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animation art Artist Television Access (ATA) Meetings presentation workshop

Rotoscope Workshop and Presentation with Artist Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

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Physical Traces – Rotoscope Workshop Description:
Join Brooklyn-based artist, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, for this hands-on workshop and learn step-by-step method for creating rotoscope animation. Participants will be instructed on how to utilize live-action video to generate a series of stills that will be used as templates to trace a drawn version of each video still and then export the drawn stills as a video file. The workshop will be taught using Adobe Photoshop CS6. The finished projects will be displayed on the web and exhibited in the storefront windows of ATA.

Register Here – only $65 for 2 days!

*** Free Artist Upgrade! SF Presentation with Ricardo on Thursday May 30th, 7-9pm @ ATA ***

About the Artist:
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga approaches art as a social practice that seeks to establish dialogue in public spaces. Having been born of immigrant parents and grown up between Nicaragua and San Francisco, a strong awareness of inequality and discrimination was established at an early age. Themes such as immigration, discrimination, gentrification and the effects of globalization extend from highly subjective experiences and observations into works that tactically engage others through populist metaphors while maintaining critical perspectives. Ricardo has established a socially investigative creative practice that utilizes whatever media possible to present content in a manner that may generate interaction and discussion by others.

Location: Artist’s Television Access (ATA), 992 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Workshop Schedule: 11am-4pm both Sat June 1st & Sun June 2nd.

Prerequisites: A Mac OS or PC laptop with a copy of Photoshop CS5 or higher – PS CS6 preferred. A  30-day trail can be downloaded here: https://creative.adobe.com/apps?trial=PHSP&promoid=JZXPS
No prior technical or artistic skills are necessary beyond navigating the computer environment.

Questions: about the workshop should be directed to lucky@kildall.com

Support for this subsidized workshop is provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program.

art Asterisk SF Magazine data visualization Meetings workshop

Sara Schnadt Presentation April 18th @ 7pm & Workshop April 20th – 21st

Presentation: Join us on April 18th at 7pm-9pm for a free public presentation with Los Angeles-based artist, Sara Schnadt.

Workshop: “Network Gestures“ by Sara Schnadt on the weekend of April 20th-21st, 2013. Only $50.

Register for Workshop here

Location for both Presentation and Workshop: Asterisk San Francisco Magazine & Gallery in the Mission District, located at 3156 24th St. @ Shotwell.

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“Network Gestures” Workshop Description:

Sara Schnadt, will be leading this hands-on workshop on mapping invisible data and social networks with everyday materials. Participants will learn how to translate data visualization concepts into small-scale art installations. The finished projects will be displayed at Asterisk San Francisco Gallery.
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About Sara Schnadt
Los Angeles-based artist Sara Schnadt explores technology in her work both as subject and media. Her installations and performances use found objects, interactivity, projection, and movement derived from common gestures. Much of her work involves representations or data that translate large quantities of socially resonant information into poetic forms, including data visualization. She often performs within accompanying sculptural environments, attempting to articulate the personal within virtual and technological innovation.
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Support for this subsidized workshop is provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program.  

Questions about the workshop should be directed to lucky@kildall.com

art Electric Works presentation

Upgrade!SF at Electric Works (new space), Sept. 6th at 7pm

Join us on Thursday September 6th at 7pm at Electric Works (1360 Mission Street between 9th and 10th — their new location) for “fluctuating images – a curatorial presentation”, an exciting evening of new media audio and visuals with Berlin-based curators Cornelia and Holger Lund.

fluctuating images is a curatorial platform for presenting contemporary, cutting edge, New Media Art.
www.fluctuatingimages.de

Since 2004, in Stuttgart and currently in Berlin at General Public Gallery, curators Cornelia and Holger Lund have run fluctuating images as a non-commercial forum and laboratory for showing video, music, photography, interactive artworks, installations as well as concerts and dance performances.

