More information regarding ordering will be available soon from Greyscale Press.

Current structure proposal:
Data from mailing lists, Wiki, chat logs and image archive are sorted according to performers. There could also be paths to navigate through the book according to sets of keywords like: science, tech, or sex…

Aether9 products since 1933:

Aether9 (Audrey and Manu) working with Ludivine Loiseau, Pierre Marchand and Gijs de Heij from OSP.

Two members of the aether9 group (Manuel and Audrey) will be working with Ludivine Loiseau and Pierre Marchand, on a book that will visualize the past years of activity of the Aether9 project.

Some images (arrival at Constant Variable, first work session)…

Without defining documenting as a set of rules, but drawing a trajectory for the possibilities of documenting as complementary to the practice, an example can be presented. Being interested in the creative process, the collective Aether9 explores the possibilities of realtime manipulation and transmission of audio and video. Geographically located in different points of the globe, the collective’s members maintain communication and perform exclusively via the Internet. Documentation of their Skype meetings that happen during preparation and during the performance took the shape of (so far) two books published by Greyscale Press. (…) Through this process of documentation, Aether9 provides non-descriptive layers of the performances which help understand them beyond their results, based on the interaction between artists during the process of development and final presentation.

Source: http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/paper/ephemeral-audiovisual-realtime-practices-analysis-possibilities-its-documentation

Several browser manufacturers (Google, Mozilla, Opera) are currently exploring methods to bring two-way multimedia capacity to web-browsers. The technical name for this technology is WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication).

Here is a quick overview of current initiatives that look promising:

Ericsson Labs
“an experiment around real-time voice and video communication built on WebKitGTK+”
While being part of the WebRTC working groups, technicians at Ericsson Labs have implemented their own experimental prototype. It is running in “a modified version of WebKit”, under Ubuntu:
https://labs.ericsson.com/apis/web-real-time-communication/

Quote: “Ericsson Labs offers web developers the opportunity to download a modified WebKit library that allows for experimentation with real-time audiovisual communication in a web browser using the JavaScript APIs proposed by the WhatWG . The modified WebKit library, in turn, relies on the Gstreamer multimedia framework (part of the required Ubuntu 11.04 platform) to carry out the media processing (streaming, coding, RTP, etc.).”
First release: March 2010

Mozilla Rainbow
“Rainbow is an early prototype that provides video and audio capture capabilities to web pages. It is currently distributed as a highly experimental Firefox addon.”
Major update, August 2011:
“we’re happy to announce that we will be working with the WebRTC group on JavaScript APIs that let web developers build real-time voice and video applications. (…) As the project matures, and after the many UI and technology issues have been worked out, we would also like to integrate this feature into Firefox. It is a little early to tell when that will happen, but we want to do it as soon as possible!”
https://mozillalabs.com/rainbow/
https://github.com/mozilla/rainbow
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-rainbow/
First release: October 2010

The WebRTC initiative
An open-source effort, started by Google in June 2011, that provides many of the low-level platform APIs required to build support for real-time communication into browsers.
http://www.webrtc.org/

Standards and specifications:
WhatWG: Web Real-Time Communication APIs
W3C : WebRTC Working Group Charter
W3C : WebRTC 1.0 Working Draft
IETF: IETF Working Group

Mailing lists:
public-webrtc at w3.org
rtcweb at ietf.org

Dates: 12, 14 November 2010

Initimacy over Distance : networked broadcasting tools and scenarios.

This workshop is remotely facilitated by Nancy Mauro-Flude and locally by Audrey
Samson. It explores networked communication and related technologies through
the elaboration and enactment of a networked performance using PureData signal
processing language (Pd) and the Internet as a performance platform.

Artists: gatekeeper (ideacritik), sister0 (performed by Nancy Mauro-Flude in Tasmania)

While we look forward impatiently to the complete article, here are the raw answers produced by the aethernauts:

Pauline Eiferman: Firstly, I am interested in how the project started and what exactly it aims to do.

Christiaan Cruz: it started with a huge blank page problem
like the one steve jobs had, but more open and fun

Manuel Schmalstieg: technically, the project was initiated during a workshop given by the N3krozoft Media Group during Mapping Festival in Geneva, May 2007. the objective of the workshop was to devise methods for realtime visual collaboration in a performative context (Mapping Festival is an event dedicated to VJing).
During this workshop, a few people met on-location for the first time, and a group of people joined remotely (after a massive call-for-participation mailing) from Paris, Berlin, Brussels, the US, Colombia, Slovenia.
After the workshop, the group continued the work and new members joined the effort. We try to keep it very open, following methods that are used in open source software development.
Our objective: achieving new forms of art, by mixing existing forms (video, cinema, theatre) with current technical tools, most importantly the various network protocols. there are many “one-to-one” audiovisual communication tools, also a few “one-to-many” tools, but it’s very difficult to achieve “many-to-many” communication. so our project is a practical/artistic attempt to solve this problem.
I also like to point out that my main inspiration for the Mapping Festival workshop were projects carried out in the very early 80s by several artist groups, such as “Electronic Cafe” by K. Galloway and S. Rabinowitz in 1984, or “the world in 24 hours” by Robert Adrian in 1982 (see http://1904.cc/timeline/ for sources).

