Performing Data exhibition (April-June 2011) is a review of Fleischmann and Strauss´ body of work from Virtual Reality (Home of the Brain) up to Mixed Reality (Murmuring Fields or Energie-Passagen), from Fluid (Liquid Views) to Rigid (Rigid Waves) up to Floating Interface (Media Flow).

Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss from the Fraunhofer IAIS Research Institute show an intersection of the body and immaterial digital data. From Body Space (Virtual Striptease) to Knowledge Space (Semantic Map): Interactivity as an extension of touch is a central strategy of their work – interactivity with its complex relationship to reality, re-presentation and presence.

The body as interface and intersections to the disembodied digital information. Immersion in data flow causes productive moments of disturbance and suspension, and consequently – a feeling of real physical presence.

The exhibition Performing Data includes works from the early 1990s, when the artists/scientists were co-founders of the ART+COM collective in 1987 in Berlin. Since 1992 they developed their work as research artists at KHM and GMD – the German National Research Center for Information Technology, since 1997 as directors of the Media Art & Research Studies (MARS) department and since 2001 at Fraunhofer Society, in the Institute for Media Communication (IMK) and the Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems in Sankt Augustin, Germany.

The catalog with DVD and essays by Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Derrick de Kerckhove, Luca Farulli
Released in September 2011
Editor: Krzysztof Miekus
Co-editor: Karolina Koriat
Publisher: National Centre for Culture, Warszawa 2011 in collaboration with Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk, 2011
ISBN 978-83-61587-55-2
114 pages

Coded Cultures is an multinational initiative of the group 5uper.net to discuss and reflect the intersections of media, art, society and technology in experimental settings of exihibitions, workshops, symposia, presentations and artistic interventions. For the fourth time, Coded Cultures presents a forum to discuss and present (new) media arts, digital communities and positions itself in the current international (media arts) discourse.

Cultural accomplishments of individuals or differently organized forms of human beings in context with an ever-changing (transforming) environment bring manifold products and processes to surface: cultural artifacts, »distributed agencies«, »framed interactivity« , collective ideas. The city as artistic playfield is used to present Coded Cultures 2011 in a dislocated way, presenting new media arts, media architecture, hacktivism and similar fields of expression with a strong focus on intermediation and discursivity. Through interactive and experimental forms of presentation, accompanied by classical forms of displaying new media arts (such as exhibitions and performances) the role of media arts, media artists and art festivals as such are to be discussed, presented and reflected upon.

The interface as a cultural paradigm: In the case of computers, interfaces mediate between humans and machines, between machines and between humans. Interfaces thus involve an exchange between data and culture. In this sense, the computer interface can be described as a cultural interface combining cultural content (images, text, movies, sound) with machine/media control (buttons, menus, filters, etc.) and networks (World Wide Web). As such, the interface can be seen as a cultural paradigm affecting not only our creative production and presentation of the world but also our perception of the world.

From private to public:

In the past decade, interfaces have been expanding from the graphical user interface of a computer to meet the needs of different new technologies, uses, cultures and contexts: they are mobile, networked, ubiquitous, and embedded in the environment and architecture. The purpose of the conference and Ph.D. workshops is to investigate the aesthetic and cultural implications of a situation where interfaces not only appear in public space but are also platforms for both private activities in public spheres and offer public interference in the private sphere. In other words, we aim to investigate these new interfaces that affect relations between public and private realms, and generate new forms of civic communication and creative production.

Across disciplines:

The events aim to bring together researchers within diverse fields: across aesthetics, cultural theory, business, architecture and urban studies, united by the need to understand public interfaces and the possible paradigmatic changes they pose to these fields. The event stresses dialogue between fields of study, institutions and individual researchers who are engaged with common issues but not usually in a situation where they are able to openly discuss and reflect interdisciplinary concerns and approaches.