For this Upgrade! event, the Lunds will present their curatorial concept for fluctuating images and show examples from their recent projects; including the audiovisual screening series “media flow. videoventure on electronic music“; their research on visual music; as well as architecture shorts, music videos, audiovisual instructional films and fashion films.

Bonus: DJ set of 1970s Turkish funk music!

Place and Time:

Date: September 6th, 2012

Time: 7pm-9pm; 7-7:30 is meet and greet n’ DJing. At 7:30pm (sharp), we begin with the speakers + conversations.

Place: Electric Works (their new space) 1360 Mission Street between 9th and 10th

Bring: A chair or cushion, food or drink to share.

Invite Others:
Please bring relevant artists, curators, writers and thinkers.

Hope to see you there,
Scott, Victoria and Tim

Bios:
Cornelia Lund PhD, is a media theorist and curator. Currently she is visiting professor for “Art.Aesthetic.Media” at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf and has published widely on the relationship of image and text, moving images and sound and dance and film.

Holger Lund PhD, is a curator, professor of design theory and media design at the University of Applied Sciences DHBW Ravensburg. He has widely published on the relationship of sound and image, and in 2011 he released a vinyl record compilation of 1970s Turkish funk music.

Cornelia’s and Holger’s work as curators includes screening programs that have been shown at various international venues and festivals. Together, they co-edited the 2009 award-winning book “Audio.Visual – On Visual Music and Related Media”.

Augmented Reality Events workshop

Augmented Reality Workshop Reportback


San Francisco, CA

On the weekend of March 31st-April 1st, Upgrade! SF produced its first ever workshop. The theme was Augmented Reality and the guest instructor from Boston was artist John Craig Freeman (Craig), who did an excellent job of getting the 13 students going with the technology and placing augments in the SOMArts “I am Crime” show.

Craig spent most of the day discussing concepts of Augmented Reality and configuring everyone’s computers so they could view the sample augments on their phones.

No easy task! But it was a great group of people; artists, teachers, grad students, community organizers, and a few start-up folks. The vibe was good and everyone ended up sharing information (and snacks!), seated at a banquet-style dinner table with laptops and mobile devices.

On day 2, the AR action began with everyone designing several augments as PNG compilations. The idea was that they would generally be drawn from personal memory or experiences.

Here’s what one looks like, graphics overlaid onto geolocations, viewable from your mobile device.

Now you see it, now you don’t. Scott Kildall is being stabbed with a virtual Golden Knife created by Dorothy Santos.

All of the augments the participants made were amazing and they now populate the SOMArts gallery as virtual sculptures. Below is DC Spensley‘s creation.

And Christine shows Bob Dylan in the corner.

And Isabel Reichert exhorts us to “Trust” — is it the gallery or her partner Sean Fletcher that she’s talking about.

Casondra tells about her family history in Pittsburg as this “impossible object”.

And here is a press pass from 1934 which caused imprisonment for one’s “radical” beliefs.

You can see these augments and more at the closing night of “I am Crime” — April 19th at SOMArts.

Special thanks to Victoria Scott, who spent both the two days acting as T.A. And much gratitude to Justin Hoover at SOMArts and Southern Exposure Gallery for providing an Alternative Exposure grant that helped keep the workshop financially accessible for all.

art Events open discussion presentation workshop

Augmented Reality Talk + Workshop with John Craig Freeman


San Francisco, CA

Workshop is now $50!!

Upgrade! San Francisco is proud to present two events with Boston-based media artist and activist John Craig Freeman at SOMArts Cultural Center (934 Brannan Street, San Francisco).

Free Public Talk: “Emergent Technology as Art Practice and Public Art as Intervention”
Thursday, March 29th, 7-7:30PM meet and greet; 7:30-8:30PM lecture + questions.

