This year is the 50th anniversary of the World Expo organized in Brussels in 1958. Focusing on internationalism and the brotherhood of men, the Expo expressed unlimited self-consciousness and progressive optimism. Mostly a trade fair and a platform for obvious clichés, it was at the same time a rare occasion were the subversive ideas of the modernist avant-garde and the hopeful beliefs of an open-minded post war generation went hand in hand.

My two all time favorites are the now still standing Atomium and the long gone Philips Pavilion. The Atomium (see image above), designed by Belgian architect André Waterkeyn, is 335-feet tall and consists of nine steel spheres that are connected. It represents the molecule of iron magnified 165 billion times. Being a large-scale mind blowing atom, it has exhibition spaces inside. On my recent trip to Belgium, I was confronted with numerous publications on Expo 58, which inspired me to visit the Atomium and experience its weird architecture once again.

The Philips Pavilion was more than a building at the fair; it was a multimedia experience displaying the technological skills of the Philips Company by combining light, sound and color. Le Corbusier is often credited as the main architect of the building, but his involvement is slightly overestimated. In reality, his collaborator Iannis Xenakis, a Greek architect and experimental music composer was responsible for the design. Le Corbusier, however, commissioned electro-acoustic composer Edgard Varèse to create an immersive sound installation, Le Poème Electronique (The Electronic Poem). Visitors to the Pavilion were treated to an impressive multimedia performance: 400 loudspeakers moving Varèse’s composition through 3D space, projections of images, and text by Le Corbusier.

“Le Poeme Electronique proposes to show, within a distressing tumult, our civilization on her way to conquest modern times”, Le Corbusier would say. Here is the video:

Although the World Expo of 1958 clearly reflected societal and political tensions of its time (Cold War competition and displaced colonial superiority), it is difficult to avoid a feeling of nostalgia when considering the various modernist attitudes that it temporarily materialized.

“My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness. . . . As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge.” (Edward Said, Orientalism)

Recent political developments have once again shed light on the question of East/West relationships. Framing the Other: 30 Years After Orientalism, is a symposium that looks at the 30th anniversary of Edward Said’s Orientalism as a suitable opportunity to re-examine the impact and currency of Said’s key arguments. Famously suggesting that discourse about other cultures is always inherently ideological, Said developed a highly controversial postcolonial critique of cultural representation. The symposium will focus on his legacy to analyze visual culture and its construction of the ‘Other’.

Organized by the Courtauld Institute of Art in London on April 26, lecture topics will range from 19th Century visual culture to contemporary Islamic art.

Planet of the Arabs is a trailer-esque montage of Hollywood’s relentless vilification and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims by artist Jacqueline Salloum. Descending from Palestinian immigrants in the US, Salloum felt “forever the foreigner, and with the constant exposure to only negative images of Arabs in the news and Hollywood films, […] grew up feeling ashamed of being an Arab. […] her feelings soon reversed in her teens… with a twist of candy-coated vengeance.” Inspired by the book Reel Bad Arabs by Dr. Jack Shaheen.

Here for Framing the Other: 30 Years After Orientalism.

Here for Jacqueline Sammoun.

Taboo Theater 2.0 is an Internet/Theater project by media artists Ursula Endlicher, Ela Kagel and Anke Zimmermann, focusing on the question: How much taboo does art need? On a blog people are invited to submit images, sound files, texts, videos or comments on taboos in art, theater, literature, or on the Web. These posts will then be incorporated in a week-long theater production at Theater am Neumarkt/Chorgasse in Zurich from May 19-24, 2008.

The current issue of Kunst Magazin Berlin is dedicated to Taboos. Eugenia Ilion writes:

“Discussion of the term taboo is complicated from any perspective, because it is a term that is, in reality, empty. Every society, every age, and even every individual attributes to the term another meaning, and for that reason taboo has no consistent content. It serves, rather, as an umbrella-category for an ill-timed subject. As an open code, taboos allow room for interpretation, but the urge to use the term grows with its lack of clarity. This margin of play seems to be predestined for art’s license to do as it pleases. But does art need taboos? What is a taboo?”

With the Internet as a global stage, the artists hope many different points of view will be conveyed. The structure and functionality of the blog will be translated onto the theater stage, where the collected content will be further worked on.

More info and to participate: here.

This short film was written, produced and directed by Charles and Rae Eames for the IBM Pavillion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Animated by John Whitney and scored by Elmer Bernstein, this cartoon animation traces the history of storing and analyzing information from the days of the cavemen up until 1958, placing the computer in the context of human development.

Organized by Leonardo Education Forum and the University of Texas at Dallas, Social Fabrics demonstrates “convergences between individual expression and statement making, on the one hand, and the phenomenology of ‘network society’ on the other”. To put it more simply: the exhibition is a fashion show in which artists combine wearable art, locative media and sensor technology to express social commentary on life in a high tech society. Commenting on our digital media-infused and fashion driven lifestyles, the artists in the show express themselves in provocative new ways. As curators Susan Ryan and Patrick Lichty point out, “Fashion and digital technology have been interdependent at least since the development of Jacquard’s loom in the 1800’s.”

Social Fabrics is organized in conjunction with the annual conference of the College Art Association, February 20–23.

