update

[Lynda Brown-Ganzert]

Hi everyone!

We now have events happening in most major cities (we would love more representation from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and the Territories).

The CIAIC is taking the lead on lobbying in Ottawa and setting up MP meetings. I'm also working with their Exec Director James Lewis to develop key messaging and press release templates that everyone can use.

We have formed a leadership group of those folks leading events across the country. If you have an event that I don't know about, let me know and I'll add you to the group.

The day is going to profile digital media but it's also going to have a strong advocacy role given the recent cuts to our funding programs.

The louder the better so please help get the word out. The below announcement is a great example of how we can leverage our other networks to spread the word.

Thanks for anything you can contribute. This is a completely volunteer run event so any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers, Lynda
________

Wired Woman is proud to help support Digital Media Day!

Join us to celebrate BC’s 1000+ new media companies and our position as a world centre for digital media excellence!

Meet BC’s digerati as they gather to celebrate the inaugural National Digital Media Day! 350+ people are expected for an evening of mixing and mingling and catching up with the rest of Canada.

There will be a networking reception featuring DJs Beats Without Borders followed by a digital shorts screening presented by the New Forms Festival.

*New Media BC members and potential members: the New Media BC 2008 Annual General Meeting takes place at 4 pm at Radical so come early if you want to hear our plans for the coming year and meet other members!

This event FREE to attend - but please RSVP here or via the NMBC site (www.newmediabc.com)

New Media BC thanks the following partners for their support of National Digital Media Day:

Fjord Interactive

Wired Woman

New Forms Festival

Mission Hill Winery

[Wayne Clark]

Good plan Lynda! I shall check with the local MPs to get out to our event in Winnipeg.

Jim Rondeau, Minister of Manitoba Science, Technology, Energy & Mines will be on hand to speak to all those who come out in droves to support the regional efforts.

New Media Manitoba will have an update soon in regards to location etc.

Cheers

Wayne

[Susan Kennard]

Hi Linda

Here in Banff we will be releasing 5 video presentations hot off the presses from our end of August annual creative producers lab "Interactive Screen". The main page of The Banff Centre website will be dedicated to new media for that day and we will be celebrating the success of the artists and creators we have worked with over the years. In terms of new content we will be launching 5 keynote addresses, all one hour in length. These are all fascinating presentations given by luminaries in our field. Check out our website on Thursday for the full video. In the meantime here is a description of what the presentations are all about. Susan

During the last week of August 2008 the Banff New Media Institute ran it’s annual creative producers lab Interactive Screen 0.8 – the theme of which was SUSTAIN.
Over sixty participants gathered in Banff to consider strategies and ideas that allow those working with new media to better reflect and act upon the economic, social, cultural, natural and technological synergies and dichotomies of our changing world. Our guest speakers were been chosen because their current practice or discourse raises critical, sometimes crucial, questions about the practice, theory, and meaning of new media.

Five keynote addresses were given over the course of the event. These keynotes framed the dialogue for the day and brought to the foreground considerations of culture and what it means to produce it, sustain it and share it, global economics and local environments; memories of new media, can games get real and the pervasiveness and interdependence of technologies of the ages.

The following links present the complete keynote video recording. Each presentation is
sixty minutes long. (links will go live Thursday)


Radical Traditionalism: The Gift, The Commons and The Future – Keynote

Rick Prelinger, archivist, writer, maker, San Francisco, CA

At first glance, today's makers face a dilemma: whether to lean towards the traditional media industry and its old-fashioned cultural economy of "billable events" or, alternatively, to pursue emerging alternative paths of production, distribution and sharing. Most still opt for certainty rather than innovative experiment. But what if the "new ways" weren't really so new or so radical? Could the rise of open-content and freer-culture models actually signal a return toward traditional ways of living and working? And are we really going to have a choice in the matter?