2-day Workshop: “Making Art with Augmented Reality”
REGISTER HERE
Saturday March 31st & Sunday April 1st, 11am–5pm both days.
This 12-hour workshop provides a hands-on introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) – a technique where virtual 3D objects can be overlaid into physical space and viewed through the camera and screen of mobile devices. AR is an emerging tool in game design and offers many exciting possibilities for visual artists and activists to realize their ideas in any scale or location in the world.

All participants in John’s workshop will have their finished digital augment and a 17″ x 22″ color print automatically added to the current SOMArts exhibition “I Am Crime: Art On the Edge of Law“.


John Craig Freeman is a public artist with over twenty years of experience using emergent technologies to produce large-scale public works at sites where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. He has produced work and exhibited around the world including in Xi’an, Belfast, Los Angeles, Beijing, Zurich, New York City, Taipei, São Paulo, Warsaw, Kaliningrad, Miami, Bilbao, Havana, Atlanta, Calgary, Buffalo, Boston, Mexico City, London and San Francisco. Freeman received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990.

John is currently an Associate Professor of New Media, at Emerson College (Boston) in the Department of Visual and Media Arts and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, at UC San Diego.

Support for this workshop is provided by Southern Exposure Gallery Alternative Exposure Grant Program.

Pictured above: Border Memorial Frontera de los Muertos by John Craig Freeman

art Augmented Reality Center for the Book Meetings presentation

Join Upgrade! SF: February 29th @ SF Center For The Book!

Our next meeting will be held at 8pm on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, at the San Francisco Center for the Book. The meeting coincides with the exhibition, “Left to Chance: The Accidental Book Art,” curated by Hanna Regev.

Our featured speakers are Mohammed Allababidi, collaborator with Penny Nii on “Totality: A Digital Over Analog Book” a piece included in the exhibition, along with Philip Benn, whose video, “Cluster City” is also featured in the show.

There will be a social time from 8 pm – 8:30 pm. At 8:30 pm, the speakers will make 10-minute presentations about their projects, followed by a general discussion. Please be punctual!

The Upgrade meeting follows “Then and Now: Circa 1980 – 2012+“, a panel on art, science and technology in the Bay Area at the San Francisco State University Fine Arts Building, Room 193, SF State Main Campus, 19th & Holloway Avenues, San Francisco.

About The Speakers:

Mohammed Allababidi is a professor of Digital Arts and a 3-D Game Animator. http://cgmohammed.cgsociety.org

Philip Benn has worked extensively as a Digital Artist in both the fine art and commercial worlds. http://philipbenn.atmospherex.com/?page_id=22

Make sure to invite your friends and colleagues who are interested in New Media and Art. Feel free to bring your favorite drink or snack to enjoy and share with others.

Cheers, and we look forward to seeing you!
Tim, Scott & Victoria

When:
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012, 8 pm.

Where:
San Francisco Center for the Book
300 De Haro Street (at 16th) San Francisco CA 94103

Events

Upgrade meeting Jan. 18th @ SOMArts


San Francisco, CA

The first Upgrade-SF meeting of 2012 will be 7-9pm, Wednesday, January 18th at SOMArts, (934 Brannan Street, between 8th and 9th Street).

We will be holding the meeting the exhibition space of “Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance“, which was curated by our very own Hanna Regev and Justin Hoover.

We have billed this as a “Community Conversation” and here we hope to engage a conversation around chance in new media art. Hanna will be giving an overview of the show, followed by some “surprise speakers”, who will engage in a chance-based conversation.

Place and Time:

Date: January 18th, 2012

Time: 7pm-9pm; 7-7:30 is meet and greet. At 7:30pm (sharp), we begin the speaker + conversations.

Place: SOMARTs, 934 Brannan Street, between 8th and 9th Street
Bring: food or drink to share, but no alcohol

Invite Others:
Please bring relevant artists, curators, writers and thinkers.

