<nettime> Winner Transnational Communities Award - Transborder Immigrant Tool and Nano_Berlin

[rdom@thing.net]

Winner Transnational Communities Award - Transborder Immigrant Tool

Artists: Ricardo Domínguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas y Jason
Najarro

A bang.lab project: (http://bang.calit2.net)

Project: Transborder Immigrant Tool (Herramienta Transfronteriza para
Inmigrantes)

Country: U.S.A

http://en.transitiomx.net/competition/transnationalwinner

The award was presented as part of the *nomadic borders* program of
the International Electronic Art Festival - TRANSITIO_MX 02. Which was
held in Mexico City from Oct. 12th to Oct. 20th, 2007.

The Transnational Communities Award was presented to us by the US
Embassy in Mexico and the award was funded by *Cultural Contact*,
Endowment for Culture Mexico - U.S. (Contacto Cultural, Fideicomiso
para la Cultura México-Estados Unidos).

The *Transborder Immigrant Tool* has also received an
award from UCSD, Center for Humanities' Transborder
Interventions, Transcontinental Archives Awards 2007-2008.
http://humctr.ucsd.edu/awards/awards.shtml#Transborder

We also received support from the Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Research
Scholarship Program at UCSD 2007 for our undergraduate researcher
Jason Navarro.

About Transborder Immigrant Tool:

The border between the U.S. and Mexico has moved between the virtual
and the all too real since before the birth of the two nation-states.
This has allowed a deep archive of suspect movement across this
border to be traced and tagged ? specifically anchored to immigrants
bodies moving north, while immigrant bodies moving south much less
so. The danger of moving north across this border is not a question
of politics, but vertiginous geography. Hundreds of people have died
crossing the U.S./Mexico border due to not being able to tell where
they are in relation to where they have been and which direction
they need to go to reach their destination safely. Now with the rise
of multiple distributed geospatial information systems (such as the
Goggle Earth Project for example), GPS (Global Positioning System) and
the developing Virtual Hiker Algorithm by artist Brett Stalbaum it
is now possible to develop a Transborder Tools for Immigrants to be
implemented and distributed on cracked Nextel cell phones. This will
allow a virtual geography to mark new trails and potentially safer
routes across this desert of the real.

The technologies of Spatial Data Systems and GPS (Global Positioning
System) have enabled an entirely new relationship with the landscape
that takes form in applications for simulation, surveillance, resource
allocation, management of cooperative networks and pre-movement
pattern modeling (such as the Virtual Hiker Algorithm) an algorithm
that maps out a potential or suggested trail for real a hiker/or
hikers to follow. The Transborder Immigrant Tool would add a new layer
of agency to this emerging virtual geography that would allow segments
of global society that are usually outside of this emerging grid of
hyper-geo-mapping-power to gain quick and simple access with to GPS
system. The Transborder Immigrant Tool would not only offer access to
this emerging total map economy ? but, would add an intelligent agent
algorithm that would parse out the best routes and trails on that day
and hour for immigrants to cross this vertiginous landscape as safely
as possible.

We also just returned from Berlin's House of World Culture where
bang.lab presented a new project on *nanotechology* , nomadic cultures
of New York art practice and the global economies - entitled:

PARTICLES OF INTEREST: TALES FROM THE MATTER MARKET
(a b.a.n.g lab project)
by
Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin (Principal Investigators)

http://pitmm.net/

Lead Researcher:Nina Waisman

Assistant Researchers: Tristan Shone, Caleb Waldorf, Amy Carroll,
Marius Schebella, Pierre Galaud and Césaire José Carroll-Dominguez

nomadic new york counters Manhattan?s restless flow of money with
?decelerated? in-between spaces. Their performance art refuses
spectacle. It takes on a political dimension through the formation of
temporary collectives which occupy spaces in new ways. The artists
open up New York and Berlin through their nomadic coming and going,
their avoidance of fixed structures. In Berlin they will tell us a
story of life in the global metropolis, a story that we all have in
common.

For the market, nanoparticles hold the 21st century?s great
promise. For critics, they are a vision of pure horror, as long
as the toxicological risks are not known. The era of unregulated
nanocapitalism has already dawned, with these smallest of particles
being used today in cosmetics, fabrics and dyes. Ricardo Dominguez,
founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater and initiator of virtual
sit-ins with the Zapatista resistance, sees his art as explicitly
politically commissioned. He and Diane Ludin invite the public to a
multimedia lecture-performance with two leading nanotechnologists that
will provide insight into the stories of the global particle market.
Knowledge is action!

http://www.hkw.de/en/programm2007/new_york/_new_york/projekt-detail_3_
14893.php

This project was funded by CALIT2 Research Funds and the UCSD,
Division of Arts and Humanities.

A new version of this nano-culture project will open at the San Diego
Museum of Art in March 2008 as part of the *Next Wave* show.


Best,
Ricardo R. Dominguez

Principal Investigator
CALIT2
bang.calit2.net
and
Assistant Professor
Visual Arts Department
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive (0503)
La Jolla, California 92093
E-mail: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu
Phone: (619) 322-7571







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