In terms of Actualization
by Jorge Marulanda and Arlan Londoño

The general show was framed within the concept of "Actualization", a term used to dimension the possibilities created by new digital media and to base on them connections and cooperation with the environment and the concept of reality.

The concept "actualization" is taken from the work of Pierre Levy, as the basic form of the virtual that permits the interaction between human beings and information systems around intelligence and thinking societies. In the assumed opposition between reality and the virtual, the author dimensions actualization in the real/actual relationship, as opposed to real/unreal, as a way to understand the migration of instruments used to communicate towards the field of numeric systems.

In terms of actualization, the numerical present of digital media assumes a non-static dimension of reality, in which common representation, limited to a moment of observation, evolves towards a moving corporeity that adjudicates change from complexity and context sensitivity.

This evolution follows a progress line that goes from formalizing a unique radical point of view in painting or sculpture, to a second moment in the audiovisual form, which allows to think of the idea in temporal terms and get its antecedents and an evolutional follow up around defined axes. Numerical digital form allows for a change regarding its structure, altering its formal dimension and contextual implication.

The new "fresh representation" of digital media causes the concept of actualization to evolve towards collaboration: an artificial space that allows human beings to exercise their interaction through numerical architecture's sensibility and flexibility, expressed through technology that leans towards transparency.

The second installment of digital event has been based on a participative structure centered on a specific subject, trying to gather formal and reflective proposals in a curatorial project planned around three axes: Artistic Approaches to Programming, Imbricate Tendencies on Internet, and Emergent Societies on the Net.

1-   Artistic approaches to programming

Artistic approaches to programming is an exhibition space for formal proposals based on an abstract exploration on the Web, experimenting with programming and its formal possibilities. We understand artistic approaches to programming as being a field focused on contemporary abstraction (digital, exploring modularity and automation) in order to develop self-sufficient pieces within projects involving digital infrastructures, creating exploration fields that add to the resources on the web.

Santiago Ortiz, Moebio
http://moebio.com/santiago/
moebio.com is   Santiago Ortiz´s website, which includes his interactive works and texts, and also information about exhibitions   and events. He brings together art and science, interactive information design spaces, and promotion and dissemination of complex systems that use abstract forms to visualize and manipulate information networks, allowing for a dynamic reading of web art projects.    

Brian Mackern, No-content
http://no-content.net
His works, mainly concerned with processes and structures, explore interface-design, random concatenation of random events, estocastics, sound toy creations, generative/reactive/interactive image_sound objects, real time video-data animations, netart and soundart. No content offers a random exploration space in which the information source provided by the web inspires unexpected forms in the rational act of programming, In this project, Brian works with processes and structures, exploring interface designs creating random relations and events.

Biopus Group, Emiliano Causa, Fractal Circle
http://www.proyecto-biopus.com.ar/biopus_eng/circulofractal.html
This work has the special feature of letting the user give movement to the circles, which can be rotated, altering the design softly. Fractal Círcle   is made using Processing 0068. Processing is an open source programming language and environment. It was created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

Eduardo Tisselli, Net experience
http://motorhueso.net/experience/index.htm
Net experience is a project based on software design and interaction for digital applications of the different pieces that conform this work. In this work, Eduardo uses different strategies in order to create user interaction, including words and images and the code that gives structure to the digital piece. At times he uses the web as a huge data base. Eduardo's work is oriented towards the poetics of scripting.

Gustavo Romano , Cyberzoo
www.cyberzoo.org
With Cyberzoo, Romano uses the programming in information viruses to turn it into the materiality of an artistic proposal, focusing on the "anatomic" observation of these entities full of significance in the digital context. Humor is an important element that makes this piece a rare poetic specimen with a code that destroys that which contains it.

2-   Imbricate tendencies on the Internet:

Imbricate tendencies on the Internet is the second action field that takes advantage of digital flexibility in order to create a form that can be explored from multiple angles, nurturing from information coming from a variety of sources. Imbricate tendencies pretend to open a space for relations between the different types of images populating artistic projects on the Web, providing a flowing space to mobile, fixed and environmental forms. In this field, the interaction on the net is not only a dialog between human beings, but a complex dialog, developed from a variety of platforms. As field, form is constructed by the interaction and amalgamation of representations of reality (still image, three-dimensional image, audiovisual image), all of them found within the digital sphere, in order to give shape to an idea that contrasts different visions, expressions and sources.

Video Games: We understand video games as being one of the typically imbricate forms. In the first place, because of the subversive nature of artist-created videogames, since they are a re-make or try to convey another point of view different from what participants are used to. In some of the cases they are based in social issues with a clearly political outcome. Secondly, the aspect of interactivity is an important factor when we consider the ability to create contexts using any formal element they can use for this purpose.

Anne-Marie Schleiner & Luis Hernandez, Corridos,
http://www.ungravity.org/corridos/index.htm
Anne-Marie and Luis realizan el video juego corridos como una ironia politica de algo que sucede en la frontera Mexico y EEUU. Corrido: Oral form of communication, deeply rooted in mexican culture, perfected during the revolution (1910), In recent decades, this form has been retaken to sing about famous narcotraffickers and big trafficking operations.   Narco-corrido songs tell the sometimes sad, cynical and   romanticed adventures of narco traffikers who take great risks to deliver drugs across the mexican/us frontera, over a polka or waltz beat in the background.

Rafael Fajardo, La Migra,
http://www.rafaelfajardo.com/projects/migra.html
With La Migra I wanted to broaden the critique presented in Crosser . "You have taken our reality and made it into a game!?!" This comment was made by a student at The University of Texas at El Paso when he was presented with the two video games, Crosser and La Migra . The games simulate opposing points of view on the Rio Grande. This gambit seems only fitting as the games also have to serve double and even triple duty; as art, as political commentary, and as play. There are several voices at play in this paper, and they assert themselves without warning.

