Over recent years tiny automated and nonsensical beings have infiltrated our daily life via twitter and email. They have taken delight in agitation by imitating human behaviours – from telling jokes to online-dating. These small computer programmes are called bots (derived from the word robot) and their repetitive and often simple actions have brought fun to – and often poked fun at – the Internet platforms that now mediate our lives.

This weekend of workshops, labs and bot showcases will be a chance to meet pioneers of the bot making community, gain an insight into their practices and also uncover the darker side of these computer programmes. Bot creators come in many different guises and our weekend will feature artists, whistleblowers, developers, gamers, comedians, thinkers and inventors from this global micro-community.

In the showcase discover more about bot behaviours and their creative potential plus how these are connected to histories in automata and movements such as Dada and Fluxus. It will be a unique opportunity to get hands-on with bot inventions and prototypes as they are being created.

Talks and presentations will take the form of the Disruption Network Lab: Bots curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. This is an ongoing platform of events where artists, hackers, networkers, whistleblowers and critical thinkers enter into a dialogue. This keynote and panel discussion will consider and interrogate the political and artistic potential emerging from the relationship between surveillance and the use of bots. Alongside the weekend of events we will release a programme of bot works online.

Join Abandon Normal Devices for a free weekend of bot inspired performance, workshops, debates and events. Discover how computers are getting better at thinking like us and how they are exposing the cracks in the inner workings of the internet.

The programme is co-curated with Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, a British-Colombian artist based in London known for 3D printed sculpture, bots and the popular blog Algopop.

The Art of Bots will take place in the River Rooms situated in the New Wing of Somerset House (London, UK). For information on and directions to Somerset House, you can visit AND dedicated venue page.

The Electroni[k] organization launches a call for submissions for the next edition of Maintenant festival that will take place in October 2016 in Rennes. Propose an innovative project linking art and new technologies, to live insolites and poetics experiencies!

Artistic crossing, interaction, immersive project, innovation, experimentation, AV performance, scenic device, participation, augmented reality, exhibition, tangible objects, interactive installation, design, workshop, technology…

The project must be professional and not necessarily a premiere. Electroni[k] supports the project up to 5,000€. Apply for one of these two categories:

• less than 1,500€
• between 1,500€ & 5,000€

To apply, fill in this form with a file including a mediafire.com link with:

• an explaining note presenting the project (1 or 2 pages)
• artworks (sketches, drawings, photos, videos…)
• material needs (production budget, rider…)
• every other features helping with the understanding of the project

Call is open until May 10, 2016.

Since 2001, the Electroni[k] organization has been exploring cross-fields, pushing borders, breaking the rules of artistic propositions and locations to link creations and audience. Electroni[k] focuses on opening emerging cultures to the publics, particularly innovative and multi-disciplinary projects: contemporary art, graphic design, digital art, electronic, contemporary or electro-acoustic music for instance. Every year, Electroni[k] invites various artists for Maintenant festival to present exhibitions, installations, interactive setups, concerts, performances, workshops, conferences… and works with 60 artists or collective from the Rennes area, Brittany but also on a national and international scale.

Maintenant is a hybrid festival, a multi-disciplinary event that links ambitious artistic propositions and curious publics around « Arts, Musics & Technologies ». Maintenant has been thought as a snapshot of the contemporary artistic creation ; a poetic exploration of the city guided by innovative experiences, accessible to everyone in the public space and more than 25 different venues in Rennes.

Sound Development City is a three-week expedition to two annually changing cities for artists from all disciplines and from around the world. The 5th edition takes place in Madrid and Casablanca from September 6 through 25, 2016.

During the expeditions, the participating artists, an expedition writer and the team feed the website and build an ever growing archive of artistic fragments, research documents and fleeting encounters.

Applications are accepted until April 11, 2016.

Sound Development is a non-commercial, independent and privately funded cultural initiative based in Zurich.
 It is a platform for promotion of, networking of and exchange between artistic and cultural creators. We’re interested in alternative forms of art and cultural promotion as well as in how creative endeavors can be supported.

The tenth edition of L.E.V. will be held on 28th, 29th, 30th and April 1st of May across the different spaces of the Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura project (Laboral City of the Culture), and other venues in Gijon, Spain.

L.E.V. stands for Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual or, in English, Laboratory of Visual Electronics, is the International Festival of Audiovisual Creation of Gijón. A project that tries to show  a panoramic and eclectic  vision of the ample spectrum of current genres that come from connecting visual arts and electronic music.

A physical and ephemeral space, concerned specifically with four themes: the natural synergy between image and sound, the live presentation, the relationship established between audience, artist connection and public space, and the new artistic tendences that constantly emerge on a global level.

L.E.V., co-produced by Principado de Asturias Goverment, the Gijón City Council, LABoral’s Centre of Art and Industrial Creation and Datatron 0x3F, honors by its acronym to Lev Thermen.

