “Memento” style). I think my invocation of Snakes on a Plane as a pleasurable experience in the traditional “narrative” form in which the interactivity took place as a shaping force of the narrative, and in which the audience participation script provided the interactivity, was not too shabby. On the Zimmerman scale, it simultaneously offered both the typical type 1 passive narrative experience as well as a type 4 cultural shaping experience. Neato.

4:30 – I left after the questions in the big room session, because I never last past 4 o’clock at these things, and ArtCamp, alas, is no exception. Saw a friend from high school who goes to Emily Carr and went to The Stock Market at the Public Market for yummy soup!

I wasn’t feeling at my most social this particular day, so I didn’t meet as many people as I could have…at the same time, ArtCamp had a much different feel from the bustle of BarCamps, where it’s about trading business cards and an awful lot more tech-centric. (That said, props to the organizers for swinging the free wifi.) On the whole, this reminded me a lot of the Subtle Technologies conference I attended last year in Toronto (link added – thanks to Richard for knowing my own website better than I do), mainly because I don’t get nearly enough exposure to people using technology for artistic purposes, and I’m always amazed when I see people who are able to think past the details to see something conceptually mind-bending.

And so ends the liveblogging experiment as well. Maybe less on the mundane details? Or better if annotated with pictures? Will need to pick up some tips on this from Miss604 in the future.