Although our starting point derives from a concept of the public informed by network theory and the social practices around computing, we aim to expand this view in recognition of the ways in which contemporary power and control are structured. The following statements operate as points of departure for the conference:

Research questions:

Whilst experimentation and developments in the culture of free software reflects emergent and self-organizing public actions, how does this modify our understanding of public interfaces? Can the public interface be used as a useful concept for understanding changing relations between public and private realms within other fields? Does the public interface offer a way of further examining relational aesthetics, the cultural regeneration agenda and public art? Does the public interface provide new understandings of the relationship between creative production and the free market sphere? How does the possible dissolution of the public and private spheres relate to bio politics and contemporary forms of power? Does the public interface suggest new borders or even the dissolution of borders between the public and private, humans and machines, the centre and periphery?

The conference and workshop are organised into three thematic strands:

- The public interface as art
- The public interfaces of urban space
- The public interface and capital.

The conference and Ph.D. workshop brings together researchers from Aarhus University, University of Plymouth, and guests to address the broad theme of Public Interfaces. It is organised by the Centre for Digital Urban Living (DUL), Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC), and Dept. of Aesthetic Studies, Aarhus University. Emerging from DUL and DARC’s ongoing research around interface criticism, the aim is to broaden issues to encompass the development of urban interfaces, and the changing concept of the ‘public’.

Speakers: Merete Carlson (DK), Phil Ellis (UK), Christian Rhein (DE), Nina Valkanova (BG/ES), Tobias Ebsen (DK), Kevin Carter (UK), Thomas Bjørnsten Kristensen (DK), Andrew Prior (UK), Morten Riis (DK), Nina Gram (DK), Lars Bo Løfgreen (DK), Robert Jackson (UK), Magda Tyzlik-Carver (UK/PL), Tatiana Bazzichielli (IT/DK), Jacob Lund (DK), Malcolm Miles (UK), Morten Breinbjerg (DK), Brett Bloom (US/DK), Rui Guerra (NL/PT), Jørgen Bang (DK), Martin Brynskov (DK), Robert Brown (UK/US), Lone Koefoed Hansen (DK), Zoran Poposki (Rep. of Macedonia), Christian Ulrik Andersen (DK), Søren Pold (DK), Joasia Krysa (PL/UK), Geoff Cox (UK/DK), Mikkel Bolt (DK)

Organizers:

- Geoff Cox, Post Doc, Digital Urban Living, Dept. of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University
- Jacob Lund, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Aesthetic Studies, Aarhus University
- Christian Ulrik Andersen, Associate Professor & Chair of DARC, Digital Urban Living, Dept. of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University.

Inter-face, curated by Coral Silverman, is a group show exploring the ways in which our lives are being shaped by technology. The exhibition — featuring Emma Andrea, Jonathan Nissenbaum, Coral Silverman, Felisia Tandiono, Vitor Teixeira — presents new work addressing themes of communication, technology, and the virtual world. Inter-face asks the viewer to consider the many definitions of the term, as the point of interconnection between two entities, both between a person and a machine and between two people. As it becomes increasing simple and efficient to communicate with others, does the value of that communication decrease? As people spend more and more time engaged with their computers, cell phones, and other machines does human face-to-face interaction remain important and relevant?

Eight Grand is a shared studio space containing a small gallery in a converted factory building housing hundreds of artists’ studios as well as the International Studio & Curatorial Program. Inter-face is the first show of planned monthly exhibitions. Each show will be open for one night only.

In the discussion on hybrid spaces, an earlier post from Martin and Dimitiris (20 July) talked about The synchronous experience of a mobile spatial interface and of the non-mediated physical environment, a hybrid spatial experience, material (space determined by material elements) and immaterial space (determined by digitally produced representations) are merging. This is a useful starting point and there is no doubt that the physical spaces we inhabit and move through are now mediated with technologies; they are hybrid spaces. Yet it seems to me that we are finding it difficult to move beyond the rhetoric and to really respond to the challenge of how to engage with these hybrid cities as designers and how to understand the new behaviours that are emerging in these layered spaces. Below I introduce some of my own thoughts and questions on this topic.

of flashmobs, foursquare and facades….