Not in the show, but equally worthwhile checking out, is Dutch artist collective De Geuzen, ‘a foundation for multi-visual research’. They have done thought-provoking projects with wearables, tactile media, uniforms and mobility. Researching the connection between everyday life and open source software, De Geuzen make tools available that allow communities to actively participate in their projects and eventually, at least in theory, turn them into their own. However, while De Geuzen point out the complexities of distributed authorship, they make it clear that they are far from optimistic about the enthusiasm that surrounds the open source movement. Wearable Resistance is a dress adorned with LED that can be programmed to depict images or text, such as:

Here for other De Geuzen projects.
Here for Social Fabrics.

I can’t help but feeling retro today; blame it on the rainy weather or strange electromagnetic connections in the air. I’m listening to the sounds of the weird Theremin, one of the first fully electronic instruments, invented in 1919 by Leon Theremin. I wanted to share this remarkable video of the late great Clara Rockmore performing Rachmaninov’s Song of Grusia. Both Russian émigrés in the United States, Rockmore worked closely with professor Theremin on the development of his invention. Trained as a classical musician, she had an astonishing mastery over the instrument, defined by a rarely achieved accuracy and elegance.

The instrument is played without being touched. Two antennas stick out from the Theremin - one controlling pitch, and the other controlling volume. As a hand approaches the vertical antenna, the pitch gets higher, approaching the horizontal antenna makes the volume softer. Because there is no physical contact with the instrument, playing it requires precise skill and perfect pitch.

I’ve always been interested in the way in which the Theremin has pushed boundaries and set standards concerning the interaction between man and machine, how its history is closely connected to the social, aesthetic and scientific dimension of technology. From the early days on, its design tried to maximize social cohesion and human creativity.

The instrument is not an odd artifact from a long forgotten past, its tradition and innovative nature is still kept alive today, most notably by the Theremin Center in Moscow where Andrei Smirnov has developed many contemporary interpretations of the instrument. At this moment he’s organizing a workshop at Berlin’s electronic media festival Transmediale, teaching people how to convert your laptop into a digital Theremin.

Here for the interesting life story of Leon Theremin.
Here for ‘how to build your own Theremin’.
Here for the work of Andrei Smirnov.

Here for a playlist of songs with Theremin.

When I wrote my book Leo Laporte’s Guide to TiVo (which was really Gareth Branwyn’s Guide to TiVo — I wrote the book, he got his picture and name on the cover), I titled one of the chapters “DIY Network Programming.” I realized that, with TiVo’s ability (especially a hacked Series 1 TiVo) to search through the TV guide data and record only the shows you wanted, you were basically constructing your own TV channel out of all the content available, using Google-lite searches. Miro is that same technology, but applied to all of the video content of the Internet and it’s cross-platform, free and open source.

Miro, which was first named Democracy, was created by the Participatory Culture Foundation. It works on Windows, Macs, and Linux machines. The really amazing thing about it is that it can scoop up pretty much any video content across the Web, from YouTube, Google Video, and mainstream TV content online, to BitTorrent (peer-to-peer file sharing) to any video content that’s attached to an RSS feed, anywhere in cyberspace. I love the way it so seamlessly integrates mainstream commercial content, P2P content, and amateur content so that they all carry the same weight. Democratizing, indeed. The mission of the Participatory Culture Foundation is to bring the power to create, distribute, and view Internet TV to anyone who wants it. It’s TiVo meets Public Access TV meets Google… or something like that. It’s your next download.

Here to download Miro.

Ricardo Dominguez calls himself an “artivist.” Half political activism and half art, his projects blur the boundaries between the aesthetic and the political. Ricardo was part of a team that was recently awarded the Transnational Communities Award for a Transborder Immigrant Tool that uses GPS-enabled mobile phones to help immigrants crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. The phone has a visual system that works like a compass and helps immigrants locate resources such as water caches, safety beacons and highways by vibrating when within certain proximities.

Here for an article on the project and for MobileActive.org, a resource for activists using mobile technology.

Exploring the final game of the 2006 Soccer World Cup through 12 different vantage points, this multi-layered video-installation by Harun Farocki analyzes the spectacle of sports through technology and statistical information. The event, held in Germany, was reportedly seen by 1.5 billion viewers worldwide. Unfolding in simultaneous, real-time montage, Deep Play depicts the artist’s own footage of the game, official FIFA footage, charts of player stats, real-time 2D and 3D animation sequences, and stadium surveillance, exposing the visual, informational, and technological design of these grand social events. Deep Play, the latest installment in Farocki’s ongoing investigation into the politics of audiovisual representation, premiered last summer at Documenta in Kassel and is currently on view for the first time in the US at Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. A must.

“Art’s Birthday” is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.

He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Modest beginnings, but look at us now.

Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists around the world. Each year the network evolves to include new partners - working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art.

Artists have celebrated Art’s Birthday with lavish parties and gatherings, correspondence and mailart, and through Telematic networks using SloScan TV, Videophones, music composed for telephone lines, modem-to-modem MIDI connections, early bulletin board and chat systems, and (starting in the mid 1990’s) the Internet.

Here for a complete listing of all celebrations.

And a short video of a performance by the indispensable Robert Filliou: