Dear Nettime list,
We're organizing a 4-day pressure cooker in Bratislava this
June 3-6 on the theme of technologically mediated
awareness/attention towards ecological change. We are looking to
spread the call for participants, so please share with any
interested parties you may know!
The full text of the call can be found here:
https://sensorycartographies.info/2019/04/02/open-call-the-augmented-attention-lab-at-sensorium-festival-bratislava-3-6-june/
And a shorter version on the Sensorium website here: https://sensorium.is/lab
Thank you very much! :-)
Jonathan Reus & Sissel Marie Tonn
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OPEN CALL: The Augmented Attention Lab, 3-6 June at Sensorium
Festival, Bratislava
The Augmented Attention Lab is a four-day
pressure cooker that brings together a diverse group of
practitioners to create and test technological prototypes and
cognitive methods that explore the edges of the human sensory
spectrum and compose attention towards varied intensities and
scales of change within our environment. We invite designers,
artists, technologists, researchers and theorists to
collaboratively build on each others’ knowledge during an
intensive development period where new projects can emerge and
existing projects can take on new and unexpected directions.
The
deadline for applications is April 15, 2019!
Register here.
The
Augmented Attention Lab
“Artists
are making present and composing attention”
— Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment
It is
becoming evident that the multiple social platforms, screens and
technological devices that we surround ourselves with scatter
and fragment our attention. This poses a problem from an
evolutionary perspective, as our ability to attend, react and
adapt to the environmental changes occurring around us are the
determining factor of our survival as a species. In a present
where environmental change is the single biggest challenge to
our species, how can an awareness of our perceptual limitations
foster new ways of creating technologies and practices for
augmenting our own modes of attention?
The
Augmented Attention Lab is a nomadic platform that gathers
practitioners from diverse fields who wish to confront this
question through interdisciplinary collaboration. We attempt to
facilitate a fertile experimentation space where designers,
creative technologists, theorists and researchers can benefit
from each others’ expertise in actualizing new sensory paradigms
through cognitive “hacks” and technological prototypes. As
facilitators, we organise exercises and field trips and bring
our own skills to the table, while also inviting guests who
provide additional skills, technical platforms and research
methods to the group. Participants are free to form new
collaborations on the spot or bring already existing projects to
work on during the period of the lab.
This lab
departs from Sensory Cartographies, an
artistic-research and design project that conceptualizes and
develops wearable mapping technologies and practices that take
into consideration the constant flux of change that plays out at
the interface between body, consciousness and world.
3rd –
6th of June
Bratislava, Slovakia
Participation is Free of charge
Facilitated by Jonathan Reus & Sissel Marie Tonn
Applications are accepted until April 15th, 2019
Apply Now
Participate
The
Augmented Attention lab is looking for practitioners who are
interested in developing bodily and sensory extensions that
afford awareness and attention towards our surroundings, and who
wish to engage with these issues through a collaborative making
process. We look for a mix of artists, designers, musicians,
consciousness and cognition researchers, ecologists, creative
technologists, etc.. who are willing to step out of their
comfort zone for a 4 day intensive pressure cooker. The
facilitators of the lab are particularly experienced in the
development of wearable sensor systems, wearable computing and
e-textile fabrication, and interactive sound technologies, and
will provide access to the specific platforms we use for those
who are interested. However all project ideas are welcome no
matter the platform or medium, so long as the participant is
interested in developing work that challenges the perceptual and
sensory modes of the body within its environment.
The 4
day pressure cooker will consist of presentations of the lab
facilitators (Sissel & Jonathan) and mentors Marcello
Lussana and George Profenza (see bios below), as well as
facilitate the projects and possible collaborations of the
participants. We will focus on introducing you to the methods
and hardware we use in our research, as well as facilitate the
use these methods and hardware for your projects. Furthermore we
will be going on field trips in Bratislava and beyond, that can
inspire new ways of thinking across our respective practices.
Will
your practice or project benefit from being part of this lab?
Then submit your entry for our open call here, by April
15th! The Sensorium team and lab facilitators will then select a
fitting team of participants from the submissions to ensure a
rich and diverse group.
Practicalities
The
Augmented Attention Lab will take place in Bratislava, Slovakia
from the 3rd – 6th of June. Participation in the lab is free
(thanks to generous support by the Goethe Institut
Bratislava). Note that participants need to arrange and
pay their own travel to and accommodation in Bratislava. There
will be tools available for production and prototyping on site
such as 3D printers, soldering stations and sewing machines.
Additional tools are potentially available upon request.
The lab
is part of Sensorium Festival: the first Slovak
festival making sense of creative technology. The main Sensorium
programme takes place June 7th – 9th featuring conference
program, interactive exhibition, live performances and
cross-disciplinary workshops. Throughout 2019 Sensorium
addresses the theme ‘The Augmented Mind’.
The
Augmented Attention Lab will culminate in an open lab session at
the beginning of Sensorium Festival. Festival visitors will be
invited to look behind the scenes, test prototypes and talk with
lab participants about their work.
About
the Facilitators
Sissel
Marie Tonn & Jonathan Reus
Sissel
Marie Tonn & Jonathan Reus are the co-founders of
The Augmented Attention Lab. They began working together as
Sensory Cartographies in 2016, an ongoing artistic research
project and platform for exploring ways in which human attention
to environmental flux can be mediated for survival.
Sissel
Marie Tonn is a Danish artist/designer working with textiles,
wearable sculpture and forms of spoken narrative. Her work
focuses on human perception of environments undergoing change,
and is particularly inspired by feminist/post-humanist ideas of
materiality and entanglement by Rosi Braidotti and Astrida
Neimanis, the anthropological work on umwelts and attention of
Anna Tsing and Tim Ingold, the death-defying architects Arakawa
& Gins and the relational objects of Lygia Clark. During the
Augmented Attention Lab she will be facilitating participants in
prototyping with textile and other materials, proposing “mind
hacking” practices, and sharing insights from her research at
specific sites of local ecological change across the world.
Jonathan
Reus is an experimental composer who explores new ways of music
making through technological/critical practices. His work often
involves deep research into new tools and technologies for
musical and performative _expression_ that value sensitivity,
mindfulness and fragility as their core components. During the
Augmented Attention Lab he will facilitate participants in
working with wearable sensing and computing system, working with
and through sensor data and environmental datasets, and
exploring the possibilities for music, sound and vibration to
enhance the sensory spectrum. He and Sissel will provide a
number of mobile sensor/sound platforms for participants to work
with if they choose, using the Bela platform.
Marcello
Lussana
Marcello
Lussana (1979) is a multidisciplinary
researcher/composer/designer who combines the practices of
music, philosophy, cognitive science and creative technology
into a cohesive whole. His work deals specifically with embodied
interaction between music and intimate human movement, where
body and computer are connected through a complex understanding
of body perception and carefully designed interfaces. After
completing his study at the University of Foreign Languages in
Bergamo (IT), he earned a Master in Technology and Communication
at Torino (IT). In 2010, he attended the Master of Sound Studies
program at the University of Arts in Berlin (UdK, DE). Since
2012, he has been a core contributor to MotionComposer,
a movement-music platform designed for differently-abled bodies,
and has been a composer for the European project Metabody,
which explores technologically expanded concepts of bodily
_expression_.
Marcello
currently lives and works in Berlin where he produces computer
music for audio-visual performances, dance, theater and live
electronics. Since 2016 he has been working on a doctoral
research project at Humboldt University Berlin on the subject of
interactive music and body perception. He is co-founder of the
research project Sentire,
a technological platform and research platform for exploring
touch through the perspective of sound and cognitive science.
Marcello will facilitate the lab through providing his skills as
a sound designer, composer and giving a workshop on ‘microphenomenology‘
methods, a research technique for understanding the lived
experience of technological mediations. He will also provide
access to the Sentire system for those interested in exploring
touch as a mode of environmental perception.
George
Profenza
George
Profenza is a creative technologist with experience in a
wide variety of platforms for developing interactive sensing and
data processing work, and is the general maker of interactive
magic at London art/design studio Hirsch
& Mann , where he works to bridge the visions of
designers with engineering realities.
George’s
specialisations lie in mobile and portable computer vision,
software interfacing between hardware and sensor technologies,
and real-time computer graphics. He is a graduate of Goldsmiths
Creative Computing and the Bartlett’s Architecture + Computation
programs. In general he is interested in how art, design and
technology intersect to create unique works that are fun,
curious and engaging. He believes that rich and unexpected
outcomes are the result of a hybrid approach that embraces
analytical precision, hands-on experimentation, and a good dose
of fearless hacker enthusiasm. George spends his spare time
bringing robots and puppets to life and finding artistic
inspiration in paper folding, doodling and complex geometry.
George
will bring his myriad technical skills and experience in
facilitating design concepts to the lab in order to facilitate
the development of new prototypes and cognitive-technological
methods.
Applications close April 15th
Apply to join now
https://www.sensorium.is/lab