Ricardo Fajardo, El Rito
http://ambriente.com/el_rito/
El rito apasionado (passionate rite) offers a space for media convergence in which images' open expressions arrive from different directions to harbor a reflection around migration and the vital implications of displacement and security measures.

Jorge Alban, Artenemo
www.artenemo.org
In Artenemo Jorge presents a group of videos and web art created by Central American artists and produced using low technology. In his own words "Artenemo promotes learning experiences and questioning on technology, art and society through media art. Many art initiatives in Central America do not take advantage of communication and information technologies."

Fernando Llanos, fvideo 373
http://www.fllanos.com/videoindex.html
In Fvideo 737 you can see more video on-line to promote the consumption and production of the thing that he like the most: video. This section is dedicated to experimentation in audio and moving images on line, with three modalities which seek to widen my spectrum of possibilities in the medium. Three canals, three vias, three lines for consuming more video.

MimoSa http://turbulence.org/Works/mimoSa/mimosa_ing/index.html MimoSa is a group that works to improve the conditions in which machines are used in media production and representation on different levels. Based in Brazil, they believe in the critical power of people regarding the media and they strive to support the new possibilities that exist for those same people to become media producers. The project is available on WtHel portal, together with the group policies in order to support a project that connects a great variety of devices mediated through the phone and the Web, which act as the joining structure of the project.

Binaria Project
http://www.binaria.com.mx/
Binaria Project is a Mexican collective proposal for the exploration of digital image and audio in a variety of projects, taking on an artistic form supported by the use of formats like MP3, digital audio, video, animation, among others. On their portal you can find all the group's projects with their different resources.

3-   Emergent Societies on the Web

As a third field we have the emergent societies on the Web, a space focused on the dialogs and actions of diverse collectives in order to adopt positions regarding the current state of individual ownership when it comes to research and development of digital technology. As organizations, they turn the Web into a meeting place for the discussion and formulation of parallel proposals that facilitate taking advantage of this knowledge in an increasingly free way.

Emergent societies on the web are a space of dialog among collectives around the net in order to discuss issues regarding the legality and free use of digital technology, free software, copyleft and hackers.

Julian Lede, Adre Pahl and Carlos Amorales
www.nuevosricos.com
Mexican based group that focuses on reflecting about digital spaces, the social foundations built around this medium based on cooperation, and the legal policies that regulate theses practices. From a perspective of opposition to certain legal frames, los nuevos ricos (new rich) offer an extended array of services for the users to benefit from, in different formats and sources.

Ricardo Duque et. al, Joystick
http://www.jstk.org/proyectos/index.html
Ricardo Duque is one of the members of Joystick, important group centered around gathering artistic projects on digital technology, supported by a multidisciplinary focus and multimedia applications. On Joystick's portal you can find the different projects that the group has carried out, with a link to the work and supporting documentation.

Martin Giraldo, Radio Capsula
www.radiocapsula.org
Radio Cápsula is a meeting point for artists that focus on sound experimentation, in order to broadcast, promote and reflect on their productions. Based in Bogota, Colombia, they intend to become an important space supporting art dissemination with the Web's leading role, and have the support of important collectives from the Creative Commons scene, like the Barcelona-based group Platonic.   On their portal there is a wide range of information, possible contacts and important resources.

Brian Mackern, Net Art
http://netart.org.uy/latino/index.html http://www.internet.com.uy/vibri/
This artist has managed to build an imbricate and decentralized net of Iberian-American digital art that constitutes an excellent resource to map contemporary art related thought. Based on radical aesthetics developed on white minimalism and ASCII expression, the portal is a hyperlink center to first class texts, and to personal and biographical pages.

Minerva Cuevas, Mejor Vida Corporation.
http://www.irational.org/mvc/
This artist is centering her attention on the open distribution channels on the web, consolidating a reflective proposal looking for other exchange possibilities among users.   The project entitled Mejor Vida (better life) is a non-profit organization that distributes a list of products nationally and internationally.

Eduardo Navas , Remix theory
http://remixtheory.net/?page_id=80
Remix Theory is an online resource by Eduardo Navas that focuses on Remix itself as opposed to Remix Culture. In this site you will find a brief definition of Remix, which is examined more extensively in essays that will be added to this website as they become available. To learn more about the interdisciplinary practice of Eduardo Navas, Please visit http://navasse.net

Pablo Helguera, The School of Panamerican Unrest
http://www.panamericanismo.org/index.php http://web.mac.com/phelguera/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
The School of Panamerican Unrest is an artist-led, not-for -profit public art project that seeks to generate connections between the different regions of the Americas through discussions, performances, screenings, and short-term and long-term collaborations between organizations and individuals. Its main component will be a nomadic forum or think-tank that will cross the hemisphere by land, from Anchorage, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, in Tierra del Fuego. This hybrid project included a collapsible and movable architectural structure in the form of a schoolhouse, as well as a video collection component. The project, which seeks to involve a wide range of audiences and engage them at different levels, offers alternative ways to understand the history, ideology, and lines of thought that have significantly impacted political, social and cultural events in the Americas.

Jorge Toscano, Lourdes Morales, Danilea Wolf y Gabiela Gomez-Mont. Laboratorio Curatorial 060
http://www.lc060.org
Laboratorio Curatorial 060 is a multidisciplinary collective based in Mexico City. We come together in one common interest: to explore new ways of thinking about and around contemporary art, art at the fingers of its own (im)possibilities. Art as both narrative and as excuse for theoretical dialogue. We do no look to contain or define ourselves more than that. Definitions are for those who wish to stay inside determined geographies and act out pre established formulae. We, instead, prefer the unknown, the critical points of departure.