Tonight, Exit (also known as “Terre Natale”) opens at the AlhondigaBilbao in Spain. If you’re in Bilbao don’t miss this opportunity to experience the immersive 360-degree data projection.

From Stewart Smith: Exit (Terre Natale) is a 45-minute immersive visualization of human migration data divided into six narratives. Our historical focus is primarily from 1990 through today, augmented by occasional older data points or forecasts into the future. Humans migrate for various reasons. Political turmoil may create refugee migrations. Environmental disasters create refugees of a different sort. Some people migrate to wealthier economies sending micro-transactions, or remittances, home to their native land. We have recently crossed a threshold; 50% of humans have migrated from rural areas into cities. As of 2007 one out of every two people is now an urban dweller.

See previous Exit (Terre Natale) videos at http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale or for more information see other Terre Natale blog posts

Today also marks 30 years since Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis hung himself.

Stewdio is temporarily relocating to Copenhagen next week to install the newly augmented Terre Natale exhibition piece at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg. (Stewdio phone and email will be redirected to Copenhagen; regular meetings to be held via Skype.) Terre Natale opens on Friday, 4 December and will be on display through Sunday, 21 February 2010. See Terre Natale on Kunsthal Charlottenborg for more information.

The Jed’s Other Poem music video will appear in the Altered States segment of the Cinamatics Festival this Friday, November 20th. If you happen to be in Brussels at exactly 9:27pm you can see it for yourself. Check out the excellent selection of pieces playing throughout the evening here. Description from the Cimatics site:

Altered States: When Dreams Turn Into Data
With the digital invading every creative enterprise and form of expression, pencils have become pixels, dreams have turned into data. While cinema’s obsession with the ‘holy grail’ of photorealism has generated a blizzard of visual extravaganzas aimed at a suspension of the distinction between representation and simulation, a generation of DIY bricoleurs use ubiquitous ‘tools of vizuality’ (Kevin Kelly) to explore alternative viewings and readings of the familiar. Through processes of transference, translation and combination, they encode, reveal or impose layers of information and deceive expectations about visibility and availability. Poking the surfaces of various images, sounds and symbols, their renderings create poetic, playful and often melancholic environments that are both alien and familiar, questioning our relation to images and our imagination. (In collaboration with Courtisane.)

Tonight, Stewart Smith was one of fifty creatives under 30 to receive a Young Guns award from the Art Directors Club in New York City. Winners were selected from an international pool of applicants by a jury of previous Young Guns award recipients. Stewart was recognized for pieces including the Jed’s Other Poem music video, iQuit resignation letter generator, and his contributions to the Terre Natale exhibition. He joins previous Young Guns such as Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore, Todd St. John, Project Projects (Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels), and Ryan Waller.

Come to Gallery W/ this Saturday, June 27th at 5pm to see the opening and book launch of X, http://x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x.org/. Gallery W/ is located in Chinatown at 141 Division Street, Manhattan. Exhibition statement from the X website :

X documents the trajectory of the X symbol within (and without) underground music culture. As the first step of an ongoing project, the exhibition opening will launch a book presenting initial visual research. Building upon the varied meanings and form of the X, the show presents experiments in a range of media; attendees are encouraged to contribute materials to future iterations of the project.

Glen Cummings & Adam Michaels. With Michael Brenner, Jordan Carver, Jeremy Dean, Kathryn Holter, Kevin Wade Shaw, Justin Michael Smith, Stewart Smith, and Chris Wu.

Again, warm regards to our fellow Digital Team members who spent countless hours conceptualizing, visualizing, growing, shaping, and pruning source code on very little sleep. Bobby Pietrusko‘s early sketches proved incredibly prolific and his space-time functions ran the heart of our Bronson animation framework. Aaron Meyers taught us OpenGL and was the magic behind the camera movements in the Refugees narrative. Michael Doherty brought the Disasters animation to life and put in a good deal of sweat in the Bushwick mockup space.

Cheers to the intersection of code and art. View images and a description of Terre Natale at http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale/.

Congratulations to Ben Rubin and his Ear Studio for their work on Exits I and much gratitude for their contributions to Exits II. A very special thank-you to Bernd Lintermann for contributing his panoramic projection system and incredibly sharp eyes. And finally, we are in great debt to our Cartier counterparts Francois Gemenne, Ilana Shamoon, and Marta Niedzwiecka who assisted us above and beyond the call of duty to ensure Exits II told a cohesive and well-translated story.

See Stewdio’s Terre Natale project page at http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale.