seeMe.ath.cx by Honza Svasek

seeMe.ath.cx

Honza Svasek

The talk will concentrate on grassroots new media art production and will try to get some of the 1984 Unix Hacking spirit across to the audience.

seeMe.ath.cx is an Experimental and Interactive New Media Artwork In Progress. It is a Open Source Software Mosaic consisting of imgSeek: a. Content Based Image Retrieval System, a hacked version of Motion: a Software Motion Detector, Apache, PHP and Firefox in kiosk mode and some scripts, running on a hacked Packard Bell laptop under Ubuntu. Currently this artwork can be seen and interacted with at the Katendrechtse Lagedijk 461 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where it is usually mounted in the door of Werkplaats LUNA-TIKS, an art production facility run by Honza Svašek and friends. This work displays a matrix of 20 images which are visually similar to the current image. Usually the current image shows the observer of the artwork as observed by the artwork. If the current image does not change for some time, the system goes in sleeping mode and starts dreaming: a random matrix of the past gets displayed. The artwork demands user participation, and has been on display in a relatively poor area of Rotterdam.

Honza Svasek (NL)

http://www.HonzaSvasek.nl, http://kansenzone.blogspot.com

Playfulness of Public Space by Sonja Leboš

Playfulness of Public Space

Sonja Leboš

In this presentation, the main point of reference is the possibility of interaction of media and random audience in public space.

In my opinion, media art could release a sort of dynamic power which should enable playfulness of content in public space. While now we are having a dictatorship of commercial substance in mediascapes of public spaces, this presentation emphasizes the importance of drafting (even the smallest of the scale) projects which use public space as its playfield. In the presentation I will be talking about few of such projects, where playfulness of virtual space (expanding that notion to its wider referential field) clutches into dull and instant mediascape of a city, while transforming streets and squares towards some new forms of a less sullied urbanity.

Bio: Sonja Leboš (CRO) is cultural practitioner, living and working in Zagreb. Trained as architect and set designer in Zagreb and Prague, and educationist in art and craft in Stuttgart, she rounded her formal curriculum with mastering Cultural Anthropology and Hispanic Languages and Cultures at Zagreb University. As the chairwoman of AIIR (Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research) she initiated, produced and implemented various project, as e.g. some recent ones: ‘Cybercinematography – Semantics of Cities’ Retrodynamics’, on-going project, ‘Return to the City (of Dubrovnik)’ – 30’ documentary in cooperation with CroatianTV, 2007, ‘Space of identity, space of interaction, space of change’, research in urbanity, 2006-2008, on-going, ‘Body as a Site of Alteration: Croatian cinema d’auteur of 60’s and 70’s of the XX.Ct’, investigations in the history of the Croatian cinema, 2007; in cooperation with MM Centre, Student Centre Zagreb, 2007, ‘Narrative structures and the notion of subject: space of identity in the Croatian cinematography in the middle of XX.Ct’, investigations in the history of the Croatian cinema, 2006.

Point of Centre by Paul Wilson / Liquidiser

Point of Centre

Paul Wilson / Liquidiser

The presentation will aim to answer the key question of ‘who cares about art in the information age’ by suggesting audiences be given a reason to care, through both participatory and inclusive methodologies and being shown how new media art can reflect aspects of their lived experience.

The ‘Point of Centre’ is a project centred around a series of experimental documentary narratives – short films attempting to record places in transition; environments at a point of major or traumatic change. The ‘Point of Centre’ attempts to make use of new media art practise within documentary or journalistic traditions and contexts: using first-person reportage and access gained through discussion and negotiation with those individuals and groups affected by, or undergoing, such change. This information is then reprocessed in order to explore the fragmented and fragmentary nature of contemporary urban experience. Between late 2006 and mid 2007 Liquidiser gained access to four such spaces in Northampton (UK), each in the process of change: a hospital, cemetery, (produce) market and transport nexus. We aimed to record them all at this point of trauma and demolition or transition to another use. The Point of Centre project is a record of gaining such access and the potential for communicating documentary narratives alongside a means of connecting decisions made regarding space and place with users, stakeholders and citizens. In terms of audience, Liquidiser seeks to explore new methods to reconnect the subjects / participants / inhabitants with their respective spaces (work, healthcare, transport etc). In particular, ‘Head and Neck’ documented the closure of three operating theatres in Northampton General Hospital (UK) and was forged from a close working relationship with workers in the health profession. This film’s audience was built through ongoing liaison in terms of making, presentation and discussion of work-in-progress via blog and small-scale viewing. The audience for such work was first and foremost targeted as those effected by closures in this healthcare institution and was developed through participation in public meeting and grass-roots political engagement. The nature of the work itself – experimental, exploratory and resolutely non-commercial – was enriched by the ongoing involvement of participants in the local democratic and activist community. Liquidiser aims to find and develop new audiences in the East Midlands region of the UK through a determined vision of building communities around it’s new media projects: whether curating grass-roots new media events or participating in awareness-raising activities in order to make connections and forge new links with members of local communities. It believes strongly that audiences for new media exist within the everyday, within those effected by and subject to decisions made in the political process. While it doesn’t aim to give a ‘voice’ to specific communities, it prefers to allow them access to a means of communicating a shared understanding of their experiences. The presentation at ‘New Media Art Audiences’ would outline the remit and scope of Liquidiser’s ‘Point of Centre’ project and focus, in particular, on the ‘Head and Neck’ film as an early attempt to build new audiences for new media through a determined focus on workers, participants and – most importantly – those whose lives are effected by decisions made regarding the use and function of public and / or private space.