It puzzles me that when I look and move around I notice very few obvious changes in the physical nature of urban space (maybe I expect too much?). For sure I carry a device with me that augments the space. But the screen is still my interface; it rarely spills out into the city. In fact the city and the built space itself remains surprisingly neutral and passive. I may look at the city through a digital lens, but the physical world rarely responds to my passing or presence. When I try to grasp how space has been changed, it is summed up in these three areas:

flash mobs.
These highly choreographed performances in public space show how media and technology can inform new ways of behaving in public space that’s moved way beyond rheingolds smartmobs. They come into being through a whole plethora of media platforms, twitter, facebook and sms and demonstrate a temporality that the physical space of the city cannot (will not?) respond to. It can only be a passive observer or stage. How can the static nature of out built environment and space start to respond to these forms of serendipity and micro-coordination of social behaviour? Can hybrid space start to perform, to come together and disperse when its use is over?

foursquare.
love it or hate it the use of foursquare represents a new practice of recognising and naming presence in space on technology’s terms. Take a look at foursquare listings at any place and you will find as diverse a set of descriptions for places as you could imagine. It documents the sociality and mobility of places we are present in, where people pass through and encounter others; train stations, airports, sandwich bars, stores and nightclubs. These are places of shared experience, not addresses or locations, and our presence our physical environment is a presence in this hybrid space. So as locative media re-values the sociality of presence with strangers in urban public space how can the spaces start to allow for these passing encounters? Do we simply need a few more places to be ’slow’ and to stop (without having to pay for a coffee), where we can be present in both digital space and the physical space without causing disruption due to our civil inattention. Is it as simple as more benches, more meeting points with wifi and a power supply?

facades.
As I move through transit spaces there is a growing number of screens showing digital images, sometimes they respond to my input. Whole facades are superimposed with images and sometimes projections or even screens. Do we need windows in public buildings any more? probably not. So how do we design for spaces that need not look out, but that offer other ways of both enclosing and making interfaces between one space and the next? Mirjam Struppek’s work on highlighting the important issue of urban screens starts to reclaim the screens as a creative design problem. But on a broader level how do we connect our physical spaces with our digital spaces. How do we make a less diss-jointed hybridity, drawing together the physical requirements of the built space to connect outside and inside, and the media spaces which demand a different kind of accessibility; one which is only concerned with non-visual, unbroken links to the network?

Although this is my personal perspective on some of the issues facing us in the design of hybrid spaces I also introduce them in the context of the 2010 Mediacity conference in Weimar, Germany which will take place at the end of October. This will also provide the opportunity to consider and discuss some of the challenges of the hybrid city in a co-located panel discussion, which I will be moderating. It would be great if list members were also able to contribute to this discussion in some way either by responding to some of the topics or above or by introducing their own questions and comments. I will do my best to include these in the debate.

regards,

Katharine

www.trolleyinteractive.com
http://www.uni-siegen.de/locatingmedia/personen/willis_katharine.html?lang=de

In the beginning of the 21st century, urban environments, within which social life evolves, are radically being reordered by technological systems and networks. Mobile telephony has restructured the way people socialize within urban space (Plant, 2001). Multi-user virtual environments redefine the meaning of mediated communication by immersing communicating participants into a synthetic spatial context. ICTs and new media may also be used for augmenting physical environments in order to communicate meaning. The contemporary urban environment already incorporates various kinds of representations of reality, communicated to us all via various media and appropriate display systems (most of these representations are visual, i.e. billboards, video projections, wall paintings, closed circuit TV, touch screens, etc). These environments may also incorporate systems that capture visual, auditory, and other types of information regarding human activity and, consequently, utilize this input to affect the process of generating digital representations. The most advanced form of such systems is pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems (Weiser, 1991). It could then be suggested (Charitos, 2005) that the incorporation of information and communication technology (ICT) systems results in an electronic enhancement of the everyday urban environment and that communication with these environments and with other citizens who exist and act within them is mediated by these systems.

The convergence of new mobile telecommunication networks, geographical positioning systems and interactive graphical interfaces on mobile devices, as they are already being utilized in a series of location-based activities, have begun to reveal the potential for new forms of interpersonal communication. These systems may allow groups of people to interact with each other, while being aware of each other’s location at all times via representations on mobile interfaces, which have a predominantly spatial character. The synchronous experience of a mobile spatial interface and of the non-mediated physical environment, ultimately affords a hybrid (synthetic and physical) spatial experience, in the context of which novel forms of social interaction and cultural practices may occur.

