City Lights Booksellers& Publishers in conjunction with
the Consulate General of France in San Francisco                          
and the San Francisco Art Institute Film Department
present

TRAJECTORIES OF THE

CATASTROPHIC

Lectures, film screenings, and roundtable discussions spanning over a two day period featuring:

Dominic Angerame, Jordan Crandall, James Der Derian, Ricardo Dominguez,
Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker, Sylvère Lotringer, Timothy Murray,
Steve Redhead, John Rodgers, DJ Spooky, and Stelarc

Dates & Locations:

Watch video @ blip.tv

Calit2 Researcher as Cesar Chavez [from life.calit2.net]

By Doug Ramsey

We're a bit late on this story... but Visual Arts professor Ricardo Dominguez (in blue at left) had a unique experience in July, when he portrayed Cesar Chavez in a re-enactment of a landmark speech by the Chicano leader. It was the fourth event of the Port Huron Project, a series of re-enactments organized by artist Mark Tribe, part of Creative Time's 2008 public art initiative, "Democracy in America: The National Campaign". It was held in Exposition Park in South L.A., site of the original speech.

According to Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight, "At the end of Dominguez's second performance of the Chavez speech, the crowd spontaneously erupted into a loud chant of "Si! Se puede! Si! Se puede!" Under the circumstances, it resonated as an Obama moment." Dominguez was also featured in a preview in the LA Times. The event was filmed and should be available shortly on YouTube and blip.tv. The program will also play on the MTV Jumbotron in New York's Times Square in mid-September.

From the latest issue of .dpi magazine, published in Montreal...

An article by Sophie Le-Phat Ho reflects on the Transborder Immigrant Tool , an audacious and militant project developed by a group of artists from the electronic resistance movement out of the University of California's Calit2 Lab in San Diego...

abstract The Transborder Immigrant Tool is being developed at the Calit2 Lab of UCSD (University of California, San Diego) by a team of electronic disturbance artists composed of Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas and Jason Najarro . The project aims to reduce the number of deaths at the US/Mexico border by providing a device that migrants can use to locate resources, such as water caches and safety beacons, as well as situate themselves in the desert. The author explores the tool's intervention in bringing together questions of artistic value and humanitarian value in the current landscape of mobile and locative media art.

résumé Un groupe d'artistes de résistance électronique du Calit2 Lab à UCSD (University of California, San Diego), composé de Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas et Jason Najarro, développe en ce moment le “Transborder Immigrant Tool”. Ce projet vise à réduire le nombre de morts à la frontière mexico-américaine par le biais d'un appareil que les immigrants pourront utiliser afin de repérer des lieux sécuritaires ou de l'eau, ainsi que d'être en mesure de se situer eux-mêmes dans le désert. L'auteur explore l'intervention que l'outil provoque en rapprochant la question de la valeur artistique avec celle de la valeur humanitaire dans le paysage actuel de l'art médiatique mobile et locatif.    

Read more @.dpi magazine...

Artificial life - Patent pending

Jun 14th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Move over Dolly. Synthia is on her way

YOU have to hand it to Craig Venter, he is not someone who thinks small. The latest adventure of the man who was the first to sequence the genome of a living organism (three weeks after his grant request to do so was rejected on the grounds it was impossible), the first to publish the genome of an identifiable human being (himself) and the first to conceive the idea of sequencing the genome of an entire ecosystem (and to enjoy a nice cruise across the Pacific Ocean in his yacht while he did so) is curiously reminiscent of the incident that made him a controversial figure in the first place. That was when, 16 years ago, he attempted to patent parts of several hundred genes—the first time anyone had tried to take out a patent on more than one gene at a time.

This time, he is proposing to patent not merely a few genes, but life itself. Not all of life, of course. At least, not yet. Rather, he has applied for a patent on the synthetic bacterium that he and his colleagues Clyde Hutchison and Hamilton Smith have been working on for the past few years.

MORE

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9333408