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Paraflows 2009 / Check it out

grenz — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:27:59 +0000

paraflows 09 – Festival for Digital Art and Cultures
10. – 20. September 2009

The city of Vienna has a long tradition of interventions and actions in the public space. With this year’s topic URBAN HACKING, the fourth paraflows festival continues this artistic investigation of the public and urban space of living. What is more, paraflows 09 will shed light on the role played by digital media when it comes to exploring, questioning, and shaping the urban infrastructure.

Exhibition URBAN HACKING
Symposium URBAN HACKING: Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity
Paraflows at Metalab

And yesterday happend a really great MP3 experiment… check out the full recording…

Dorkbot Vienna #9: Martin Kaltenbrunner (reacTIVision, TUIO, reactable)

grenz — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:22:16 +0000

I’m hosting Dorkbot Vienna #9… and our guest will be Martin Kaltenbrunner. (Thanks to the Metalab!)

Martin Kaltenbrunner is a Human Computer Interaction Designer, currently finalizing his Ph.D. at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. Recently he has been mainly working on the interaction design of the reacTable – a tangible modular synthesizer based on a multi-touch surface. He is author of the open source tangible interaction framework reacTIVision and the related TUIO protocol, which has been widely adopted for open source multi-touch applications. He is co-founder of reactable systems SL, dedicated to the development of novel HCI concepts and products, while he is teaching classes and workshops on tangible interaction at the Kunstuniversität Linz and at the UCP Porto.

http://modin.yuri.at/

reacTIVision is an open source, cross-platform computer vision tool for the fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects, as well as for multi-touch finger tracking.

http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/

TUIO is an open framework that defines a common protocol and API for tangible multi-touch surfaces. The TUIO protocol allows the transmission of an abstract description of interactive surfaces, including touch events and tangible object states. There exists a growing number of TUIO enabled tracker applications and TUIO client libraries for various programming environments, as well as applications that support the protocol. This combination of TUIO trackers, protocol and client implementations allows the rapid development of table based tangible multitouch interfaces.

http://www.tuio.org/

The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

The instrument has been developed by a team of digital luthiers, the two Austrian researchers Martin Kaltenbrunner and Günter Geiger and their Spanish colleagues Marcos Alonso and Sergi Jord, working at the Music Technology Group within the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. This multidisciplinary team of researchers, musicians and designers has been awarded with various international prizes such as the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, two D&AD Yellow Pencils and the prize if the city of Barcelona.

After its overwhelming success on Youtube and since the Icelandic singer Björk has incorporated the instrument during her last Volta world tour, the reacTable has become widely known to the general public.

http://www.reactable.com/

Sunday, June 28, 2009.
7 PM @ Metalab Vienna (Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienna)

Link

Bier und das MQ

grenz — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:34:34 +0000

Wir wollen eine Bring-Your-Own-Beer Trinkaktion im Hof des Museumsquartiers
veranstalten. Dazu müssen wir Leute und die Presse mobilisieren.

ORT/ZEIT: Samstag, 20. Juni 2009, 18.00-18.05 Uhr. Innenhof des
Museumsquartiers (Museumsplatz 1/5, 1070 Wien).

VORGEHENSWEISE: Ab 18 Uhr wird 5 Minuten lang während des Trinkens
regelmäßig laut zugeprostet!

ZIELGRUPPE: Alle, die ein Interesse daran haben, ihre mitgebrachten
Getränke weiterhin im MQ trinken zu dürfen.

GRUND: Das MQ ist ein öffentlicher Platz und wird mit unseren
Steuergeldern finanziert, im Jahr 2005 mit ca. 11 Mio. Euro. Wir sehen
nicht ein, wieso wir dazu gezwungen werden sollten, das Bier vor Ort zu
kaufen!

Es haben sich schon mindestens 2 facebook-gruppen gegründet und es gibt ein
geplantes protestereignis:

http://bringyourbeer.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=89218829570

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=96081236267

3 Years of Metalab

schneeweisz — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:04:51 +0000

Vienna’s hackerspace, the Metalab, is celebrating it’s 3rd anniversary – and of course, a birthday like this mustn’t pass unnoticed and uncelebrated!

Therefore, the Metalab is inviting to their party on Sat, May 23rd, starting 08 PM, under the motto ‘Stream Punk’ with a live alternative music performance of Pandora’s Hope and a DJ set by the fabulous Drum’n'Bass kids from Gaswerk, accompanied by the finest visuals in town. A midnight special and the meanwhile semi-famous Guitar Hero contest will top the event off.

