We’re really excited to announce a special Upgrade 2.0 event that will take place 12–7:30pm on Sunday, October 24th in connection with the New Forms Festival. The Upgrade 2.0 @ NFF is a day of artists talks on audio and interactivity at the New Forms Media Society Open Studios. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.
Curated by Malcolm Levy and Kate Armstrong, Upgrade 2.0 at New Forms will feature Vitamins For You, In The Nursery, Sue Costabile, Ben Nevile, Matt Roberts, Nathan Wolek, NomIg, and artists from Reverie: Noise City including Jean Routhier, Igor Santizo, Alberto Guedea, Elizabeth Fischer, and Ken Roux.
From 12 – 1 there will be A/V artist talks by In The Nursery, then at 1 Matt Roberts and Nathan Wolek of the Mobile Performance Group will appear. From 2–3 Vitamins For You will give a talk, and from 3–4 there will be a workshop featuring Ben Nevile.
Starting at 4 pm, Jean Routhier, Igor Santizo, Alberto Guedea, Elizabeth Fischer and Ken Roux will be present to talk about Reverie: Noise City, a virtual urban landscape on the Web. Inside this city, an ever-expanding group of international sound artists will build venues for their work. Reverie: Noise City imagines an urban landscape that includes a variety of poetic extrapolations on the types of regions that exist in our cities – a merging of Sunset Boulevard, Lower Manhattan, boat houses on the canal, the Surrey Landfill site, and a public botanical garden of the future. The web interface for the project consists of an abstracted grid. The contributing artists will locate themselves within the grid and define the characteristics of their environment and sound venue. Over time, the growing collection of audio art venues will define a structure of neighbourhoods and communities in which artists plan time-based events and engage other inhabitants in collaboration and exchange.
The project title comes from a novel entitled The Artificial Kid, by Bruce Sterling. The protagonist in this story (the Kid) is the focal point of a futuristic reality TV show. He moves around in a disjointed urban landscape – traveling from regions of neglect, violence and industrial decay to the mansions of wealth and power. The book is both a comment on our contemporary North American urban phenomenon and an exploration of virtuality. Sterling puts forth the idea that at some point when you take on or wear a virtual personality it becomes a real personality. To a degree, the actor who plays a long-standing role becomes the character and the distinction between real and virtual breaks down. The project also refers to William Gibson’s Walled City and other non-fictional on-line virtual communities (MUDs, chat groups, networked gaming groups, BLOGS, etc.). Walled City”exists as a distributed network game that requires continuous human interaction to keep it alive and functioning. The players adopt a persona and take responsibility for maintaining different parts of the city. These parts are then passed from player to player as the participants log-in and out of the game. In a similar fashion, Reverie: Noise City imagines a city that is activated purely through the ongoing activities and exchanges of sound-artists.
Talks and discussion will start at 12 and run all afternoon at Open Studios. A reception featuring audio performances will begin at 6 pm.
Schedule: 12 – 7:30 pm
12–1 PM: A/V artist talks by In The Nursery
1–2 PM: Matt Roberts and Nathan Wolek of the Mobile Performance Group
2–3 PM: Vitamins for You
3–4 PM: Workshop featuring Ben Nevile
4–5 PM: Jean Routhier, Igor Santizo, Alberto Guedea, Elizabeth Fischer,
and Ken Roux from Reverie: Noise City
6–7:30 PM: Reception and Performance
Mobile Performance Group: http://www.mattroberts.info/mpg/
In The Nursery : http://www.inthenursery.com/
Sue Costabile : http://www.orthlorng.com/sue/bio.html
Reverie:Noise City : http://reverie.aaeol.ca/
Sunday, October 24th from 12 – 7:30 pm
New Forms Media Society Open Studios
252 East 1st Avenue
Vancouver, Canada
Free Admission