In late 2001, we began to reengineer our film archives away from the classical model of scarcity and around a model of plenty. Since that time, we've tried to have it both ways – selling images commercially while simultaneously giving them away to a receptive world. After millions of downloads, we've found that the results point to new ways of making and distributing media that don't rely on "billable events." And we've also grown to believe that our collective survival rests on openness, flexibility and sharing.


It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye – Keynote

Stephanie Rothenberg, Artist, Brooklyn, NY

The computer video game has become the idealized commodity form of the 21st century offering hours of enhanced game play through seductive new technologies. From whimsical business applications and corporate team building retreats to online education, advertising and the military, digital gaming is a cultural phenomenon that pervades contemporary life. Yet the sweat, stamina and natural resources that drive this multi-billion dollar global industry are often overlooked. Through three interrelated multimedia projects that use participatory, interactive formats, critical issues concerning the social and environmental consequences of the global game industry and tactics for intervention will be discussed.


Curating Immateriality through an Archival Paradigm – Keynote

Vincent Bonin, Freelance Curator, Montreal, QC

Between 2000 and 2008, I occupied the position of archivist at the Daniel Langlois foundation for Art, Science and Technology in Montreal. While at the foundation, I was both a witness of emerging new media practices and had access to a wealth of historical materials on its so-called pioneering decades (1960s, 1970s). After leaving this institution, I shifted roles and became a curator working on projects solely based on archives. In this presentation, I want to suggest that curating historical exhibitions can be a strategy to fight up the notion of programmed obsolescence in media art that often translate in historical amnesia. In her anthology entitled Curating Immateriality, published in 2006, Joasia Krysa gathered scholars to address the impact that systems of immaterial production (databases, programming, net art, software art, generative media) now have on the practice of curating. I would add another level to this proposition: how can curatorial strategies informed by an archival paradigm can open up new theoretical areas by showing a layered political context as the points of origin of current dematerialized art practices? My talk builds on a few examples of such approaches. The exhibitions curated by Catherine Morris since the mid 1990s, especially Food (on Gordon Matta-Clark’s food restaurant founded in 1971, New York) and 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre and Engineering, 1966 (on this important event at the Regiment Armory) are investigating the complex origins of current issues like artistic collaborations and the juncture between art and technology as they emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. In a similar vein but limited to a Canadian context, my own curatorial project, Documentary Protocols, addresses the emergence of information-based practices of this era (conceptual art, video) as prefiguring the artist’s role in an economy of immaterial labour.

The Games of Life – Keynote

Cindy Poremba, PHD Candidate/ Curator, Kokoromi Collective, Montreal, QC

The art of documentary videogame practice lies in designing a non- fiction experience that allows for deep engagement and experimentation, within the constraints of a rule-structured, computational form. A tremendous challenge to be sure – but one that, where successful, can provide new opportunities for re-engaging the archive, exploring the complex, unseen or unseeable, and renewing interest and excitement in “the real.” Can a videogame not only capture, but sustain an aura of reality? This presentation examines the cultural shifts in documentary, games, and digital representation that have led to the emergence of the documentary videogame.


Information, Energy – Keynote

Julian Priest, Independent Researcher, Informal.org, Wanganui, NZ

The talk Internet, Environment at Interactive Screen 07 looked at the technological and cultural relationships between the Internet and the Environment as part of an ongoing exploration of how Digital Media informs issues of Sustainability. This year, as energy concerns come to the fore, the theme is developed by focusing on the relationship between Information and Energy. The talk takes as its starting point electromagnetic radiation, which is both the underlying medium of information transmission, and the bearer of energy. How does sunlight relate to the light coursing through up our fibre optic cables?

[Larry Mersereau]

Hi Lynda,
I just sent this out to a number of our teachers in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and B.C. Hopefuly some will join in on the fun! Thanks for getting things rolling for us all. We are looking forward to it.
-Larry

Larry Mersereau
Animation and Gaming Department Head
Centre for Arts and Technology
Second Floor
130 Carleton St.
Fredericton, NB
Canada
E3B 3T4
506.460.1280 ext. 110 (tel)
506.460.1289 (fax)
www.digitalartschool.com
[e-mail]