Follow L.E.V. for line-ups and information.

Arts@CERN has flourished since its creation in 2011, binding arts, science and technology to contribute to a fast growing knowledge-based culture. They are pleased to announce the COLLIDE International Award, a major international residency programme and a new collaboration between CERN and FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool).

COLLIDE International Award is a unique opportunity for artists to spend dedicated time in one of the most important laboratories in the world, where crucial questions about nature are addressed. COLLIDE aims to encourage curiosity, offering experimental and open-minded artists an extraordinary framework to inspire creativity both within the sciences and the humanities. Ultimately, COLLIDE proposes to transform the way art and science encounters are understood, and to challenge new modes of dialogue and enquiry.

As the cradle of the World Wide Web and home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN is an eminent centre of science and technology with great relevance in the culture of today. As an international centre of excellence in these fields, CERN is an inspirational place for artists, designers and creators of any kind to explore and extend their research in the fascinating world of particle physics.

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is the UK’s leading media arts centre based in Liverpool, bringing people, art and technology together. FACT harnesses the power of creative technology to inspire and enrich lives through a wide ranging programme of exhibitions, research and innovation, and community-led projects. FACTLab is FACT’s experimental laboratory, a collaborative environment for interdisciplinary practice-based research and production operating at the crossroads between art, science and technology.

The competition is open to artists of any nationality or age. Their  proposal  should reflect upon encounters between art and science, and offer challenging methods of collaboration  with CERN scientists. The scope of this proposal should also consider a second developmental phase at FACT, where the artists will have the opportunity to expand their research and test its applications through FACTLab’s facilities and engagement with a wide range of communities. The ultimate goal for the residency will be the research and development of new concepts in laboratory contexts.

For details on conditions and expectations please follow http://arts.cern/collide-international-award.

The deadline for applications is May 23rd, 2016.

The Jury of this edition is composed of a panel of experts including Monica Bello, Head of Arts@CERN, Geneva (Switzerland); Patrick Gyger, Director of Le Lieu Unique, Nantes (France); Tara Shears, Physicist at LHCb, CERN (Geneva) and at University of Liverpool (United Kingdom); Mike Stubbs, Director of FACT, Liverpool and Professor at Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom).

Artists intending to apply shall submit a proposal adhering to the criteria of the call. The proposal should describe, in detail, the project that the artist intends to undertake during the residency at CERN and FACT. The proposal should be accompanied by a filmed statement (no longer than five minutes), defending the relevance of the intended project.

Submission form is available at the COLLIDE International Award page.

World’s very first Virtual Reality Cinema opened it’s doors! It’s located in the heart of Amsterdam, but you will feel like you are in far away countries, animated worlds or places you could never go before. The VR Cinema is a place where everybody has the possibility to get acquainted with virtual reality and experience what it is like to see the finest selection of VR movies that are unfolding around you in 360 degrees.

The VR Cinema is a concept by &samhoud media that originated in the form of Europe’s first virtual reality pop-up cinema which toured through several big cities in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and now settles in Amsterdam. After the grand opening in the Dutch capital cities like Madrid, Berlin, Paris and London will be in for their very own VR Cinema some time soon.

When in Amsterdam, you can pick a date and reserve your tickets for the VR Cinema: https://thevrcinema.com/cinema-calendar

The relationship of humans to computers can no longer be represented as one person in a chair and one computer on a desk. Today computing finds its way into our pockets, our cars, our appliances; it is ubiquitous—an inescapable part of our everyday lives. Computing is even expanding beyond our devices; sensors, microcontrollers, and actuators are increasingly embedded into the built environment. In Architectural Robotics, Keith Evan Green looks toward the next frontier in computing: interactive, partly intelligent, meticulously designed physical environments. Green examines how these “architectural robotic” systems will support and augment us at work, school, and home, as we roam, interconnect, and age.

Green tells the stories of three projects from his research lab that exemplify the reconfigurable, distributed, and transfigurable environments of architectural robotics. The Animated Work Environment is a robotic work environment of shape-shifting physical space that responds dynamically to the working life of the people within it; home+ is a suite of networked, distributed “robotic furnishings” integrated into existing domestic and healthcare environments; and LIT ROOM offers a simulated environment in which the physical space of a room merges with the imaginary space of a book, becoming “a portal to elsewhere.”

How far beyond workstations, furniture, and rooms can the environments of architectural robotics stretch? Green imagines scaled-up neighborhoods, villages, and metropolises composed of physical bits, digital bytes, living things, and their hybrids. Not global but local, architectural robotics grounds computing in a capacious cyber-physical home.

Architectural Robotics is available from MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/architectural-robotics

Keith Evan Green is Homer Curtis Mickel and Leola Carter Mickel Endowed Chair in Architecture and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University.