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[nettime-see] [transmediale] Newsletter: BASEMENT |
Newsletter 15.12.2004 transmediale.05 BASICS Berlin, February 4 =96 8, 2005 Haus der Kulturen der Welt BASEMENT ************************************************** 1. BASEMENT - the workspace at transmediale.05 2. SHELTER 3. KNOWLEDGE 4. COMMUNICATION 5. SECURITY ************************************************** 1. BASEMENT - the workspace at transmediale.05 The BASEMENT project in the House of World Cultures will be the 3rd edition of the transmediale Workspace. A hybrid of exhibition and open lab with workshops and presentations, the BASEMENT provides insight into the approaches and working methodologies of the participating artists, as well as the opportunity for dialogue. The BASICS theme of transmediale.05 is articulated in this space by the idea of BASIC NEEDS. Projects in the BASEMENT take a closer look at basic issues such as housing, health, food, security, mobility and communication. Several artists and project-groups who deal with geo-political, social and technical infrastructure are invited to present their work. What technology is required to satisfy our BASIC NEEDS? Connected to the BASEMENT are the workshops and the transmediale salon. On transmediale salon's stage every day will be dedicated to one of the BASEMENT's topics. ************************************************** 2. SHELTER Shelter can be taken for granted. Access to fundamental technology is BASIC. Two projects test this implicitness from the perspective of disadvantaged groups=2E What can technology contribute to render their situation more bearable? Temporary Service and Michael Rakowitz are presenting plastic and 'high-tech' from the prison cell. Temporary Services + Angelo (us) - Prisoners Inventions In 2001, Temporary Services invited Angelo, an incarcerated artist, to write and design a booklet about the many ingenious, practical, necessary, and sometimes downright bizarre things he has seen other prisoners invent. Angelo has generated about 110 pages of drawings and writings on prisoners' inventions.= He has collected everything from immersion heaters with electrical plugs made from razor blades, paper clips and Popsicle sticks, to cooking methods for making= a sausage sauce with light fixtures. Angelo's drawings reveal another side of prison existence: the need to have objects that allow the most basic human desires to be felt. For this exhibition, we will present enlarged type-set facsimiles of Angelo's illustrations and a selection of copies of the objects. Brett Bloom, Marc Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin are working as Temporary Service on projects in the social sphere and striving to create participatory situations. They champion public projects that are temporary, ephemeral, or that operate outside of conventional or officially sanctioned categories of public expression. The group prefers outdoor projects that are spontaneous and organic rather than those planned with deliberation like exhibitions and special events. They develop and modify strategies for working with the public that can be further adapted by anyone that may have use for them. Continually reassessing, re-evaluating and renaming, Temporary Services attempts to make their processes and thought patterns transparent and accessible to those they encounter. http://www.temporaryservices.org Michael Rakowitz (us) - paraSITE paraSITE has been an on-going project since 1998. The artist produces individual, clear, plastic shelters for the homeless which are inflated and climatised by attaching them to outtake ducts in the ventilation systems of buildings. The paraSITE units in their idle state exist as small, collapsible packages with handles for transport by hand or on one's back. In employing this device, the user must locate the outtake ducts of a building's HVAC (Heating, Ventilatio n, Air Conditioning) system. While these shelters were being used, they functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a sign of dissent and empowerment. Michael Rakowitz is an artist interested in environmental issues as well as public interventions. He creates objects, spaces, interactive installations, performances and documentations of public interventions. http://www.possibleutopia.com/mike/ ************************************************** 3. KNOWLEDGE Consumption is BASIC. But how can we decide on what to consume? In this section of the BASEMENT two projects offer their assistance in the supermarket aisles. Can digital tools and participatory databases provide the KNOWLEDGE for ethically-reflected buying? James Patten (us) - Corporate Fallout Detector The Corporate Fallout Detector scans bar-codes off of consumer products and reacts to the environmental or ethical record of the manufacturer. It explores issues of corporate accountability and individual choice. Due to increasingly complex global supply chains, a single product we buy may contain parts madeby various companies all over the world. We may agree with the business practices of some of these companies, while not with those of others. The complexity of the relationships between manufacturers can be so great that it becomes completely unclear how to make our choice. Can our personal convictions be at all translated into smart buying? James Patten is an interaction designer researching the relationships between computation, physical objects and space. His past work includes interactive simulation systems for complex problem solving tasks such as supply chain management. His recent work focuses on the design of interactive systems for musical performance. http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpatten/index.php Claire Pentecost (us) - Visible Food Visible Food is a semi-open website/database that allows users to search for food production information by product name, brand, parent-corporation, ingredients, toxins and 'invisibles'. This project, currently in beta-phase, allows users to retrieve or themselves load vital information on the 'invisibles' which impact health, labour and global trade, society and the natural environment. Claire Pentecost has been Associate Professor of Photography at the school of the Art Institute Chicago since 1997. She has been collaborating with the Critical Art Ensemble on several projects and is a representative of the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund. Currently