Artists Reclaim the Commons

Becky Huff Hunter, “Philadelphia Social Art,” in Artists Reclaim the Commons: New Works / New Territories / New Publics edited by Glenn Harper and Twylene Moyer, ISC Press, Hamilton, NJ, 2013, pp. 268–274.

Announcing LACMA’ s Art + Technology Lab Artist Grant Awards

Last December, LACMA announced the new Art + Technology program and issued the first call for proposals. By the end of January, they had received more than 450 proposals from artists, architects, designers, and developers from all over the world, involving everything from drones and data visualization to rockets, robotics, sonification, and sensors. LACMA curators, staff, and Art + Technology advisory board members reviewed them, looking for projects that are experimental and address issues at the intersection of culture and technology, provide opportunities for public engagement, and produce data, methods of models that might be of interest to other artists and technology developers.

Photogrammetry avatar at Hollywood and Vine, August 14th, 2014.

John Craig Freeman will draw on crowdsourcing, augmented reality, and EEG (electroencephalography) technology in a project titled EEG AR: Things We Have Lost. The artist will interview people on the streets of Los Angeles about things, tangible or intangible, that they have lost, creating a database of lost objects. A later performance at LACMA will allow participants to “conjure” virtual objects using brainwave technology and augmented reality. Freeman is a founding member of the collective Manifest.AR, whose work seeks to expand the notion of public space by exploring how digital networked technology is transforming our sense of place.

Project website.

EEG AR: Things We Have Lost, Basel

John Craig Freeman, with Lena Jermann
Virtuale Switzerland, Basel
Exhibition: 19 June 2014 to 28 September 2014
Opening: 4 to 7 pm, Thursday 19 June 201

EEG AR: Things We Have Lost allows participants to conjure up virtual objects by simply imagining them into existence. A database of objects based on the broad theme of “Things We Have Lost,” which includes things such as pensions, empires and dodo birds, has been generated by asking the people of Basel what they have lost.

The project consists of a city-wide public art installation viewable on smartphones and other mobile devices.

For more information and instructions please see the project website and for documentation, please see the photo stream.

Virtuelle Realität: Basel verwandelt sich in ein futuristisches Blumenmeer Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, June 16, 2014.

AR[t] magazine, Augmented Reality, Art and Technology

Issue 5, May, 2014

The fifth issue of AR[t] magazine is available online or it can be downloaded. In this issue, the magazine looks at AR from various perspectives, however, the articles do have a common denominator: the future of Augmented Reality. Please see Site Venice Site Biennale: The Manifest.AR Augmented Reality Intervention into the 2011 Venice Biennial, by Tamiko Thiel, pp. 56 – 63.

Rocky Flats Then and Now: 25 Years After the Raid

Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities
On June 6, 7, and 8, 2014

The extraordinary June 6, 1989 FBI and EPA raid on the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant was the beginning of the end for that large, nationally important factory just northwest of Arvada, Colorado. The raid preceded the plant’s plutonium production shutdown six months later – an action with local, national, and global impacts. It symbolized a change in U.S. national priorities that began balancing national security policy with environmental protection at a time when the Cold War nuclear arms race had slowed considerably. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the same month Rocky Flats was shut down.

On June 6, 7, and 8, 2014 the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities will host a multifaceted art and humanities event commemorating the 25 th Anniversary of the raid. It will feature an art and history exhibit (including photographs and artifacts from the Rocky Flats plant) and panel discussions focusing on the raid and its consequences, including a grand jury investigation and subsequent disputed settlement of charges involving environmental crimes. Speakers will include former Colorado Governor Roy Romer, former U.S. Representative David Skaggs, former FBI agent Jon Lipsky, and several plant workers, neighbors, activists, and experts. – See more.

This event coincides with the 25 anniversary of the making of the Operation Greenrun II public art project at Rocky Flats.

View the video of the presentation.

See photo stream documentation.

Awareness Raising and Show of Support Planned for Sat July 19 2014. Join Us!, Candelas Glows, June 30, 2014.

