ElectroSmog International Festival for Sustainable Immobility

(Last minute program updates will be added in the run up to the festival.)

The ElectroSmog festival-program is organised around a series of interlocking thematic programs, connected discussions and debates.

Around the main program a host of satellite events is organised locally and translocally.

These include:
• Art projects and local interventions
• Special events
• On-line projects and environments designed specifically for the festival.
• Connected Live Performances
• A program of connected and localised workshops

Live streams & virtual theatres
All ElectroSmog events take place in two or more of the festival locations simultaneously and are streamed live over the internet in video and audio. On-line audiences can participate directly by making comments, asking questions and voting for the contributions of others.
Alternatively, you can follow the streamed events in virtual theatres set up in second life and on open sims, and join the discussion there. The main Second Life festival site is the Cyber-Nomad Camp, which can be accessed here: Teleport: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/22/222/22

Live streaming schedule:
http://www.electrosmogfestival.net/streamschedule

Venues and ticket informaton
Information on local venues and tickets can be found here.

Thematic discussions, presentations and connected debates

• Global perspectives on hyper-mobility
• Witnessed Presence
• Hyper-mobility and the urban condition
• City & country branding debate
• Deep local and remote technologies
• Designing for (im)mobility
• e-mobility versus immobility
• Public media art projects and sustainability
• Energy and information
• ElectroSmog is Good for You!
• Food and global mobility
• Urban Wilderness linkup

THURSDAY MARCH 18

Preamble: A short guide to ElectroSmog

10.00 CET (GMT+1)
At the opening of the ElectroSmog program festival-chair Eric Kluitenberg will explain what is going to happen the next three days, how the festival will work, and what the different layers of participation are in our events.

Global perspectives on hyper-mobility

10.00 – 12.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: Delhi / Dhaka / Nairobi

A live-connected panorama of the worldwide mobility crisis: Global responses from a local perspective, drawing on first-hand impressions from some of the hotbeds of mobility-out-of-control, around the globe. What does hyper-mobility mean for the local context and the everyday life-experience of people living in congested urban zones?
Are massive investments in physical infrastructures the only possible answer to the threat of urban cardiac arrest? Can network and communication technologies play any role in coping with conditions of hyper-mobility, especially in the context of emerging economies?

Responses from among others Dhaka, Nairobi, Delhi, Xi’an, London, The Netherlands.
Filtered, edited and commented by urban researchers and activists.
With:
Aarti Sethi, film maker, Sarai media lab, Delhi
Mongrel Cities (Sarai media lab)
Ralf Graf, SasHivi Media, Nairobi
www.sasahivi.com
Partha Pratim Sarker, co-founder of the South Asian network Bytes for All – Computing and the internet for the majority of the world, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
www.bytesforall.net
Daan Roggeveen, architect and urban researcher, currently involved in the Go Wrest project that explores city development in Western China, reporting live from Xi’an airport.
www.gowestproject.com
David Garcia, reporting on the joys of London’s mobility system, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.
Program host: Eric Kluitenberg, De Balie, Amsterdam.

Witnessed Presence

Research presentation and discussion, hosted by Caroline Nevejan
13.00 – 15.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: Cambridge

Caroline Nevejan is a researcher and designer focusing on the implications of technology on society, who has been involved with interdisciplinary projects for over 20 years. Currently she works with internationally with professionals, academics and artists on Witnessed Presence. Witnessed Presence deals with question such as: How do human beings bear witness to one another? Can manmade systems and infrastructure bear witness to us? How can we be witness and bear witness to each other when so often presence is mediated by technology?
Nevejan will present the extensive research she has been developing on witnessed presence and system engineering since the Fall of 2008, together with members of the Autonomous Systems group at Delft University of Technology, artists and professionals from a variety of disciplines.
A scientific site is made on which the research design, academic publications as well as the source material of 21 interviews and work of 4 artists can be accessed:
www.systemsdesign.tbm.tudelft.nl/witness/
With Mediamatic Lab an experimental site is being made to unfold knowledge from academia, the professional realm and the arts in relation to one another.
This work in progress can be accessed at:
http://witness.being-here.net

Presentations:

Dr. Caroline Nevejan – Introducing the YUTPA framework for designing trade-offs between presence and trust in social interaction.
Can you break up with your boyfriend, ask your employer for a raise or get the results of a medical test by way of SMS? Should an international organization pay for fifty airplane tickets to bring its employees together when launching a new campaign? Should one log the chat of one’s children or monitor the people they meet? Some of these questions will sound silly, while others will give reason for debate. The new ways of communicating facilitate being present in other people’s lives as was never possible before. Depending on how one relates to another person and depending on whether one can act and interfere, we have come to accept a variety of media that make it possible to trespass centuries old frontiers of time and place. An SMS, an email, a chat, a phone call or a videoconference, have the potential to change our life profoundly. In these new ‘presence-designs’ fundamental issues of trust surface, as ever and as never before.
Nevejan argues the ‘performative’ act of witnessing presence is fundamental to dynamics of negotiating trust and truth. As the agency of witnessed presence in mediated presence differs from natural presence orchestration between natural and mediated presences is needed. The YUTPA framework depicts 4 dimensions to define witnessed presence: time, place, action and relation. This framework also provides a context for design of trust in products and services.
(PPT and film fragments of current research will be published here 1 day before the presentation)
Caroline Nevejan’s other work can be found at:
http://www.nevejan.org

Debra Solomon reflects in her work on urban agriculture and the formats in social structures that human beings need to be able to sustain and participate such communities of practice. There are certain formats necessary when entering a community, in which performance and dramatization are factors of success. While collaborating in a community people need formats that define series of actions and transactions in relation to one another so they know where they are in the time based process of collaboration and what to expect next. Certain formats trigger more creativity than others. Effective formats also structure relations between people. When leaving a community, as in the case of dying, human beings need rituals to deal with grieve. Solomon’s work demands attention for the celebration of moments of entering, being and leaving communities of practice. Her work suggests that celebrating moments is fundamental for participating in longer periods of duration.
Debra Solomon’s contribution to this research can be found at:
http://witness.being-here.net/page/2112/en
Debra Solomon’s work can be found at:
http://culiblog.org/

Remote presentation: Dr. Satinder Gill collaborates with the Center for Music and Science at Cambridge University and editor of the journal AI & Society, Journal for Knowledge, Culture and Communication. She will discuss her research on synchronization in distributed collaboration process.
The interview with Dr. Satinder Gill that took place in the context of this research will become available at:
http://www.systemsdesign.tbm.tudelft.nl/witness/interviews.html

Ronald Ophuis paints scenes of suffering and victimization. Human beings also recombine and retell stories of things that happened to them before. Through his work he came to the conclusion that to convey pain and find compassion stories have to be dramatized. Through dramatization feelings and emotions become available to share. Ophuis also asks attention in his contribution to this research for the fact that human beings, through dramatization, feel they were present at places and at times where they physically never were. Because emotional impact of certain events is so powerful – the loss of a brother, an airplane crash, trauma of concentration camps – people imagine these events as if they were personally present and are capable of performing testimony about events they never witnessed at all. Being in a certain place at certain time is crucial for fact-finding, but the impact of facts is conveyed in other ways. Human beings convey impact through dramatization by telling stories.
Ronald Ophuis contribution to this research can be found at:
http://witness.being-here.net/page/2110/en
Ronald Ophuis work can be found at:
http://www.ronaldophuis.nl/

Dr. Martijn Warnier – Leaving the comfort zone
Truly interdisciplinary problems -the really interesting ones- require specialists from different fields and backgrounds to work together: joint values and insights need to emerge. This is not an easy process as the values and viewpoints of experts from distinct fields will vary greatly. Yet good collaboration, that leads to new surprising insights, requires these joint visions and shared values: you have to leave you own comfort zone. This presentation focuses on the role of values in systems design, discussing the role of collaborative, interdisciplinary research along the way.
(PPT and film fragments will be published here 1 day before the presentation)
The interview with Martijn Warnier that took place in the context of this research can be accessed at:
http://www.systemsdesign.tbm.tudelft.nl/witness/interviews/mw/interview-mw.html
Homepage of Martijn Warnier:
http://homepage.tudelft.nl/68x7e/

The session concludes 14.45 with closing statements on 4 dimensions

Hyper-mobility and the urban condition

16.00 – 18.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: De Balie, Amsterdam / Medialab Prado Madrid

Hyper-mobility poses a myriad of challenges for urban planners: How is urban planning responding to conditions of hyper-mobility? Are networking technologies playing a role in policies and actions? Can technology offer solutions in the urban zones most affected by the mobility catastrophe?
This program will compare industry-lead initiatives with alternative views, artistic and civic initiatives and down to earth research on actual effects of various policy measures on urban mobility.

Projects presented will include:

Connected Urban Development

Presented by Bas Boorsma, Director, Internet Business Solutions Group at Cisco.
“Connected Urban Development (CUD) demonstrates how to reduce carbon emissions by introducing fundamental improvements in the efficiency of the urban infrastructure through information and communications technology (ICT). Connected Urban Development was born from Cisco’s commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative to participate in helping reduce carbon emissions. The founding CUD cities are: San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Seoul. In 2008 four new cities have joined the program – Birmingham, Hamburg, Lisbon, and Madrid – beginning a new phase for CUD and opening new avenues for collaboration in promoting smart urban environments globally.”
www.connectedurbandevelopment.org
linkedin profile Bas Boorsma

In the air

Presented by Nerea Calvillo & Medialab Prado, Madrid
“In the air is a visualisation project which aims to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents of Madrid’s air (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc), to see how they perform, react and interact with the rest of the city. The project proposes a platform for individual and collective awareness and decision making, where the interpretation of results can be used for real time navigation through the city, opportunistic selection of locations according to their air conditions and a base for political action.”
www.intheair.es

Stad van Morgen (Tomorrow’s City)

Presented by Jean-Paul Close.
A network of profits and non-profits for sustainable renewal of urban conditions set up from the city of Eindhoven.
www.stadvanmorgen.com

Martijn de Waal (, a writer, researcher, curator and consultant based in Amsterdam, specialised in the relation between technology, media and society. He is one of the initiators of The Mobile City, an initiative that focuses on locative and mobile media, urban culture and identity.
www.themobilecity.nl

To Brand or not to Brand: The ElectroSmog city & country branding debate

Discussion hosts: Merijn Oudenampsen & Ana Méndez
21.00 – 23.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: De Balie, Amsterdam / Eyebeam, New York / Medialab Prado Madrid

Branding strategies are the object of extensive critical research, mostly from the area of urban sociology. This research tries to figure out how such large scale urban and regional product-packaging strategies are affecting local economic structures, land and real-estate, local tax provisions, social housing, traffic flows, and other conditions that have an immediate impact on the daily life of residents.

In this debate, designers, artists, activists, architects and sociologists will look at the relation between branding and sustainability. City branding – or nation branding – attempts to hook up a location to the international flow of tourists, goods, workers and capital. It makes a lot of sense from a short term economic point of view. From the point of view of sustainability, however, these branding strategies are highly questionable. They add to the problematic of hypermobility that is under discussion in the Electrosmog festival.

In a broader sense the critique of city branding addresses the question of whether it is a good idea to profile places as products in an international market instead of living environments for their inhabitants. On the other hand, one could ask, whether cities and regions are economically viable at all without effective branding and promotion strategies. Are there alternative branding strategies?

Contributions by:

Daniel van der Velden, designer and writer, Meta-haven, Brussels / Amsterdam
www.metahaven.net
Beka Economopoulos, Not An Alternative, New York
Jason Jones, Not An Alternative, New York
www.notanalternative.net
Ana Méndez, Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid
Isidro López, Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid
www.observatoriometropolitano.org
Eva Ramos López, Town Planning and Housing Area, Madrid City Council
Merijn Oudenampsen, Amsterdam
Essay: On Dog Shit and Open Source Urbanism

Aik Kramer (moderator in Amsterdam)

FRIDAY MARCH 19

Deep local and remote technologies

10.00 – 12.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: ADA Network, New Zealand / De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: Montréal / Forres / Santa Barbara

What does it mean to become Deep Local (again)? How can we reconnect to the local, without giving up the rest of the world and without burning up the last remaining carbon-hydrates?
Is going local a solution for the global energy and mobility crisis?
Can we reconnect the remote by means of the new networking and communication technologies without ravaging the environment?
Can traditional life-styles be accommodated with global connectivity?
Or is a no-tech scenario the only option? Is that scenario still possible?
With:
Stefan Agamanolis, director of Distance Lab, Forres, Scotland.
Distance Lab is a creative research organisation bringing together digital media technology, design and the arts to redefine and overcome the disadvantages of distance in learning, health care, relationships, culture and other domains.
www.distancelab.org
Julian Priest, artist and director of The Green Bench
http://greenbench.org
Matthew Biederman, artists and team member of the Arctic Perspectives initiative (API), an international group of individuals and organisations whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region.
Marko Peljhan, Projekt Atol, A.P.I. team member.
http://arcticperspective.org
Hosted by: Zita Joyce & Eric Kluitenberg

Designing for (im)mobility

Hosted by: John Thackara
13.00 – 15.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: De Balie Amsterdam / Land of NoR: Virtual World

ICT developers have been working on video communication since 1946 – but the experience still ‘sucks’. If massive amounts of bandwidth are not the answer, are there more artful ways to enhance remote communication?
John Thackara discusses how they would approach it with game designers, theatre directors and artists.

With:
John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception an international network that tries to find new ways of designing information and communication technology (ICT). He also blogs on design and mobility.
www.doorsofperception.com
www.doorsofperception.com/archives/mobility_design/
Martin Butler, artist, choreographer, and creator of the Girlfriend Experience project involving audience controlled real-life avatars in a paradoxical quasi game setting.
www.liminalinstitute.nl/category/productions/2007-the-girlfriend-experience-2
Dirk van Weelden, is a Dutch writer, author of various acclaimed novels, and former editor of Mediamatic and a long time critical media observer.
www.dirkvanweelden.net
Caroline Nevejan, researcher and designer focusing on the implications of technology on society, with a partcular interest in interdisciplinary projects.
See also: Witnessed Presence research presentation at ElectroSmog.
Sicarius Fegte, co-developer of the user-created on-line game world Land of NoR, which allows everything second life doesn’t.
http://www.landofnor.com/news.php

e-mobility versus immobility

17.00 – 19.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: Berlin / London

The bandwidth in closed societies like for example Iran and Syria are low because of political reasons. Even though at the same time it slows down business opportunities. Thereby the system of filtering and blocking on line content is sophisticated. Both countries have a young population (50 – 70% younger than 30 years) and lots of them want to connect with and have access to information. No surprise that circumvention tools are widely used.
How can this politically induced slowness of networks be addressed in a discussion of global connectivity?
In collaboration with Monique Doppert, Hivos, The Hague & Tactical Technology Collective (London).
With:
Sami Ben Gharbia, co-founder of nawaat.org (which means the core in Arabic), a Tunisian collective blog about news and politics, and Advocacy Director at Global Voices.
http://samibengharbia.com/
Ali Ravi, an electrical / robotics engineer by education, now leads the security programme of the Tactical Technology Collective. He will present the Security in-a-box project, a collaborative effort of the Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line. It was created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders.
http://security.ngoinabox.org
Laurent Giacobino of Internews Europe coalition will present the recent Floss Manuals on-line manual ‘Bypassing Internet Censorship’ project.
http://en.flossmanuals.net/CircumventionTools/
http://www.internews.fr
Menso Heus, consultant with Gendo on open innovation and smart applications of internet technology, member of the editorial team of HAR 2009 (Hacking At Random).
https://wiki.har2009.org/page/Main_Page
Reinder Rustema, board member ISOC.nl, advisor eParticipation at ICTU / Burgerlink and teacher at the University of Amsterdam.
http://reinder.rustema.nl/

Public media art projects and sustainability

20.00 – 22.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: Muffatwerk, München / De Balie, Amsterdam / Ambient lounge, London / Remote: Boston

What are the prospects of making of on-line and media art practices more sustainable? How do artists and cultural initiatives position themselves in the discussion on the ecological impact of networking technology?
What are the new models making more intelligent use of current media technologies and tools?
With:
Horst Konietzny, curator and director of Reframes, Munich.
www.reframes.de
Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, and editor of the Networked Performance blog, Boston.
http://turbulence.org
http://turbulence.org/blog
Manu Luksch, intermedia artist, ambienttv.net, London (tbc)
www.ambienttv.net
Karen Lancel & Hermen Maat, about TeleTrust – a participatory performance executed in Dunedin NZ, Banff and Amsterdam during ElectroSmog. We will discuss the experience of the performance by participants at these locations.
www.lancelmaat.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=128
Ela Kagel, Berlin, program curator of Transmediale and member of Public Art Lab, and involved in the organisation of the Media Facades Festival Europe 2010.
David Garcia, Dean of Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, about the (Un)common Ground research project on creative encounters across sectors and disciplines.
www.virtueelplatform.nl/en/2827

