[Nettime-nl] Evil Media Distribution Centre / Sentient City Survival Kit at The New Institute

[Twan Eikelenboom <t.eikelenboom@hetnieuweinstituut.nl>]

EVIL MEDIA DISTRIBUTION CENTRE AND SENTIENT CITY SURVIVAL KIT IN ''THE RUIN' SUMMER PROGRAMME AT THE NEW INSTITUTE, ROTTERDAM

Summer programme The Ruin (22/6 - 15/9) in The New Institute, Rotterdam features the Sentient City Survival Kit and the Evil Media Distribution Centre, among other projects. On 12 September Mark Fuller and Graham Harwood will give two lectures on The Prism of Evil Media.

The Ruin
The New Institute’s summer programme The Ruin will illuminate aspects of the organisation’s future agenda in five fragments of past shows by sister organisations and three new exhibitions. The Ruin will run from Friday 21 June to Sunday 15 September at The New Institute in Rotterdam. A parallel programme of films, talks, performances, salons and master classes will provide context for the underlying themes. The summer events will usher in the 2013–14 cultural year, in which The New Institute will give form to its ambitions around research and exhibitions.

More information: http://www.thenewinstitute.nl

Evil Media Distribution Centre
The Evil Media Distribution Centre is an artistic response to the recently published book Evil Media (2012) by Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, in which the two authors argue for an expanded notion of media or forms of mediation and a deeper, more complex understanding of their effects on how we act, perceive and think in our daily lives. On 12 September Mark Fuller and Graham Harwood will give two lectures on The Prism of Evil Media.

They focus on the pervasive presence of so-called “gray media,” whose mediations “facilitate and amplify the creation of troubling, ambiguous social processes, fragile networks of susceptible activity, opaque zones of knowledge—the evil of media.” The argument takes the form of a series of stratagems that, “rather than simple recipes to be followed, might better be understood as operative constructs in the sense that they have to be taken up, used, worked with …” It is this anticipation of the stratagems’ involvement in experimental practices beyond the pages of the book that YoHa meet.

The artists have invited 66 contributors to choose and write a short text about a gray media object, and these texts and objects are then presented in the setting of a curiosity cabinet designed as a distribution center (the presentation media—the pallets, forklift, plastic bags, clipboards and projectors—are also accompanied by a text). With this close proximity between text and object, ideas and materiality, the installation demonstrates a mindset and method where the amalgamation of theory and practice is not a point in itself, but becomes a working condition for developing reflective engagement with the evil of media.

Source: http://transmediale.de

Sentient City Survival Kit
The Sentient City Survival Kit, a project by Mark Shepard, probes the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. The project consists of a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city.

As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, information processing becomes embedded in and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Pervasive/ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban information systems capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring our behavior within it and becoming an active agent in the organization of our daily lives.

The Serendipitor Walks are part of the Sentient City Survival Kit. Serendipitor is an alternative navigation app for the iPhone that helps the user find something through looking for something else. The app combines directions generated by a routing service with instructions for action and movement inspired by Fluxus, Vito Acconci, Yoko Ono and others. Enter an origin and a destination and the app will map a route between them.

Source: http://survival.sentientcity.net/
Media: https://vimeo.com/14205709
Het Nieuwe Instituut viert de innovatieve kracht van architectuur, design en e-cultuur. De organisatie is ontstaan uit een fusie van het Nederlands Architectuurinstituut, Premsela, Nederlands Instituut voor Design en Mode, en Virtueel Platform, kennisinstituut voor e-cultuur.
The New Institute celebrates the innovative power of architecture, design and e-culture. The organisation arose out of a merger between the Netherlands Architecture Institute; Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion; and Virtueel Platform, the e-culture knowledge institute.
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