Hybrid cities could therefore be seen as spatial interfaces affording experiences which involve both virtual and physical spatial elements and information and which may synchronously support computer-mediated and interpersonal communication. Such emerging types of communication may lead to revolutionary new ways of inhabiting urban space, ultimately transforming the way we perceive, experience and think about our cities and our everyday life within them. These developments certainly call for reconsidering the way in which urban environments are conceived of and designed, by taking into account the incorporation of these ICT systems, since they are inseparably woven into the fabric of everyday life within the urban context. What is even more important, however, is the impact of these phenomena on everyday life in the city, at a social and cultural level.

The Hybrid City as an Interface discussion will attempt to approach a series of issues relating to the emergence of these phenomena and will mainly focus on the following topics:

• user generated maps & collective cartographies: issues of appropriation and expropriation
• the internet and the metropolis: similarities between the virtual space and the real space as factories of knowledge and information
• the city as a gamespace: tracing the playful features of the new modes of interactivity and participation
• psychogeographies & the contemporary city: discussing the wide use of a 60s situationist notion for the definition of digital city interventions and applications
• Whose city exactly? Reconsidering spatial production processes through ludic, user inter-actions within the urban context
• Which side are you on (on the threshold)? Outlining the relations between the virtual and physical experience of the city, as well as the new social dynamics of this hybrid urban context for everyday life.

References

Charitos, D. (2005). Virtual reality: A new kind of human-computer interface or a new communication medium? Issues of Communication, 2, 83-99, Athens: Kastaniotis.

Plant, S. (2001). On the mobile: The effects of mobile telephones on social and individual life. Study commissioned by Motorola. Retrieved August 2, 2007, from http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/0/234_MotDoc.pdf

Weiser, M. (1991). The computer for the twenty-first century. Scientific American, 265(3), 94-104.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFO of DISCUSSION RESPONDENTS

Dimitrios Charitos is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. He teaches “Human-Computer Communication”, “Art & Technology”, “Visual Communication”, “Mediated Environments”. He has studied architectural design, computer aided design and has a PhD on interactive design and virtual environments. He has taught at an undergraduate and postgraduate level since 1994 in Scotland and Greece. He has authored or co-authored more than 70 publications in books, journals or conference proceedings. His artistic work involves electronic music, audiovisual, non-interactive or interactive, site-specific installations and virtual environments.

Professor M. Rieser is a Media Artist and Theorist based in Bristol. Professor of Digital Creativity at De Montfort University. 2000-7 Professor of Digital Arts and Senior Teaching Fellow Bath Spa University , was Principal Lecturer in Digital Media at Napier University in Edinburgh at the Department of Photography, Film, and Television 1997-2000. and in post as Senior Lecturer in Electronic Media at UWE Bristol between 1986 - 1998. He set up one of the first post-graduate courses in the country in Digital Art and Imaging at the City of London Polytechnic, now the London Guildhall University 1980-85. His teaching and practice centres on new types of interactive art which use non-linear narrative in new media through Locative, interactive installations, networked art projects and collaborations with architects. He has acted as consultant to bodies such as Cardiff Bay Arts Trust , NESTA, Arkive, AHRC the Photographers Gallery London. External Examiner at UIAH Helsinki, St Martins University of the Arts and Glamorgan University Professor of Digital Ats at Bath Spa University 2000-2007. He recently edited: New Screen Media: Cinema/ Art/Narrative (BFI/ZKM, 2002)- which combined a DVD of current research and practice in this area together with critical essays . He was on AHRB research leave during 2004-5 creating a new locative work for Bath Abbey called Hosts 2006, which used mobile and positional technologies combined with interactive sound and video and has just authored a book on Locative Media Arts called The Mobile Audience shortly to be published by Rodopi.

Daphne Dragona is a media arts curator based in Athens. Her exhibitions and events the last few years have focused on the notion of play and its merging with art as a form of networking and resistance. She has worked with Fournos Center for Digital Culture (Greece) , LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre (Spain), Alta Tegnologia Andina (Peru) and with the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. She is also a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Communication & Media Studies of the University of Athens and a member of the Personal Cinema collective.