Public media art projects and sustainability in London;
As part of Chelsea College of Art & Design’s participation in Electrosmog, cultural practitioners will come together at ambient.space, in a temporary lounge in East London.
Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel,
are intermedia artists whose practice interrogates conceptions of progress through the devising of tools and frameworks and the instigation of processes, with a strong emphasis on research and dissemination. Recent works have addressed surveillance, corporate data harvesting, and the regulation of public space.
Manu & Mukul will speak about their new project ‘Function Creep’, a tactical fiction piece at research stage.
www.ambientTV.NET
Armin Medosch,
is artist and co-initiator of Stubnitz-Kunst-Raum-Schiff, co-founder of online magazine Telepolis, author of ‘Freie Netze” (2003), curator of exhibitions such as ‘Waves – electromagnetism as the medium of art’, and conferences such as Art Servers Unlimited (backspace / ICA 1998) and Good-bye Privacy (Ars Electronica 2007).
Armin will present The Next Layer, a collaborative online environment
combining open source, experimental and artistic research methodologies.
www.thenextlayer.org
Heather Ring  
works as a landscape architect both on large-scale public spaces, and on locally-focused participatory projects. She initiated the Wayward Plant Registry, which develops pop-up adoption centres for unwanted plants, and the Wayward Land Trust as a platform for research and interventions, developing strategic responses to underutilized land and interim spaces that are both productive and poetic.
www.waywardplants.org
The Lorax
speaks for the trees. Since the early 70s, the Lorax has promoted the considered use of natural resources amongst children. Tirelessly, he alerts young generations to environmental degradation through books and films.
The Lorax, devised by Dr. Seuss, was believed to be such a threat by the US logging industry that they created their own character, the Truax, inresponse.
Further ambient.lounge guests: renewable energy expert Pete Grech (from Southern Solar), environmentalist and artist Caspar Below, and others…

SATURDAY MARCH 20

Energy and information

10.00 – 12.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: ADA Network, New Zealand / RIXC, Riga / De Balie, Amsterdam
Hosted by Julian Priest

Exploring the energetic implications of global communications. There is an intensive debate about the question how to make the internet backbone and server structure more energy efficient and ecologically sustainable, as till recently this did not seen to be a real concern. The energy needs of networking are enormous. Various solutions are on the table, but many ‘green hosting’ initiatives tend to be rather ‘green washing’ operations.
The most challenging direction of this debate revolves around the emergence of smart electricity grids that can monitor in detail actual energy use patterns and allocate peek capacities much more efficiently. Such smart grids raise important privacy concerns for individual customers, however. With the old idea of fusing energy and information infrastructures back on the table, these concerns increase exponentially.
What are the trade-offs between sustainability and the necessary safeguards of the personal sphere?
With:
Julian Priest, artist and director of Green Bench, New Zealand
http://greenbench.org
Michiel Karskens, policy advisor on energy matters, Consumentenbond (national consumer association), The Netherlands.
Rasa Smite, RIXC, Riga – organiser and curator of the 2009 art+communication festival: “ENERGY – Scientific and artistic, utopian and critical visions of future terrestrial energy”.
http://rixc.lv/09/en/theme.html
Sacha van Geffen, director of Greemhost.nl
https://greenhost.nl/about/

ElectroSmog is Good for You!

Exploring artists’ engagements with the spectral ecology
13.00 – 15.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: RIXC, Riga / De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: Strasbourg

This program brings together artists fascinated by the invisible and most ephemeral side of electronic media, the varying densities of the electro-magnetic spectrum. The program continues the discussion started at the RIXC’s Spectral Ecology event in 2007. Besides the exploration of the invisible and intangible, also critical environmental issues are addressed. How is the body, the brain and the nervous system affected by the increasing density of electromagnetic waves around us? Since the nervous system relies on electromagnetic energy flows there are certainly effects, but which? In many countries heated debates flared up in the past about the effects of new umts transmitters (high capacity mobile phone networks), and scandals erupted over transmitters fitted on apartment buildings, apparently making residents sick.
Contributions by:
Bureau d’Etudes / Spectral Investigations Collective
http://semaphore.blogs.com/semaphore/spectral_investigations_collective
Zita Joyce, ADA Digital Arts Network, New Zealand
www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/about
Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, RIXC, Riga
http://rixc.lv

Food and global mobility

Tracing the path of food to our kitchen-table
16.00 – 18.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: De Balie, Amsterdam / Skulpturenpark, Berlin / Remote: Barcelona
➤ Watch the archived web cast here
Visit the on-line discussion on food and global mobility.

