Call for entries: Power

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This issue of Drain attempts to expose the cultural faciality of power, as well as manifestations of power as simulacra, which obfuscate traditional inquiries into its construction. If power connects the virtual and the actual, how does cultural creativity channel or destabilize this connectivity? The corporate-academic-entertainment-military-industrial complex and its front-end, the global information machine floods us with images, and images of images, to cause sensory overload, and yet at the same time, acute sensory deprivation. Most of all, power entrenches a visual literacy that allows us to see only its style, leaving us unable to access other ways of seeing and becoming. How can we parody this visual literacy, and the speed, cadence and grammar of this power and its affects?

If the simulation of power is necessary and absolute, can creative acts and molecular politics slip through the surveillance and desensitizing of territorializing systems?

This issue of Drain invites artwork, papers, and other creative works to actualize answers to these questions and re-channel them into different connectivities, ways of becoming and conceptual production.

Submission deadline: Sep 15, 2010

Please send submissions to:

Owen Mundy owen -at- drainmag -dot- org
or
Avantika Bawa avantika -at- drainmag -dot- org

“Facebook App Brings Back Data by Riva Richmond” – The New York Times

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Facebook App Brings Back Data by Riva Richmond, New York Times, May 1, 2010

“The app is “making hackers out of regular users,” says the developer, Owen Mundy, an assistant professor in Florida State University’s art department. And it’s giving them a way to exercise ownership rights over their data. (After all, Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities says users “own all of the content and information” they have posted on Facebook.)”

drain: Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture launches Issue #10 COLD

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drain: Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture is pleased to announce the launch of Issue #10 COLD

A collective behavior of baroque, abundant consumption has led to an economic and climatic meltdown. The push toward a frenzied emphasis on growth & mass consumption has manifested a cascade of aesthetic opulence in the form of brightly colored advertisements & plastic disposable goods. In the wake of this recent collapse; the purity, simplicity & refinement of a calmer and cooler culture is now alluring. Can transparent, clear and meditative practice counter this lavish, hot & hysterical culture? Subverting the old notion of icy bureaucratic indifference remediated through hot empathy, might the forces of hot commodity be slowed by an intervening cold? Is it possible for the lucidity of coolness to connect cultures & move us into the future?
This issue of Drain presents a collection of critical writing and art practices that has touched on many continents, climates and cultures to transform the way in which we think about how various degrees of cold collaborate.

We are pleased to present Celina Jeffery and Owen Mundy as our feature writer and artist.

This issue also includes essays by Edwin Janzen and Eduardo Navas, as well as interviews by Scott Waters with artist Andrew Morrow, Shannon Stratton with Michael Milano; reviews by Gean Moreno (on Ernesto Oroza) and Edith-Anne Pageot (on Construction Work: Lorraine Gilbert, Josée Dubeau, Jinny Yu).

In our Creative Writing section, we bring to you works by Adelheid Mers, Ellie Krakow, Kathryn Yusoff and Allison Kudla.

Art projects, include two sections; Freeze – with works by Leah Bailis, Lou Mallozzi, Sally Grizzell Larson, Noelle Mason and Deborah Wing-Sproul and Thaw – with works by Jonathan Van Dyke, Nitin Mukul, Kim Jackson DeBord, Rachel Moore, Adrian Göllner and Living Lenses

While this issue explored Cold as an aesthetic experience and concept of our times, THAW – The Meltdown- A Panel and discussion forum held at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, took this investigation a step further through conversation that addressed the aftermath of the residual coldness.

We wish you an enjoyable read and look forward to contributions from you for our upcoming issues on Militarism and Rewind respectively.

Drain would not have been possible without the support of you, our patrons. Thank you for your continued support!

This issue was curated by Avantika Bawa and Stuart Keeler.

Managerial board: Avantika Bawa, Celina Jeffery, Adrian Parr

drain – Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture
www.drainmag.com

Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media Art _VOL.12 Fall 2008

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Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media Art
Volume 12: Vital presents nine artists exploring that which is essential, grave, indispensable, and/or critical to existence. Mirroring preconceived notions of reality, these works re-imagine new deities, investigate animal nature and human desire, contemplate the body vs. the psyche, meditate on the circular nature of our existence, and in one case force us to witness the final minutes of life. We confront our own profound mortality, experience fear and displacement within a technological landscape, and consider the sustaining reciprocal relationship of artist and gallery.

  • 9-11/9-11 by Mel Chin w/ commentary by Ute Meta Bauer
  • Liberation of the Paranoid World; Gargoyling; Pressing the Vessel by Goatsilk w/ commentary by Ricardo de Mambro Santos
  • Primate Cinema by Rachel Mayeri w/ commentary by Meredith Tromble
  • Sequence of Good Intentions by Park McArthur w/ commentary by Michael O’Malley
  • Bathyscape by Andrew Mowbray w/ commentary by Matthew Nash
  • Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art by Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy w/ commentary by Eduardo Navas
  • Freund Hein by Elisabeth Smolarz w/ commentary by Angelique Campens
  • Polar Bear God by Deke Weaver w/ commentary by Una Chaudhuri
  • excerpts from Untitled (Red); Untitled (Blue); Tell Me; Ned Talking by Suara Welitoff w/ commentary by Andrew Witkin

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Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art by Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy
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2007

Inspired by Jim Campbell’s Formula for Computer Art and Tallahassee’s annual sea of tree pollen, Mundy and Dietrick created a data-based animation referencing new forms of cross-pollination and re-use. Made to be meditative and aesthetically pleasing, the format parodies computer art that simply crunches numbers to create useless forms. The diligently recorded data of the National Allergy Board guides the animation down a predictable path and stands in stark contrast to the chaos of everyday life. The project calls into question our obsession with mapping nature, as if grasping its sublimity would be essential to finding lifelong satisfaction.

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