Mapping Culture: Communities, Sites and Stories

Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES)
University of Coimbra, Portugal
May 28 – 30, 2014

The International Conference Mapping Culture: Communities, Sites and Stories will explore both conventional and alternative approaches to mapping cultures and communities in an international context.

EEG AR: Things We Have Lost, by John Craig Freeman, allows participants to conjure up virtual objects by simply imagining them into existence using brainwave sensor technology. A database of objects based on the broad theme of “Things We Have Lost,” which includes things such as pensions, empires and dodo birds, has been generated by asking the people of Coimbra what they have lost.

Please see the photo stream.

Metro-NeXt

Augmented reality public art by John Craig Freeman

Zürich meets New York
Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Terminal, New York, NY
May 17th – 22nd, 2014

With: Arthur Clay, DAW International, Marc Pollefeys, ETH Zurich, Caroline Bernard, Lalie Pascual, HR Giger, Lorenz Meier, Curious Minds, and Charles McCarry

Metro-NeXt took the public on a virtual journey from New York City’s Grand Central Station to the heart of Zurich, using the latest in augmented reality technology. The project exhibited a replica of a vintage New York City subway entrance that transported visitors to downtown Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city. It uses augmented reality and photogrammetry technologies to display 3D models of Zurich’s old town and the historic “Augustinergasse.”

MetroNeX+ is presented by ETH Zurich, Digital Art Week International, and Virtuale Switzerland.

See the photo stream.

Also, please see Platonic Solids.

Monument / Anti-Monument, Sculpture City Saint Louis 2014

April 9 – 13, 2014
Saint Louis, MO

Monument / Anti-Monument is an international conference that will bring together artists,art historians, curators, academics, architects, urban planners, designers, archaeologists and other experts to explore contemporary thinking about the intersection of sculpture and the public realm. While the public sculpture and monuments of the host city of St. Louis will be used as a catalyst for discussion, the conference will also seek a broader dialogue that will encompass a global perspective on sculpture and its relationship to place.

Keynote Speaker: Lozano-Hemmer

Lozano-Hemmer develops interactive installations that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art. His main interest is in creating platforms for public participation by perverting technologies such as robotics, computerized surveillance or telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival and animatronics, his light and shadow works are “antimonuments for alien agency”.

Redefining Memorials: The Conflation of Heroes and Victims

Harriet F Senie, Co-Chair and Panel Organizer
Harriet F Senie is the Director of Museum Studies and Professor of Art History at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

John Craig Freeman, Co-Chair and Panel Organizer
John Craig Freeman is a public artist and Professor of New Media at Emerson College.

Charlotte Cohen, Panelist
Charlotte Cohen is a Fine Arts Officer with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), managing new commissions and the collection in the New York region.

Sally Webster, Respondent
Sally Webster is Professor Emerita of 19th-Century American Art at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center

A discussion on the increasing role of victims’ families in the memorial process, leading to a hybrid form that foregrounds individuals lost rather than historical issues. The topic will be explored from the perspective of an artist, an art historian and a public art administrator/curator.

Augmented Reality Art

From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium
Series: Springer Series on Cultural Computing
Geroimenko, Vladimir (Ed.)
ISBN 978-3-319-06202-0

Written by a team of world-renowned artists, researchers and practitioners – all pioneers in using augmented reality based creative works and installations as a new form of art – this is the first book to explore the exciting new field of augmented reality art and its enabling technologies.

3. Beyond the Virtual Public Square: Ubiquitous Computing and the
New Politics of Well-Being
Gregory L. Ulmer and John Craig Freeman

L’esposizione come “spazio aumentato”: Hans RichtAR e l’exhibition design negli anni ’20

Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti
Elisa Mandelli

Hans RichtAR non è un errore di battitura, ma il titolo di un’opera d’arte in realtà aumenta (augmented reality, abbreviata con AR, da cui il gioco di parole)1 realizzata nel 2013 da John Craig Freeman e Will Pappenheimer. Read more.