What does food mean for us today? There is a growing understanding that food is not only a fuel to keep our bodies working, a source of pleasure, and for some also a source of income. It is also an important link between us and our environments, natural and social, local and global. More and more people are trying to rethink our relationships with the world through food and different forms of engagement with it. The issue of sustainability in the age of hyper-mobility is one of the most urgent ones. Questions on the table can be different as well as answers to them. Should we reduce global food mobility and start buying more local products? But what then about farmers and communities in the developing countries for whom supplying us with fruits and vegetables is of great economic significance? What exactly would we like to know about the pre-shelf life of our food in order to make an informed responsible choice? How can we access this information? What alternative ideas for sustainable food strategies are out there? Is urban farming a promising way to reconnect to your food? And what does it actually mean – “sustainable food strategies”?
This panel will bring together people involved in practical and theoretical research related to sustainable food strategies. The idea is to present and discuss highly diverse perspectives on the issue where environmental, social, ethical, technological, scientific and aesthetic aspects can be interrelated in an interesting, insightful, creative, and even challenging way.
With:
Tania Goryucheva, editor of the Food and Global Mobility theme for ElectroSmog and co-founder of the Cool Mediators Foundation.
www.coolmediators.net
Artist Esther Polak will present findings from her project under development NomadicMILK. NomadicMILK is a unique project which combines poetics, research and creative use of technologies, such as GPS and a mobile robot. It tracked the daily routes of two milk related economies between January and December 2009 in Nigeria.
http://nomadicmilk.net/?page_id=2
Ir. Toine Timmermans, Program manager Sustainable Food Chains at the Research Institute Food & Biobased Research, part of Wageningen University & Research Centre. He will provide expert insights into the recent developments in supply chains research. As for consumers the pre-shelf life of products is still quite a mystery,  it is useful to learn how supply chains management deals with the sustainability issue and how it can be improved.
Position Paper: Food Efficiency: sustainability at a higher speed
www.wur.nl
Hernani Dias, “Refarm the City” project: open software and hardware tools for urban farmers. 
In his hands-on project Hernani Dias develops, in collaboration with Medialab Prado and others, open software and hardware tools, low-tech practical ideas for urban farmers. At the project website one can explore and discuss ideas how, for example, water shortage can be resolved or hydroponic system can be built.
www.refarmthecity.org
Hugo Hooijer, Fairfood International, a non-profit campaign and lobby organisation, which encourages the food and beverage industry to increase the level of sustainability of its products. In their critical investigations of modern supply chains, issues of social responsibility and fair treatment of producers are among the highest priorities.
www.fairfood.org
Dr. ir. Frank van der Hoeven, Associate Professor, Chair of Urban Design at Delft University of Technology.
Food in the city is a complex reality: transportation, shops, markets, eating places, etc. A lot of these practices and experiences are up to urban designers to rethink and determine. What can we expect in this area from urban science and technology?
http://urbandesign.bk.tudelft.nl/
Michiel de Lange, (moderator) researcher at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, involved in the Playful Identities research program and co-initiator of the Mobile City platform.
www.bijt.org/wordpress

Urban Wilderness Action Center linkup

Online linkup between New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and elsewhere takes place at 21.00 CET (GMT+1).
Follow live updates from each city on Twitter at #UWAClive from 15.00 – 24.00 CET (GMT+1).
Hosted by Jon Cohrs, Kai-Oi Jay Yung, and Eyebeam
Venues: Eyebeam, New York / Skulpturenpark Berlin / De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: London

The Urban Wilderness Action Center (UWAC) is a project initiated by Eyebeam alum Jon Cohrs, in collaboration with the Eyebeam Student Residents (New York), Eyebeam Education Coordinator Stephanie Pereira, and UK-based artist Kai-Oi Jay Yung (UK). The UWAC project includes a web platform uwac.anewfuckingwilderness.com and a day of action where people from NYC, Berlin, and London will work together to design and disseminate specific guerrilla gardening projects and related urban interventions.
During the link up local results of the project will be presented and discussed between the participating cities.
http://uwac.anewfuckingwilderness.com
http://eyebeam.org/events/electrosmog-festival-urban-wilderness-action-center

Art projects and local interventions

TeleTrust

Participatory performance by Karen lancel & Hermen Maat
Daily: 9.00 – 11.00 & 20.00 – 22.00 hrs CET (GMT+1)
Venues: De Balie, Amsterdam / Banff Center for the Arts / Dunedin, New Zealand

Artists Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat are conducting a series of networked performances in public spaces involving a wearable ‘data-veil’ that covers the entire body. The veil is touch sensitive and by touching her or himself the wearer triggers stories he/she can listen to inside the veil, while the audience around can follow the same story on public screens and via the web. All these stories are interviews conducted around the public performances with the TeleTrust veil. The interviews centre on issues of trust in public space and the question of veiled presence in public space:
“Do I need to see your eyes in order to trust you?”
How is trust established under veiled conditions?
The project can also be seen as a metaphor for the hidden presence of people in digital networks, where ‘the design of trust’ (Nevejan) remains a highly problematic issue.
www.lancelmaat.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=128

The performance will be staged simultaneously in Banff, Canada, Dunedin, New Zealand and Amsterdam, The Netherlands – covering a time-zone stretch of 20 hours.

Urban Wilderness Action Center – John Cohrs (with Eyebeam New York)

Venues: Eyebeam, New York / Skulpturenpark Berlin / De Balie, Amsterdam / Remote: London
Online linkup between New York, London, Berlin, and elsewhere will take place at 21.00 CET (GMT+1).
Follow live updates from each city on Twitter at #uwac from 15.00 – 24.00 CET (GMT+1).