Paula Vélez: The project started with an idea in the Mapping Festival (2007) , people from different countries joint in for a performance having place there, in Geneve.
Then things continued, almost all of the first participants stayed for a while, since then new artist all over the world have been joining Aether9 performances.
Aether9 has been developping this years different patches built in MAX MSP, researching on streaming remote performances having place online and in local real spaces.
The research is not limited to streaming, also to visual and audio narratives conceve in a collective way. Spreading, sharing knoledge in between participants, thinking about networking, artistic collaboration, management, project sustainability, and looking foward the use of open source plataforms.

Pauline: What role do you believe the internet can have in the creation of art today?

Chris: open distribution and storage
easier global interaction/collaboration

Paula: Internet allows artist to explore new surfaces, new supports with technogical gadgets. Internet is a tool for communications, expression, distribution and new economical ways or explorations.

Manu: i didn’t ever work with the internet (email or BBS) before the arrival of the WorldWideWeb, so i would rather talk about “the web” than “the internet”.
what is most significant to me, is that Tim Berners-Lee originally conceived the www (and the first browser) as a “read-write” medium, where every user would have the ability to write, therefore to create. this philosophy (or “feature”) was quickly dropped by the main browser producers. fortunately it’s been returning with the rise of wikis and “content management systems”.
one barrier for artists, is that wikis and CMSes are text-based. video on the web still suffers from many issues, as we see with the current struggles between h264, ogg, etc.
one excellent example of “video management” by/for artists is http://pad.ma

Pauline: What do you hope to achieve through Aether9 project?

Chris: a proper production to utlizes the unique flicker effect of the interface

Manu: i don’t know. i guess i answered this already above.

Paula: Open the project to open source plataforms to allows other groups of people to use this tool of expression: Collaborative remote narratives and audiovisual performances.

Pauline: Could you talk about one specific video that is part of the project, and how it used the internet in its creation?

Chris: Our private 777 video always makes me happy.
The project seems to function best as a global interactive jamming forum.
Much like jazz functioned in post-bee-bop Europe when all the great masters
migrated there and shared a musical dialogue with collectives of musicians.

Paula: All project is based in the use of internet for make it happen. Participants are situated in different locations working together for being present in a same place at a time… that place could be call the aether…. the middle of something in between the inmaterial space.

Manu: i was never really satisfied with our “video archives”. it’s like with most peformance art, you cannot understand the intensity of the work when watching archival recordings. maybe they will be interesting to watch in 10 years.
I will mention the “Aether9 LRRH archive remix“, though:
one function that we implemented in our streaming tool, during the “Little Red Riding Hood” performances in 2008, was an automated script that uploaded one video frame per minute to a special “archive” server. After a few months, i retrieved those thousands of images, and combined them into this “automated remix”, that consists in many little fragments of rehearsals and performances. The soundtrack of the video is the live sound-mix that I made for the Montreal performance (at Perte-de-Signal, August 2008)

This follows first experiments with mobile streaming carried out by the Aether team in October 2009 during their Berlin residency, and on March 26th during a performance in the frame of Pixelache festival.

The streaming is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. CEST (GMT+2) and will last approximately until 7 p.m.

The transmission will include live footage of the “Celestial Hopscotch”, a scenographic happening that will be carried out on the outskirts of Art Basel by French artist and zerographer Frank Ancel (at approximately 5 p.m.).

Quoting Franck Ancel: “At the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1900, Loïe Fuller danced under the flag of its electricity pavilion. [I offer] the chance for everyone to design their own virtual Pavilion, to “dance” on the ground of world cities, a hopscotch grid already present on five continents where the land becomes zero and the sky infinite.” A first Celestial Hopscotch grid has been drawn on May 19 in rue de l’Exposition, Paris. The final one will be performed in Shanghai, just before the closing of the 2010 World Fair.

For more info, check the event’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=100175690028339

Some tech info

The transmission team in basel will be using the following hardware:

• Asus EEE 1000H netbook
• Huawei Mobile Broadband E1762 USB stick (with a Swisscom prepay plan)
• Aiptek Trio VGA+ USB webcam

The same setup has produced those lovely video fragments during the Pixelache perfo in March.

More info will be posted here soon!