Three days before this, from Wed 20th (starting at 07 PM – open end) to Fri 22nd respectively, the First Viennese Hackathon will take place at the hackerspace: It’s THE chance to finally focus on that project you wanted to start ages ago and never found the time to finish. More motivation and productivity through the Hackathon group challenge! A more detailed schedule & participants list can be found on Metalab’s Hackathon page.

Additionally, Metalab members will present some of their work and projects at the upcoming exhibition ‘Was bisher geschah’ (What happened so far) from June 11th – 13th.
Opening party: Thursday, June 11th, 06 PM

The address:
Metalab
Rathausstrasse 6
1010 Wien
Map

Have fun! ^^

Opening: KRYOT @ street art passage MQ

grenz — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:38:41 +0000

In September 2008 the “Street Art Passage Vienna“ was opened on the initiative of quartier21 as a continuation of an already existing series of thematic passageways in the MuseumsQuartier Wien. The passageways are exhibition venues in public space which are each dedicated to specific cultural forms of expression (comic, sound art, etc). Moreover, the “Street Art Passage Vienna“ has a site-specific setting: the bridge from the Spittelberg – a center of the Vienna street art scene – to the 60,000 m2 cultural area of the MuseumsQuartier is accessible from the Breite Gasse.
Beside the permanent design of the passageway by french artist “Invader” this public venue benefits from its alternating program of exhibitions of both international and local street art and graffiti artists plus an accompanying series of publications. Each issue of the street art magazine “betonblumen” (”concrete blossoms”), designed by the artist who is currently exhibiting, is published by Schlebrügge.Editor, and is available at an integrated floral vending machine directly on site. Signed copies of limited artists’ editions of the magazine are up for grabs at the publishing house, at the SUBOTRON shop in the quartier21, at the INOPERAbLE gallery and at THE HOT DOGS in the 7th district. Once per year the works of art can be purchased by auction.

KRYOT @ street art passage MQ
Host: subotron
Friday, April 17, 2009, 7:00pm – 10:00pm
street art passage @ MQ / Übergang Breite Gasse
Museumsplatz 1, Vienna, Austria

http://betonblumen.org
http://betonblumen.org/artist_kryot.html

Vapiano II For Viennese Bellies

philafication — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:20:55 +0000

For all Vienna gourmets – and probably gourmands as well – there is very good and tasty news. A second Vapiano store is about to open its doors to visitors. January 28. Looks like the location is supersekrit. Keepin’ ya posted.

On the one hand I am still praying it’s going to be somewhere in the 7th district (close to my apartment), but one other hand a Vapiano-proximity might have a bad impact on my monthly (limited!) budget. Yet, dining at Vapiano is affordable and most definitely part of my life as a student in Vienna.

This got you all hungry? Looking for ideas where to go in Vienna? Check out tupalo.com!

Update: Wien 2 turns out to be PRATERSTRASSE 24-26 . A-1020 WIEN. And guess what, a third restaurant is on its way.

Demonstration Friday Afternoon At the VIC

scottythebody — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:15:49 +0000

It’s fun to be sealed inside of one’s work compound because of a demonstration!

Or should I say that UN organization employees in the Vienna International Centre didn’t get to leave as early as they had planned on Friday because security services closed Gate 1 due to a protest.

But the mystery remains: who was out there and what were they protesting?

We’re curious.

The Mustache (Part 3)

melancolia — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 09:11:53 +0000

He is back!

Seen along the Margaretengürtel, Fifth District, the last of the series. The Jörgi is back. He has promised he would only go to Vienna if the Austrians made him their chancellor. Your choice.

Tomorrow is Election Day. So go out and vote my dear Austrian friends.

The Mustache (Part 2)

melancolia — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:27:15 +0000

Somewhere in the 22nd District, the mustache touch on the Socialist Party.

Time Travel On 8 Bits A Day

grenz — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:00:33 +0000

Jason Scott will talk about time travel. A special kind of time travel: “8 Bits A Day”!

Computer History, once a somewhat strange idea, has now taken the world by storm; a magazine or newsletter merely has to dip their ladle into the piles of nostalgia and older images of computing technology to guarantee readership, commentary and links. But what is it like to live in this just-past world of unusual keyboards, cartridge slots and 256 colors?
Jason Scott describes the process by which he became a collect of online artifacts, the strange twists and turns his journey has taken (both legal and financial) and the lessons he has learned towards the goal of “saving everything”.

Jason Scott is a digital historian and documentary filmmaker based out of the Northeastern US, focusing on bulletin board system culture of the 1970s and 1980s. He often finds himself well outside of that realm and has collected many archives of general computer and software history, which he makes available on various parts of his online archive, TEXTFILES.COM.

- When: Thursday, September 18 2008, 8:30 PM
- Where: Metalab, Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienna

http://www.metalab.at
http://www.paraflows.at