The Urban Wilderness Action Center (UWAC) is a project initiated by Eyebeam alum Jon Cohrs, in collaboration with the Eyebeam Student Residents (New York), Eyebeam Education Coordinator Stephanie Pereira, and UK-based artist Kai-Oi Jay Yung (UK). The UWAC project includes a web platform uwac.anewfuckingwilderness.com and a day of action where people from NYC, Berlin, and London will work with us to design and disseminate specific guerrilla gardening projects.
UWAC Day is Saturday, March 20
After collecting ideas for instigating Urban Wilderness through the UWAC website, we will put some of the ideas into action in each of the three participating cities. Over the course of the day we will live-feed ongoing experiences and documentation from across all three sites.
Live updates from each city on Twitter at #uwac from 15.00 – 22.00 CET (GMT+1).
http://uwac.anewfuckingwilderness.com
http://eyebeam.org/events/electrosmog-festival-urban-wilderness-action-center

Bureau d’Etudes: Electro-magnetic propaganda

the statement of industrial dogma
A downloadable do-it-yourself exhibition.
Locations: Amsterdam (exhibition) / on-line

In 2006 the art collective Bureau d’Etudes (Paris/Strasbourg) created an enigmatic map of the influence of electromagnetic waves on the biological body. This map is transformed for the ElectroSmog festival into a downloadable exhibition to print out and display in your own locality.
“Humanity has known electromagnetic waves for a century, but their massive use for technical applications only began with the Second World War. Since then, the density of electromagnetic radiation has doubled every four years, and electromagnetic pollution has been multiplied a hundredfold over the past thirty years. Medical and epidemiological research has accumulated over the past few decades showing the destructive effects of these fields on our organisms, affecting our health or even modifying our ways of apprehending the world.” (B.d.E.)
See also:
http://semaphore.blogs.com/semaphore/spectral_investigations_collective/
http://utangente.free.fr/index2.html

NomadicMILK project

Art project and installation by Esther Polak
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam (exhibition)

The NomadicMILK project is a quest in the tradition of landscape painting. Based on a collaboration between the artist, robot engineers, anthropologists, documentary makers and philosophers, the project triggers new consciousness with new means.
NomadicMILK project tracked the daily routes of two milk related economies between January and December 2009 in Nigeria. We followed Mr Idiris, Fulani cow herder and his family during dry and rainy season. We also followed the distribution of PEAK milk, one of the best-known powder- and condensed milk brands in Nigeria (partly owned by Friesland-Campina). We collected the routes by GPS (Global Positioning System) and made a drawing of each route on the ground: for this we used a custom developed GPS drawing robot. This way we could discuss the routes with the people involved in an performative setting. Finally we made mono prints of every route: a set of 12 70 X 100 cm sand colored prints per route and thus per person.
The resulting installation consists of twelve monoprints on canvas, two video projections and sound. It depicts the nomadic life of cow herders versus truckers by visualizing their routes, stories and daily life.
www.nomadicmilk.net

Special events

Première Screening of 10Tactics

Thursday March 18, 19.00 – 20.30 CET (GMT+1)
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam / London
Presented by Tactical Technology Collective & Chelsea College of Art and Design , London, and Hivos, The Hague & De Balie, Amsterdam.

This film is a work in progress, currently released one tactic at a time, about the use of digital technologies for advocacy projects.
Stephanie Hankey, co-founder of Tactical Tech, about 10Tactics: “The project came about when we hosted an info-activism camp in India earlier this year. The event brought together more than 100 rights advocates, technologists and designers from around the world who we knew had really interesting stories to tell about how they had turned information into action using digital technologies. We decided to document and explore people’s stories throughout the camp. When we had finished we knew that what we had collected was pretty remarkable. Many of the stories highlighted ground-breaking use of the internet and digital technologies. They show what is possible for rights advocates to achieve now even with very few resources.”

10 tactics features 35 info-activism stories told from the point of view of advocates in 24 different countries including Lebanon, India, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia, South Africa and the UK.
(…)
The screening will be complemented with a live Q & A session between Amsterdam and London with Tanya Notley (Tactical Technology Collective) and David Garcia (Chelsea College of Art and Design).
www.informationactivism.org

Book Launch of Plan B, by John Thackara

Friday March 19, 15.00 – 16.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam

At the occasion of the launch of the Dutch translation of John Thackara’s book “In the Bubble”, now titled “Plan B”, with 4 new chapters added, John Thackara will introduce the main topics of his book and devote special attention to the relationship of design, telepresence, and (im)mobility.
About the book:
“We’re filling up the world with technology and devices, but we’ve lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centred on technology, so it would be no small matter if “tech” ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the ends it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we’re unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff, and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now — not in a remote science fiction future; it’s not about, as he puts it, “the schlock of the new” but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can’t. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology — ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centred world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles — above all, lightness — inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.”
www.thackara.com/inthebubble
www.doorsofperception.com

Immobile Moving Cinema

An entirely digital screening program hosted by Cinema De Balie, Amsterdam.
Screening dates: Friday March 19, 23.00 CET / Saturday March 20, 20.30 CET
Venue: De Balie, Amsterdam

The days of celluloid seem to be numbered. It is merely a question of time when 35 mm film prints will be out of use and express companies loose yet another source of income (shipping film prints). During ElectroSmog Cinema De Balie will present Immobile Moving Cinema, a compilation of short films that allows the viewer to undertake an exhilarating trip through imaginary space, from the comfort of a cinema chair. No motorised vehicle is operated for this program. All films are delivered over the internet, or if not otherwise possible collected locally by bicycle (a relatively clean and popular mode of transportation in Amsterdam).

Program:

Heliocentric
R: Semiconductor (UK 2009, 15’)
Heliocentric uses time-lapse photography and astronomical tracking to plot the sun’s trajectory across a series of landscapes. The entire environment feels to pan past the camera whilst the sun stays in the centre of each frame, enabling us to gauge the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun. Shooting into the sun creates many intriguing visual artefacts, for the power of the sun still exceeds what both the human eye and the artificial eye of the camera can bear.

Moonwalk
R: Greg Pope (UK. 2001, 1’)
Digital Haiku with moon snow and sea.

The Life-size zoetrope
R: Mark Simon Hewis (UK, 2007, 7’)
The celebratory life story of one man told via a one-take live action shot of a giant human zoetrope containing the film. We are taken through the cyclical journey the man has taken through animated loops on pages and body parts of 36 riders on the wheel.


