From interrogating Nicolas Bourriaud’s ideas of a new age of the altermodern to the daily life of a political actitivist in the World Bank-backed last dictatorship in Europe -Belarus, You Are Here goes a way to offering a sort of field book for contemporary Europe. A continent where young artists and activists blend forms and travel in their work, living in one country while all the while subtly interrogating their home countries’ traditions and expectations. A generation has come of age in a post- Wall Europe who no longer feel obligated to answer the national questions, but instead answer to their unique personal experience, one of borderless work and travel, mediated by translation and the Internet. Such instances of artistic, intellectual and activist projects are given space in You Are Here, offering the chance to see whether such young practitioners really are writing from a freedom and plurality born in 1989 back into a new, wider and pan-European tradition in 2009.

Edited by Line Madsen Simenstad and John Holten
Texts and artwork by Ann Cotton (AUS), Anna Bro (DK), Agnieszka Drotkiewicz (POL),
Martin John Callanan (UK), Volha Martynenka (BEL), Francesca Musiani (IT), Christophe Van
Gerrewey (BE), Urszula Wozniak (GER)

9 November, 2009
English (with Polish, German, Belarussian, Danish)
ISBN 978-3-00-028868-5

Book Release Party @ Basso Berlin (Köpenickerstr 187, Berlin-Kreuzberg) 21 Uhr, Mittwoch, 11. November

Data Soliloquies is a book about the extraordinary cultural fluidity of scientific data. A wide array of graphs, charts, computer models and other forms of visual advocacy have become inescapable fixtures of public science presentations, though they are often treated as if they were neutral ‘found objects’ rather than elaborate narrative constructions containing high levels of statistical uncertainty. Through a mix of essays and artworks, this witty and engaging book — the result of a collaboration between Richard Hamblyn and Martin John Callanan during their terms as writer and artist in residence at the UCL Environment Institute — examines the theatricality of scientific data display, while critiquing some of the poorly designed statistical wallpaper that surrounds so much public science debate.

ISBN 9780903305044 (November 2009)

Available for order on Amazon.co.uk

Today, I become decamillesimal as I turn 10,000 days old.

This two-day symposium brings together scientists, artists, social scientists and policy-makers to explore scientific controversy from an interdisciplinary perspective. From esoteric arguments over the structure of the universe to highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells, Eye of the Storm will touch on brilliance and ego, dissent and whistle-blowing, big science, high finance, deviant science, the reliability of knowledge and the legislation of uncertainty.

Martin John Callanan as Artist in Residence at UCL Environment Institute, alongside Richard Hamblyn the Writer in Residence, will be presenting.

Organised in collaboration with and supported by The Arts Catalyst and Tate Britain in association with Leonardo/OLATS

Tate Britain Auditorium (booking required)
Friday 19 June 2009, 10.00–19.30
Saturday 20 June 2009, 10.00–17.30

The UCL Environment Institute, Slade School of Fine Art, and David & Charles Publishers invite you to an evening reception to celebrate

the unveiling of Martin John Callanan’s A Planetary Order (Terrestrial Cloud Globe)

and the publication of Richard Hamblyn’s Extraordinary Clouds

on Tuesday 30th June 2009, 6:30-9:00pm
at the Main Quadrangle, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

I Wanted to See All of the News From Today will be at FILE Rio de Janeiro 2009.

encoding_experience/ is the first of a series of exhibitions inspired by the ways in which artists are embracing critical, hands on interventive strategies towards the understanding of, and experimentation with media. The artists in the show open up issues of privacy, piracy and control, paradigms that are deeply embedded into technology and the way technology is designed. Most of the artists favour a collaborative, socio-centric approach to their work. They have an agenda about thinking through questions such as; Where does the technology come from? What is the real use of a computer? What are the social issues around regular access to domestic machines i.e. game consoles, home stereos and digital cameras. How do we use and question systems that tirelessly reproduce and augment environments, image and sound?

Actively engaging with conceptual concerns, DaDa-esque notions of performance, hacking and intellectual property; encoding_experience presents an insight into how electronic media and craft knowledge operates in current art practice, not only in terms of its functionality, but also in regards to artists who have a critical approach towards the politics, aesthetics and ecconomies coded into these systems.

ISBN: 978-3-9812208-0-3

Sonification of You will be installed at Netaudio London 2008.

Netaudio’08 will take place from 22nd to 25th October 2008 at Shunt Lounge, London SE1. It will celebrate the creative output of networked musicians and online communities with talks, workshops, showcases and performances.

Netaudio’08 will play host to a broad range of live musical acts all the way from well established musicians through to undiscovered new talent – the only criteria is that they sound good and that they engage via the medium of the Internet. Musically Netaudio’08 will provide a programme spanning genres and cultural boundaries and embracing the widest possible selection of sounds humming through the Internet.

Within the conference side of the festival, Netaudio’08 will explore the creative practice and merit of digital networking tools. Workshops will share knowledge about music production and digital distribution whilst presentations will take a lead in the discussion of altered user behavior in the networked society – both aiming to engage the thought provoking process of music production, distribution and consumption in an age of networked communication.

We have seen a vast number of requests to find out information about issues which really do add value to people’s lives, or to the sum of human knowledge, or to research. And making a positive contribution to the quality, accuracy and completeness of public debate. This is exactly why we brought in this legislation.

However, it is also true, inevitably, that this culture is being undermined by requests under the Act which arguably do not impact so positively - like what a central government department spends on toilet paper or make-up, or whether written proof can be provided under the Act of a Minister’s existence.

Responsible users of the Act and supporters of the legislation would surely agree that these sorts of requests are frivolous, and sometimes even vexatious, and that spending time answering them is not how public resources ought to be used.

The Information Commissioner has made his position abundantly clear. He has said that claims that are ‘manifestly unreasonable’ should be resisted under section 14 of the Act - claims which would serve no public good or impose substantial burdens on the financial and human resources of public authorities.

My department will be issuing guidance complementing that from the Information Commissioner, to help public authorities handle these types of requests.

I don’t believe this is a concern in terms of requests from the academic community - but it is a serious issue for the operation of Freedom of Information as a whole.