The Media Facades Festival Berlin 2008 presents:

First public testscreening will happen on the rearprojection facade of the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin on the August 30 2008, starting after dawn. We will present first selected artworks produced in the framework of the Media Facades Festival. The final Urban Screenings will take place from October 18 - November 3 2008 on four media facades in the center of Berlin. 24 meda artists and interaction designer will gain temporary use of the facades and one interactive city terminal ito explore their cultural, political and social roles. They invite a wider audience to gain hands-on experience in this special connection of content, format, and site-specificity, and to take part in a new interactive infrastructure.

Exposive Revelations (2008) by Daniel McKewen of the program Great Expectations.

NEXT WAVE festival - May 15-31 2008: a biennial festival all around Melbourne, presenting genre-busting new works by the next wave of Australian artists. The theme "Closer Together" refers to the way society is - for the better or for the worse - becoming increasingly connected by media and communication technologies.

Sceptical of the acclaimed social achievements of new technologies, the Brisbane-based artist-run initiative Boxcopy sets out to explore the futility of human activities with a collection of works entitled Great Expectations as part of the Membrane Project, a major site-specific exhibition, infiltrating the cracks and crevices of Federation Square.

A few other projects deal with media interventions in Public spaces such as Spinning a video projection by Kotoe Ishii is running on the Night Projection Window of the Centre for Contemporary Photography. Serial Blogger a unique digital narrative and performance installation based on a hyper-real crime scene investigation. The project invites audiences to pry into the lives of a group of bloggers who get a little too close to someone stranger than themselves a serial killer…. Esky a Moving architectural intervention is a quirky, curious and nomadic intervention, an unexpected inflatable bar and venue that will occupy periphery and unconventional urban spaces. Urban Screens wil be presented at the Polyphonic’s Forum 3 on Sunday 25th.

The episode Playful Audiovision on blip.tv presents some documentations about projects shown at Urban Screens Manchester 07: Videos about the general overview, an Interview with Susanne Jaschko and the projects ‘A wall is a screen’, ‘Circulez Y’a A Rien A Voir’, ‘The Air Been Broken’, ‘D.I.Y. Ballroom’, ‘Man With A Movie Camera’, ‘2.4Ghz Homing Pigeons’ and ‘Megaphone’. Go to their show page for watching the videos.

A mesh LED net is temporarily covering the facade renovation at Piazza Duomo, Milan

The Urban Screen in Milan at Piazza Duomo became media partner of the project Check-in Architecture, a participative research project, inviting artists, architects, designers and sociologists, studying in the most prestigious universities in Europe, to tell stories about our cities in the form of 3 minute-long documentaries. The project interacts with its participants through a website, collecting and managing the documentaries via YouTube and GoogleMaps. It will also publish daily reflections on a blog. Check-in Architecture is also a free-press publication, a part of the Urban Screen programming and an exhibition taking place during the Architects’ Congress in Turin and the Venice Biennale.

"We at CIA have never really liked the word ‘content,’ as it makes art and advertorials one and the same, but let’s say instead of content, Urban Screen will be showing the Check-in Architecture documentaries, roughly between 3-4 and 8-9 everyday."

Source: Anouk De Clercq

A new Video installation by Anouk De Clercq is running on the SEVEN SCREENS in Munich from April 25 to November 9, 2008: Movement is the focus of her installation Motion for Newton. Inspired by the famous physicist’s laws of motion, the Belgian artist allows lines and forms to affect each other in an interplay with their direct environment.

Point of departure was an analysis of the OSRAM building’s architecture. The artist thus created a work that was specifically developed for its location and those passing by the site in their vehicles. The artist refers to her new work as Motion for Newton. This title stands for a “constructive mobile,” which is inspired by the vertical forms of the SEVEN SCREENS, as well as by the city’s architecture, high rises and sky scrapers. Forms encircle each other in continuous motion. The work’s main theme is the moving body in relation to its environment. The SEVEN SCREENS are transformed into "motion sculptures," which become a homage to Isaac Newton…

CALL : The Media Facades Festival Berlin is looking for creative people such as artists, media producer, interaction designer, filmmakers, software developer, architects, urbanists and digital poets for the production of site-specific contents for four media facades in urban areas of Berlin. The works will be presented to a broad expert audience and the Berlin public from 18.10. - 3.11. 2008 during the main activities of the Festival.

Deadline for submissions of a broad project idea: 15.April 2008

Vox Pop by Antonia Hirsch is a 2-channel video project that will be screened April 7 to 13, 2008 on a dual video billboards above the intersection of Granville and Robson Streets in downtown Vancouver.

Silent, and one minute in duration, Vox Pop is set in a large, empty sports stadium. A panoptic tracking shot, evoking the mass-movement of an Audience Wave, is contrasted with the portrayal of a single audience members gestural action. A subtly provocative investigation of the individual within the crowd, the artwork draws attention to the spaces and behaviours through which we are encouraged to perform and celebrate shared values. By slowing down the rapid pace of video advertising, Vox Pop troubles the site of recreation, competition, and the particular dynamic of the collective.

Vox Pox was curated by Barbara Cole and presented by Other Sights for Artists‘ Projects.

Find here a documentary about the project Liberate Your Avatar evidencing the exciting collaboration of Lets Go Global with artist Paul Sermon, which was part of the arts and events programme for the Manchester Urban Screens Conference.

In a showcase of international Urban Screen initiatives, Our Friends Are Electric introduces the concept of urban screens to the Melbourne audience in anticipation for the next Urban Screens Event - Urban Screens Melbourne 08 from 3rd-8th October 2008.

From the subways of Paris to electronic billboards in cities such as Toronto, Berlin and Amsterdam, Our Friends Are Electric is a series of projects created specifically for public screens throughout the world. The series will include a range of video art programs in addition to individual artist initiatives created from collective, worldwide contributions.

Beginning with the launch of the Streaming Museum, the first international moving image gallery to be broadcast both in
cyberspace and public space over seven continents simultaneously, Our Friends Are Electric celebrates how today’s cities are
becoming connected through a network of urban screens.

Featured initiatives:

The Streaming Museum
Visual Foreign Correspondents
Videospread
The Vernacular Terrain
Do Billboards Dream of Electric Screens?
Upgrade! International
Best of Transmedia
At Play

This project, curated by Kerrie-Dee Johns and Mirjam Struppek, is presented by Federation Square and the International Urban Screens Association - a network of international collaborators.