Q – Queer media art, theory, praxis, discussion

Q is a list for queer media art, theory, praxis, discussion, started by myself and Zach Blas. Anyone who is interested is welcome. We have grand hopes for future events and publications relating to the list, which we will begin discussing more formally in May. Micha and I see a need for more space for discussing queer new media and queer media art, which we identify as an emerging art/political/theory movement.

You are invited to join the discussion and pass it on!

http://lists.transreal.org/listinfo.cgi/q-transreal.org

Audio of Queer Viral Practices Panel at SXSW

The audio recording of our panel from this year’s SXSW Interactive is up. You can listen here:

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100223

Enjoy.

The Transreal book is now available!

The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities is now available on Amazon.com. I am so thrilled to say that my new book was released in February 2012. I hope you enjoy it and if you write a review, please let me know! Or if you know of a university or bookstore that would like to host an event, please comment on this post and I’ll get back to you via email. Thank you!

From the back cover:

The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities explores the use of multiple simultaneous realities as a medium in contemporary art, including mixed reality, augmented reality and alternate reality approaches. Building on the notion of “trans” from transgender, signifying the crossing of boundaries, the book proposes that transreal aesthetics cross the boundaries created by a proliferation of conceptions of reality that occurred as a result of postmodern theory and emerging technologies.

Proposing three operations for dealing with multiple realities, The Transreal discusses artists and art collectives including Blast Theory, mez breeze, Reza Negarestani, Ricardo Dominguez and Zach Blas. Through these artists’ work and Cárdenas’ own artwork, including Becoming Dragon and collaborations with Elle Mehrmand Becoming Transreal, technésexual and virus.circus, The Transreal demonstrates that transreal aesthetics have broad implications across new media, performance art and electronic literature. The book spans a wide range of genres including theoretical analyses of artworks, poetry, source code, photos of performances and wearable electronics, and discussions with leading thinkers in new media and performance art including Stelarc, Allucquére Rosanne Stone and Ricardo Dominguez.

Building on the notion of experimental affective politics that was developed in Cárdenas’ first book Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs, co-authored with Barbara Fornssler, The Transreal claims that an understanding of building and working with multiple realities is essential for artists and political actors to have agency today.

“In this daring and poetic study, Micha Cárdenas guides us through the world of the transexual, the transgenerational, the transpolitical, the transborder. The transreal is both a multilayered space and an existential condition. Brilliant.”

Diana Taylor, University Professor, Performance Studies and Spanish, New York University

“The book itself, a provocative combination of theory, art, and autobiography, is at once a field guide, operating manual, and diary that embodies the mobile, mixed realities that it activates and describes, bringing together erotics and ethics within its calls to action.”

Jordan Crandall, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, UC San Diego

“Micha Cárdenas and her playmates are ontological guerrillas who know that blowing up the dominant order of power/knowledge is only the first step towards real revolution. The crucial next step is materializing virtual possibilities immanent in our current situation.”


Susan Stryker, Associate Professor, University of Arizona

UCLA Queer Studies Conference and QUEERTURE: QUEER + COUTURE

I’ll be speaking on a panel on Friday at the UCLA Queer Studies Conference on the topic of “Wearable Electronics as Femme Disturbance”, discussing virus.circus and my new project, Autonets. The panel is going to be amazing with lots of other digital media scholars! I am so honored to be on this panel with them. I can’t wait! Also, I’m going to be showing some new wearable electronics from the Autonets series in the Queerture Fashion show.

3:00 – 4:15 Royce 306
Techno-Queer Self Fashioning: Digital Theory by Digital Praxis
 Moderator:
Michael Stambolis, Sociology, University of California – Los Angeles

Speakers:

“The Real and the Fake: Asian American Digitality, Drag Kings, & ‘All of Me’”
Margaret Rhee, Ethnic Studies, University of California – Berkeley

“Borrowed Time: Fan Video and Queer Temporality through a Cylon Digital Remix Machine”
Alexis Lothian, English, University of Southern California

“Please Select Gender: Video Games and Butch Expression”
Amanda Phillips, English, University of California – Santa Barbara

“Wearable Electronics as Femme Disturbance: Sex Positive Community Responses to Gendered Violence”
Micha Cárdenas, Interdivisional Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California