Hope to see you there,
Scott, Victoria and Tim

Exploratorium fieldtrip Meetings Report

Report: New Media Studio at the Exploratorium

Last Thursday, Upgrade! San Francisco met at the Exploratorium — an art & science institution founded in 1969. Hosted by the New Media Studio, whose mandate is a hands-on educational experience, we got a tour from staff & Upgraders: Eric Socolofsky, Lotte Meijer and Chris Cerrito. In the after hours, we learned about three of NM Studio’s projects and the behind-the-scenes techniques to make a rich viewer-based experience.

The first installation we saw was Elastrotron — an interactive installation, which acts as neo-funhouse mirror, warping our reality. In front of the screen, visitors quickly loose their inhibitions, performing with their bodies and creating interactions with strangers.

We then played with Where do you belong? in which you can take a picture of yourself, inserting your image in between two other people you select. The buttons to take your picture are at the edges of the frame, creating an effect so that you appear to be holding hands with your two neighbors. The challenges here were less conceptual — as the idea was straightforward — but instead of user-interface. The solution was to make two large buttons that you have to hit with both hands at the same time and also a countdown timer so that that you don’t repeatedly hit the ‘take picture’ button (a common result, especially with younger kids).

This bubble floor, called Social Projections impressed me by its non-interactive nature. At first, it looks like it responds to movement, reminding me of Scott Snibbe’s Boundary Functions — but instead, there is no camera vision. People quickly make up their own rules. Different shapes appear and move through the space. People negotiate social behavior, jumping over lines, stepping in and out and performing collaborative tasks, all without interaction.

We followed up the tour with conversation along the lines of development process, how to generate user feedback and more. Here, it turns out that the new media staff spends a lot of time casually observing how people use the interfaces, refining the process. Prototypes are put on the floor without a huge degree of bureaucracy, creating a truly experimental science space.

Zer01

Upgrade! SF in the news

A very nice description of our activities this past year by San Francisco arts writer, Dorothy Santos for the Zer01 blog.

Thanks D!

Exploratorium fieldtrip Meetings presentation

Upgrade! SF – Fieldtrip to the Exploratorium!

We are pleased to announce that the Exploratorium’s New Media Studio will be hosting the next meeting of Upgrade! SF on Thursday, October 27th from 7pm-9pm.

Email lucky@kildall.com to reserve your spot for this event, as we are a small gathering and limited to only 20 people. Spots are reserved first-come, first served, and we will confirm with you if there is room or if you want your name on the waiting list.

The New Media Studio is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining interactive exhibits that use digital and physical technologies.  The NMS also coordinates and supports interactive art installations by visiting artists.

The visitor/user experience is an essential factor in the exhibit development process. During the different stages –from prototype to on-the-floor interactive–  the exhibit is tested with visitors, to make sure the experience and understanding of the exhibit matches the intention of the maker.  Feedback from visitor evaluation is fed back into future iterations, each cycle building on the next until the exhibit approximates “completion.”

We will have a brief presentation (10-15 minutes) by NMS staff members (Bill Meyer, Eric Socolofsky, North Pitney, Lotte Meijer, Chris Cerrito) to frame a context for a larger group discussion about the role of the user in new media art.

Place and Time:
Date: October 27th, 2011
Time: 7pm Sharp -9pm; 7-7:30 is meet n’ greet followed by the presentations and group discussion.
Place: The Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon Street, San Francisco, CA 94123
Bring: snacks or drink to share

Important: You must confirm your spot by emailing lucky@kildall.com. The museum will be closed when the event starts, and we will gather at the main entrance. Please be on time. There is free parking next to the museum, and public transportation is slow.

Bio:
The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco with over 475 participatory exhibits, all of them made onsite, that mix science and art. It also aims to promote museums as informal education centers.

Founded in 1969 by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, the Exploratorium offers visitors a variety of ways—including exhibits, webcasts, websites and events—to explore and understand the world around them. In 2011, the Exploratorium received the National Science Board 2011 Public Service Science Award for its contributions to public understanding of science and engineering.

Hope to see you there,
Scott Kildall, Victoria Scott and Tim Roseborough