Bio: Paul Wilson / Liquidiser (UK) is a grass-roots, experimental new media community arts organisation based in the East Midlands region in the United Kingdom. It has emerged from a long-running experimental audio workshop whose key aim was to forge links within the creative communities within Northamptonshire (UK). In the last six years it has grown into a regional voice for new media arts development and has forged strong links with previously disparate groups whose major interest centres around improvisation, experimentation and the making of new work through a range of media formats and technologies. Between 2003 and 2006 Liquidiser hosted and curated ‘Beta Testing’, a ground-breaking series of seventeen new media laboratory sessions whose aim was to present the rich and diverse new talent within the region. From this Liquidiser gained funding to produce ‘Point of Centre’, an ambitious multimedia package consisting of film, sound and text aiming to chronicle the rapid pace of change overtaking their town. This CD / DVD / Print publication is due for imminent release in mid 2008. www.theliquidiser.co.uk

CYNETart_07encounter: Various Degrees and Possibilities of Including the Audience and Communicating Media Art Works to the Public by Thomas Dumke and Anja Dietel

CYNETart_07encounter: Various Degrees and Possibilities of Including the Audience and Communicating Media Art Works to the Public

Thomas Dumke and Anja Dietel

TMA (Trans Media Academy) Hellerau is dedicated to the setting up, promotion and realisation of intermedia art projects. It essentially represents an experimental platform for the use and linkage of various interface systems with a new quality in space-time, social and synaesthetic dimensions. The classic notion of “art” with a separation of social space into producers and audience as well as the real-time dimension are being questioned by ways of technology-based interaction. One of the highlights and focal point of work of the TMA Hellerau is the international festival of computer-based art and inter-disciplinary media projects called CYNETart taking place annually. The CYNETart festival presents media performances, networked virtual environments and interactive installations. In the realisation of its media art works the festival builds on dimensions of the human body as baseline for authentic perception and communication. In most of the projects the participation of the audience is accomplished by their direct performative technically-un-mediated interaction. Thus the quality of the “work” and the intention of the artist can only be experienced in correspondence with a direct action. Selective examples of the CYNETart_07encounter festival will be used to demonstrate the various degrees and possibilities of including the audience and communicating media art works to the public.

Bio: Thomas Dumke (DE) studied history, sociology and cultural management. Since 1999 he has been involved in CYNETart festival, in 2006 he has become its director. In 2000 he initiated together with Matthias Härtig the »microscope session«, a series of A/V events. He is a member of the art collective DS-X.org and a founding member of TMA Hellerau which was established in 2001.

Call for Participation at a Mini-Sympoisum “New Media Art Audiences”

We invite you to participate at a mini-symposium

_­New Media Art Audiences

Who cares about art in the information age?

Date: Friday 23rd May 2008

Submission deadline: Thursday 1st of May, 2008

Place: CIANT GALLERY, Prague, Czech Republic

Language: English

Admission: free

This mini-symposium is an opportunity to engage with the evolving nature of audience in the field of new media art. We aim to do this by bringing together cultural practitioners, curators, festival directors, communication officers as well as artists, and by providing a platform for different perspectives and informed debate. The event will comprise a series of presentations from practitioners within the field followed by discussions.

Likely themes to be addressed might include:

• The natures and identities of new media art events (products, processes, visitor experiences)
• Different professional perspectives on new media creativity, curatorship and programming, e.g. those of the artist, artist-curator, curator, technician, educator, artist-educator, conservator, academic etc.

Call for participation:

Would you like to join us in Prague and share with us your experience? You are invited to submit an abstract of your talk and a short biography to gallery@ciant.cz no later than 1st of May 2008. Acceptance notification will be sent before 3rd of May 2008. Organisers are unfortunately not in a position to cover any travel or lodging expenses of participants.

The discussions will pick up and expand upon key themes, issues and ideas which emerge in the preceding talks and will allow for dialogue between speakers and audience members.

The proceedings may be disseminated in various ways – through digital recording and streaming and possibly through web or print publication.

The event is linked into the international project A.P.D.C. (Audience Participation in Digital Culture) which is supported by the Grundtvig programme (Life-long learning) of the European Union, but is also open more generally, especially to cultural sector professionals, artists, and students.

Main organiser: CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague

In collaboration with: Centre for Global Studies, Czech Academy of Sciences