Charalampos Rizopoulos is a researcher at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After graduating from the aforementioned department in 2003, he obtained a MSc in Interactive Multimedia Production from the University of Huddersfield, UK. He is currently a doctoral candidate, conducting research on the communicational aspects of interacting with intelligent environments. His research interests include human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, virtual reality, multimedia, spatial cognition, adaptive systems, and computer games.

Iouliani Theona is a practising architect and a researcher. She studied at the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and later obtained a Degree from the Inter-Departmental Postgraduate Programme: Architectural Design - Space - Culture, in the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens. She is currently a PhD Candidate in the aforementioned institution, focusing on subjects such as pervasive games and spatial perception.

Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak — the real-life version of the film’s eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Is this how tomorrow’s computers will be controlled?

John Underkoffler led the team that came up with this interface, called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. His company, Oblong Industries, was founded to move g-speak into the real world. Oblong is building apps for aerospace, bioinformatics, video editing and more. But the big vision is ubiquity: g-speak on every laptop, every desktop, every microwave oven, TV, dashboard. “It has to be like this,” he says. “We all of us every day feel that. We build starting there. We want to change it all.”

Before founding Oblong, Underkoffler spent 15 years at MIT’s Media Laboratory, working in holography, animation and visualization techniques, and building the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room Systems.

“We’re not finished until all the computers in the world work like this.” - John Underkoffler

The conference’s overall theme will be the exploration of the collaborative relationship between the body and sensual/ sensing technologies across various disciplines. In this respect it will offer an interrogation of practices that are indebted to the innovative exchange between the sensual, visceral and new technologies.

At the same time, the aim is to look to new approaches offered by various emerging fields and practices that incorporate new and existing technologies. Specific examples of areas for discussion could include:

• Delineation of new collaborative practices and the interchange of knowledge
• Collaborative interdisciplinary practices of embodiment and technology
• Integration/deployment of digital resources in new contexts
• Connections and tensions that exist between the Arts, Humanities and Science
• Notions of the ’solitary’ and the ‘collaborative’ across the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences
• eScience in the Arts and Humanities
• Use of digital resources in collaborative creative work, teaching, learning and scholarship
• Open source and second generation Web infrastructure
• Digital media in time and space
• Music and technology: composition and performance
• Dance and interactive technologies
• Taking inspiration from SET: imaging, GPS and mobile technologies
• Evaluating the experience among providers and users / performers and audiences
• Interface Design and HCI
• Performative Practices in Second Life or other virtual platforms
• New critical paradigms for the conference’s theme

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Richard Coyne - Professor of Architectural Computing at the University of Edinburgh.
• Christopher Pressler: Director of Research and Learning Resources and Director of the Centre for Research Communications, University of Nottingham.
• Thecla Schiphorst: Media Artist/Designer and Faculty Member in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.
• STELARC, Chair in Performance Art at Brunel University and Senior Research, Fellow in the MARCS Labs at the University of Western Sydney.

The DRHA (Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts) conference is held annually at various academic venues throughout the UK. This year’s conference is hosted by Brunel University, West London. It will take place from Sunday 5th September to Wednesday 8th September 2010. It will be held across various innovative spaces, including the newly expanded Boiler House laboratory facilities, housed in the Antonin Artaud Building, and state of the art conference facilities plus high standard accommodation.

SUBMISSIONS:

We invite original papers, panels, installations, performances, workshop sessions and other events that address the conference theme, with particular attention to the ‘Sensual Technologies’ focus. We encourage proposals for innovative and non-traditional session formats.

DRHA 2010 will include a Second Life roundtable/discussion event, led by performance artist Stelarc, which will enable international participants to present performative work via Second Life. For this event, we particular encourage submission of Machinima works that can be screened as part of this panel.

Short presentations, for example work-in-progress, are invited for poster presentations.

Anyone wishing to submit a performance or installation should visit http://www.drha2010.org.uk for information about the spaces and technical equipment and support available.

All proposals - whether papers, performance or other - should reflect the critical engagement at the heart of DRHA 2010.

The deadline for submissions will be 31 March 2010.

Abstracts should be between 600 - 1000 words.

Letters of acceptance will be sent by 15th of May 2010, when the conference registration will be opened.