Travelling Fields
R: Inger Lise Hansen (No, 2009, 9’)
Travelling Fields focuses on a particular phenomenon occurring through a change of perspective and animated camera movements, as a way of redefining a place and its geography. Sections of the landscape are documented by moving the camera upside/down, one frame at the time, along a track. The film moves between different topographies and locations in the Kola Peninsula, Northern Russia

Urban Wilderness Amsterdam

ElectroSmog goes Schijnheilig
Venue: Schijnheilg, Amsterdam (note alternate venue: Schijnheilig!)

Amsterdam, a city once known as a happening place, is suffering from the bureaucratic drive to over regulate. In the nineties, an abundance of underground initiatives marked Amsterdam as a home of spontaneity and experimentation. Squatted cultural centers lined the waterfront, free radio stations populated the air waves. Due to sparked up property prices and an ever growing political pressure to formalize everything and anything, Amsterdam underground culture has dissipated. In stead of the metropolis it claims to be, it has become the village we all know it to be. Where one has little chance of running into the unexpected.
As a necessary antidote, the closing event of the Amsterdam Electrosmog festival will take place in the squatted galery Schijnheilig. There will be lectures on branding and public space, streamed guerilla gardening actions from around New York, London and Berlin, performances, ex-pirateers of radio 100 behind turntables, and much much more.
Come along and play!
Saturday March 20, 20.00 – 01.00 (CET)
www.schijnheilig.org

On-line projects and environments

LocalSoundScapes

Sound project created by Costas Bissas
Locations: Amsterdam / Forres / on-lne

LocalSoundScapes is a collection of geography specific audio recordings created from the activities and processes of local businesses and their surrounding natural environment. The recordings reveal otherwise inconspicuous practices of everyday life and moments from the creation of various products.
The project uses binaural microphone recordings to immerse the audience in the 3D sonic environment of the greater area of Forres in the Highlands of Scotland.
Supported by Distance Lab.
www.localsoundscapes.net

Korawiki – Kete of Remote Artworks wiki

A catalogue of projects from Aotearoa New Zealand using communications technologies to present, perform, and collaborate over time and distance.

http://korawiki.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/wiki/doku.php

IForm visualization

live from 10.00 CET (GMT+1) to 24:00 CET (GMT+1) on March 21
by James Charlton and Comob

To participate in creating the visualization you need to download comob.net onto your iphone from the apps store. By joining the iForm group in the settings you will automatically be added to the visualization.

iForm is a process-based work that visualizes 3D forms from GPS data generated by the movement of iphone participants through the landscape. The transcoding of this data into 3D form addresses the anomalies of representation that are inherent in both concrete and time-based media.

Instead of designing 3D form along aesthetic / functional parameters iForm utilizes GPS data as a set of coordinates that determine visual outcome. The GPS co-ordinates are collected from a group of iphones carried by participants using Comob.net software. http://comob.org.uk/ Thanks to comob for their support with this project. Its a cool app guys ! The visualizations will be viewable in realtime over the internet.
(URL to be posted soon).

Klanggang / Soundwalk

by Luke Munn and Sam Hamilton

In this project, two field recordings from Auckland and Berlin were created on the same day by walking the length of two iconic streets: K’Road and Kottbusser Damm. These recordings were mapped onto a simple web interface, allowing users to ‘walk’ with Hamilton and Munn, or skip to the next block, re-listen to a passing conversation, or dip in and out. Users may also mix the two recordings together in greater or lesser degrees, highlighting the similarities and differences between the networked sounds / spaces.

Rather than a didactic critique of an overly mobile culture, the project is instead a personal response and celebration of immobility (in the festival sense). Both artists are car-less and deeply interested in their local spaces – some of the most vibrant and interesting in their relative cities. Technology in this case is used to extend and augment the project: providing links between collaborators, interactivity for the audience, and increasing accessibility by making it available online.
www.lukemunn.com/2010/02/klanggang-soundwalk.html

Connected Live Performances

Dancers

(a work in progress)
Friday March 19, 22.00 – 23.00 CET (GMT+1)
Venues: Muffatwerk, München / Remote: Sao Paolo / Wuppertal / Singapore