QUEERTURE: QUEER + COUTURE
Featuring LGBTQ designers, stylists and fashion illustration

For Immediate Release
Contact: Tania Hammidi, Artistic Director
queerture at gmail d0t c0m

LOS ANGELES October 15, 2011 6 – 7pm — An epic LGBTQ fashion show is befalling the UCLA campus as the final event of a two-day conference “Queer Fashion,” organized by UCLA’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Program. According to Artistic Director Tania Hammidi, “this show is a sartorial meeting of the super-powers; we’re featuring LGBTQ models, designers, and stylists to produce a show that busts the seams of classic runway shows.”

Queerture 2011 is hosting a spectrum of L G B T Q I A designs, styles, and struts – from fierce femme style to trans wearable electronics, from vintage & suited dapperness to contemporary urban wear, from boxers to one-of-a-kind hats. Free and open to the public. JOIN US!

Location: 314 Royce Hall, UCLA Campus
Parking: Lot 5, $11
Directions: http://www.uclalive.org/visit/royce_hall.asp
Sponsored: by over 28 UCLA departments and units

Fashion designs by: Styling by:
Studs Clothing and Debonair Laura Luna-Creative Xicana
Michael and Hushi Dapper Dyke-Vivian Escalante
Stafford & Shelton
Jimmy Au’s Suits for Men 5’ 8” and Under, with stylist Leon Wu
Micha Cárdenas and Adam Tinnel

Performance and Installation:
Pre-show, “Shrouds of Aloha’s Kiki” by Aloha Tolentino
Costume design from performance artist Nao Bustamante
Installation by Guinevere Turner
Durational fashion performance “Mountain” by Aaron Valenzuela

Make-Up/Hair: Fashion Illustration:
Pony Lee Estrange Maria Leung
Sparrow Fox Karen Dhillon
Aubrie Davis Lindsay Fackrell
Color Beat Los Angeles

Cyborg Culture :: virus.circus :: video of our talk at CRCA Exchange

The Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) is pleased to invite you to:

CRCA Exchange #6 : Cyborg Culture

Featuring CRCA/Calit2 researchers Elle Mehrmand, Micha Cardenas and Nick Butko.

Friday April 8, 5pm – 7pm
CRCA Performative Computing Lab
Room 1606
Atkinson Hall
UCSD Voigt Drive, La Jolla

Presentations are followed by refreshments and are open to the public.

virus.circus
Elle Mehrmand (MFA, UCSD Visual Arts) and Micha Cardenas (Interim Technical Director for Sixth College) present experiments in Mixed Reality Performance Art, using the body as an instrument to produce sounds to bridge multiple realities and explore queer futures of resistance to biopower

Machine Perception Lab
Nicholas Butko (Postdoctoral Fellow, UCSD Machine Perception Lab) will discuss the past, present, and future of machine perception technologies. The last decade saw the advent of truly perceptive technologies, such as digital cameras that decide to take pictures when they perceive that you smile, or the XBox Kinect, which perceives over twenty distinct parts of the human body. Already, machine perception technologies are leading to significant advances in health, safety, marketing, education, and art. Yet for all this achievement, current techniques are severely limiting further progress. In the second half of his talk, Dr. Butko will discuss projects in UCSD’s Machine Perception Laboratory that explore new paradigms in machine perception related to active, self-taught learning.

CRCA Exchange is a series of free lecture and discussion events open to the general public. The organizers would appreciate it if you could share this announcement with any relevant distribution lists to which you have access.

The CRCA Exchange series is supported by The Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, in conjunction with Calit2 and the UCSD 50th Anniversary.

URL: http://crca.ucsd.edu/exchange/

Wearable Thread Instrument Prototype

Wireless Conductive Thread Instrument Prototype from azdel slade on Vimeo.

An early prototype of a musical instrument made mostly of conductive thread. It works by using a long conductive thread as a sensor attached to a lilypad arduino with a bluetooth module, sending data to puredata wirelessly and generating sound. This works by using the inherent resistance in conductive thread.

This is a very early version of something we’ll be using in our performances, and a very silly video. Enjoy!

Read more about our work at http://transreal.org and http://elleelleelle.org