technesexual | micha cárdenas

technésexual performance and artist talk next week in Durham

Next week, Elle and I are heading out to Durham, North Carolina to do a performance and artist talk at Duke University. We’re extremely happy to meet the faculty at Duke including Katherine Hayles, Michael Hardt and Elizabeth Grosz (who’s visiting this quarter!). We’ll also be meeting with their Experiencing Virtual Worlds interdisciplinary research group to discuss some of our recent writing. So if you’re in Durham or know someone who might be interested, let them know!

technésexual
a mixed reality performance
1/25 @ 6pm, SoundSense Studio, CIEMAS

Erotic Mixed Reality Performance
an artist talk
1/27 @ 4pm, Nasher Museum Auditorium

Sponsored by:
The Experiencing Virtual Worlds Working Group
Information Science + Information Studies
Art, Art History and Visual Studies
Women’s Studies

Art21 Article features my and elle’s collaboration, technesexual

We’re so happy to get this much exposure, through Art21, but also so happy to see new media performance, Second Life and queer/genderqueer/transgender artists being discussed on Art21. Read on and leave a comment so they know people are interested…

Performative Interventions: The Progression of 4D Art in a Virtual 3D World

“Time” is always present in our interaction with works of art, whether we sit to contemplate a painting, stroll past a sculpture, or watch a video piece for its entire duration or cycle. Some works of art are time-based in that the viewer must experience them through the passage of time, as with music, while others refer to time through links or references to art history, our collective human history, or the timelessness of nature.
—Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 2, Episode: Time

Art in the twenty-first century, reflecting and defining new developments in a variety of areas, has radically extended the conventional media of time-based, or 4D work. Following Virtual Artists’ Immersive Discoveries in a Virtual 3D Frontier, I interviewed several Second Life artists who evoke time in their work…

Artists Azdel Slade (Micha Cardenas) and echolalia Azalee (Elle Mehrmand) set up a live video feed for my Mixed Reality interview with them. Mixed reality (MR) refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Mixed Reality events in SL are streamed real-time into a region. Streaming media is projected in the live event and may include feedback via text or audio from the Second Life audience…

technésexual performance today in Second Life and in Reno, Nevada

Join us at the Nevada Museum of Art, or join us in Second Life in Insilico.

Teleport directly http://slurl.com/secondlife/INSILICO/49/164/3624

More information about the performance is here:

http://www.unr.edu/art/prospectives09/perform.html

A Busy November! technésexual, freephone, performances and talks!

I’ve been having a wonderfully busy November and I still have even more excitement next week!

If you’re in Reno, Nevada, or in Second Life, check out my and Elle’s performance at the Prospectives.09 festival on November 14th!

This past weekend Elle, Chris and I did a really fun talk about our Freephone project at the Machine Project in Los Angeles. Check out the photos here!

Also, our Freephone article in the Inflexions Journal for research creation from the Sense Lab in Montreal came out this week. It includes a howto for making your own freephone!

And in other cool news, Gabriel Menotti wrote a really interesting review of Artivistic TURN*ON for Furtherfield.org which mentions our workshop and includes photos of our performance!

There was also an exciting hacktivism action that took place this week where major media, students, faculty and staff received an email from President Yudof announcing a new $0 tuition program! But of course I have no idea who was involved… There was some media coverage on the LAist blog and lots of tweets!

Video of technésexual in Montreal at Artivistic TURN*ON

This video was done with just our Flip, we’re working on a better documentation video soon.

technésexual // Echolalia Azalee and Azdel Slade from azdel slade on Vimeo.

//The sound is very low frequency, so please use headphones or good speakers to hear the video//

Performed in Montreal at Artivistic TURN*ON.

In technésexual, Echolalia Azalee and Azdel Slade commit playful erotic acts in physical and virtual space simultaneously, using devices to amplify the sound of their heartbeats for the two audiences. An electrocardiogram will be used to monitor the heart rate with an Arduino/Freeduino, playing a recording of the heartbeat at the correct rate using Puredata. DIY biometrics are used to bridge realities with audio, finding ways of exploring the space between realities.

technésexual opens discussion on the multitude of sexualities outside of the restrictive LGBT formulation and homo/hetero categories, which are rooted in binary gender assumptions. The mixing of realities in this project can be seen as paralleling our own experiences mixing genders and sexualities, queering new media. Virtual worlds such as Second Life facilitate the development of new identities, allowing for unimagined relations and relationships. technésexual looks closely at these new relationships, how they affect our everyday lives and horizons of possibility.

More information at transreal.org and bang.calit2.net/wiki/Mixed_Relations

Technésexual at Artivistic TURN*ON in Montreal

More information at http://artivistic.org and http://bang.calit2.net/wiki/Mixed_Relations