she is researching genetically modified foods at the Bellagio Institute in Italy. ************************************************** 4. COMMUNICATION Within the past years radio has again become a media of increasing importance due to interesting new perspectives in merging its technology with wireless LAN and streaming. But radio is more, it is vitally important. For most people it is the media of choice as a source of news and communication. We will show two contributions to the current 'rediscovery'-debate of radio: Arnoldo Coro and umatic present two different views from diverse perspectives. Arnaldo Coro (cu) - Radio Havana Cuba, BREAKTHROUGH Radio Havana Cuba was the first international radio station in Cuba - 'a friendly voice that travels around the world.' In 1961 Fidel Castro Ruz put it like this: 'Cuba has a radio station that is already transmitting throughout Latin America and is heard by countless brothers and sisters in Latin America and the rest of the world. We are in the age of radio and the truth can travel far and wide!' Today, RHC broadcasts in nine languages with a varied programming that includes news, music and features. Arnaldo Coro is producing BREAKTHROUGH, a weekly update on science, technology and the environment. The issues discussed in his broadcast range from sustainable energy resources to computer recycling and software engineering. Arnaldo Coro will contribute his view on these topics with a series of workshops and presentations in the BASEMENT. Prof. Arnaldo Coro Antich is Senior ICT Consultant to the Cuban National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO, Chair of the New Information and Communications Technologies at Instituto Internacional de Periodismo 'Jose Marti', Havana, Cuba and Professor at the School of Social Communication at the University of Havana Cuba. http://www.radiohc.cu/ umatic, Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer (nl) - Soundscape.fm: Berlin Soundscape FM is collaborative sound-art and field-recording database project. Its goal is to critique the 'one-to-many model' of existing radio, as wellas a technological exploitation of both electronic and electromagnetic means of transmission. It takes the form of an FM radio broadcast, combined with a loadable database filled with field-recordings taken from all over the world=2E During four days of transmediale.05, sound artists, amateur sound hunters, phonographers among other interested participants, will collaborate on gathering sounds from different locations within the city of Berlin. A physical workspace will be created in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt that is meant to= be a post-production booth for the gathered sounds which can immediately be uploaded in a database-system. The uploaded sounds are accessible online - as well as the user-uploadable interface - and are broadcast via several local fm-radio-stations within Berlin and the net. The Project deals with questions of collaborative artists' practices and networking communities, as well as the use and creation of open software tools and the creative re-use of 'old' media such as radio. umatic is a media lab founded in 2003 by five media-artists working in the fields of net-, video- and soundart. umatic functions as a platform for audiovisual art by organising workshops, presentations and initiating cooperative projects. http://www.umatic.nl ************************************************** 5. SECURITY 'Technology for security' is a popular formula to fight 'evil'. Makrolab takes this concept very seriously and offers a solution to arm independent observers. MAKROLAB - S-77CCR (System-77 Civil Counter-Reconnaissance) S-77CCR is a tactical urban counter-surveillance systems for ground controlled UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and airborne drones to monitor public space =2E The violence of classical theatres of battle is overshadowed by the rise of low intensity conflicts in highly developed societies of capitalist democracies. The increasing privatization of security asks for solutions towards transparency and a balance of power. To allow for equilibrium of skills in surveillance and a broad education of the public in control technologies, access to a technology for the people seems necessary. In respect to abuse of civil and human rights defensive public intelligence is well advised to use advanced techniques of crime mapping and spatial representation of conflict. Recent public conflicts have made it clear that technology for independent monitoring of operations is necessary for staying on top of developments and news but also for issues of legal procedures and court cases. http://s-77ccr.org MAKROLAB The MAKROLAB project was born in 1994 during the wars that were raging in the former Yugoslavia. Its initial purpose was to function as an autonomous and mobile performance/tactical media environment. It was first realized during Documenta X in 1997. Its final state will be as a permanent art/science/tactical media station on the Antarctic in 2007, the only trans-national territory of the planet. The primary research focus of the project consists of three global fields of interest: telecommunication, climate and migration. Up to now, the project has been set up in Germany, Scotland, Slovenia, Australia and Italy, with future plans for India, Canada and South Africa. Marko Peljhan graduated from the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana in 1992. In the same year he founded the arts organization Projekt Atol and in 1995 Project Atol's technological branch Pact Systems. Peljhan is the operations coordinator of the Makrolab project. http://makrolab.ljudmila.org ************************************************** transmediale.05 BASICS international media art festival berlin http://www.transmediale.de info@transmediale.de ************************************************** --------------------------------------------------- transmediale.05 - BASICS - 4-8 february 2005 international media art festival berlin --------------------------------------------------- transmediale - Klosterstr.68-70 - 10179 Berlin tel. +49 (0)30.24749-761 fax. +49 (0)30.24749-814 info@transmediale.de - http://www.transmediale.de --------------------------------------------------- Member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net ............................................... 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