DATE: April 23rd 2008, 5 PM
PLACE: Interface Culture Lab, Sonnensteinstr. 11-13, 2. floor
Lecturer: Michael Naimark, Prix Ars Electronica 2008 Jury
member
Title: "Artists as toolmakers"
Art making and tool making are different but interconnected. In the
electronic arts, the stakes are particularly high given the profound
impact of electronic tools on society. For the past several years, I’ve been in a position to explore tool making from an artist perspective - tools which maximize creativity, stimulation, and provocation. One might consider these as “interventions.” Four recent tool making proposals will be presented, including the recently launched “Viewfinder: How to Seamlessly ‘Flickrize’ Google Earth”. Viewfinder is an easy way to spatially situate, or “find the pose,” of arbitrary photographs, and then to view these photographs, along with others, as perfectly aligned overlays in a 3D world model such as Google Earth.
interactive.usc.edu/viewfinder
biography:
Michael Naimark is a media artist who often explores “place representation.” His work is an unusual combination of optimism and activism, for example, it currently ranks #1 on Google searches for both VR webcams and camera zapper. Naimark received the World Technology Award for the Arts in 2002 and was the subject of a 20-year retrospective at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2005.
He currently serves on the Visiting Committee for the MIT Media Lab and on the faculty in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School for Cinematic Arts.
www.naimark.net