Dancers is a simultaneous live streaming dance project following Horst Konietzny’s remote collaboration project A DAY IN A LIFE (DIAL), with partners in Brazil, England, Macedonia, Japan and Australia (2008).
The performance is a work in progress: this time it will have four dancers involved, who create a collaborative choreography that will be performed live and in real time with each dancer performing alone in his/her space but act together on four screens. The choreography will evolve like a chain reaction starting with an impulse to move given by one of the dancers, taken and modified by the next and so on. The actions can either take place in public spaces or in a private situation.
The performance will be rehearsed in online meetings in February and will be performed in front of live audiences / or in solitude but can be shown via live stream in all places linked with the electrosmog festival.
Featuring:
Morena Nasciemento in Sao Paolo
Morena Nascimento was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1980. She has been working since 15 years mainly with dance. She studied at Campinas State University (UNICAMP- SP) where she had her first dance graduation course, in 2001. She was for 3 years a fix member of Primeiro Ato Grupo de Danca, where she worked as a professional dancer and choreographer. Besides she worked with renowned choreographers in Brazil. In 2005 she moved to Germany and studied at Folkwang Hochschule, Essen. There she worked with choreographers like Susane Link, Malou Airadou, Chikao Kaido, Rodolfo Leoni, among others. Then she was invited to integrate the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, where she is until nowadays. With her own creations as “Lady Marmalade”, “Sex, Love and other Accidents” and “Quase Ela” she participated in many festivals around the world. At the moment she is working and living between Sao Paulo and NRW, Germany.
Geraldo Si in Wuppertal
Geraldo Si began his dance career in 1981 with Pantanaliadança, Brazil, after having been taking dance classes for three years. In São Paulo, he worked as dancer and actor with Antonio Abujamra, Geraldo Thomas, Penha de Souza, the Teatro Brasileiro de Dança, Marzipan Dance Cia amongst others. He also participated in a number of T.V. series.
In 1990 Si came to Germany to join the Wuppertaler Tanztheater led by Pina Bausch, where he danced as a soloist for four years. Subsequently he collaborated with Raimund Hoghe (“Geraldos solo” in 1996 and “Tanzgeschichten” in 2003), Stephanie Thiersch, Healing Theatre Köln, rodolpho leoni dance, Vera Sander Art Connect and Cocoondance.
In 1996 Si founded x.x.y. theater in Wuppertal and directed several of its productions.
He is also artistic director of Sommertanz Junge Talente a dance theatre project for the youth, that was a pilotscheme from the Kunststiftung NRW from 2003 till 2005.
Inspired by the collaboration with Suprapto Suryodarmo, for the past twelve years Geraldo Si’s has focused most of his work on improvisation and the concept of “growing through movement”. In 2002 he initiated an ongoing series of events „SichtLaut” – Dance improvisation to live Music“. On these performance evening dancers and musicians experiment within the borders of improvisation.
Geraldo Si
Vincent Yong in Singapore
Vincent Yong was a graduate of CODARTS, The Netherlands, and now is a adjunct-lecturer for LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. He has worked with Michael Schumacher in With Without and performed in Holland Dance Festival and ITS festival amongst others. He collaborated with different artists from Visual & Dance in Pointe to Point for Asia Europe Foundation in Warsaw, Poland (2006). Besides teaching dance and refining the concept of “movement” daily in his classes, he is currently also proposing his works for Taiwan amongst others and is interested in seeking parties to share ideas across cultures and borders for performances.
While never compromising his artistic integrity, Vincent Yong is a firm believer of accessibility and inclusiveness in his art. Cited to be and regarded as the “creative brain” and “true gem” by dance critics of De Volksrant; Holland and Today, Singapore,respectively.
He is a recipient of numerous awards such as the SHELL-National Arts Council Scholarship and SIA Award of Excellence in the Arts.
Barbara Messner in Munich
studied dance at the rotterdam dance academie with the emphasis on contemporary dance and improvisation, and theatre in paris and munich. since many years barbara is working as a dancer/ choreographer and actress for theatre and film.
Concept: Horst Konietzny, curator and director of Reframes, Munich
www.reframes.de
www.a-day-in-a-life.de

M4RI ( Music 4 Remote Improvistaion) Ping Pong Pop

A collaborative sound project by Sean Kerr.
Saturday March 20, 20:45 – 21:00 CET (GMT+1)
Remote venues: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin
(New Zealand, where it will be 8:45am Suday March 21)

Four online multi-user sound nerds, performing from their bedroom, pinging each other sine wave tone with a few pops, bells and whistles.
www.seankerr.auckland.ac.nz/PINGPONGPOP

‘Backyard Dances’

Friday March 19, 22.30 – 22:50 CET (GMT+1)
- being everywhere at once, while staying at home, in our own backyard.
Venues: AUT WT Building, Auckland, remote: Berlin, Brisbane, Oklahoma, Taipa (northland), and Auckland Waterview
Becca Wood + networked performers
‘Backyard Dances’ transports the backyard as actuated space for live choreography using web cameras, chat rooms, transcriptions, the imagination, text to speech software and the dancing body.

Virtual theatres, second life hubs and metaverse performances

The live-streams of the ElectroSmog festival will be streamed at a number of virtual theatres and public spaces in open sims and in second life. At these meta-locations various art projects and live connected performances will be staged along and in-between the ElectroSmog programs.
Eyebeam has its own island in Second Life, and plans to stream their New York activities on the Island, as well as host a performance by Second Front (http://slfront.blogspot.com/) during the festival.
These ‘metaverses’ will create an expanding virtual shell around the festival and create further opportunities for on-line audiences to actively contribute to and engage with ElectroSmog.

Metaverse performances include:

• Avatar Orchestra Metaverse
http://AvatarOrchestra.org
Saturday, March 20, 22.30 CET (GMT+1)

Live experimental music & visuals. Orchestra-members at locations all over the world perform real-time via the virtual world Second Life with self-made pixel-instruments .
- “Pwrhm” (by Humming)
- “In Whirled” (by Trance)
- “Formations” (by North)
- “Aleatricity” (by Bingo)

Composing and participating for the Orchestra:
Bingo Onomatopoeia, aka Andreas Müller (Regensburg)
BlaiseDeLaFrance Voom, aka Biagio Francia (Agropoli)
Carolhyn Wijaya, aka Carolyn Oakley (Boulder)
DeThomas Dibou, aka Detlef Thomas (Regensburg)
Evo Szuyuan, aka Brigit Lichtenegger (Rotterdam)
Flivelwitz Alsop, aka Tim Risher (Raleigh)
Free Noyes, aka Pauline Oliveros (Kingston)
Goodwind Seiling, aka Sachiko Hayashi (Stockholm)
Gumnosophistai Nurmi, aka Leif Inge (Oslo / Berlin)
Hars Hefferman, aka Harold Schellinx (Paris)
Humming Pera, aka Tina M. Pearson (Victoria)
Lizsolo Mathilde, aka Liz Solo (St. John’s)
Maximillian Nakamura, aka Shintaro Miyazaki (Berlin)
Maxxo Klaar, aka Max D. Well (Regensburg)
Miulew Takahe, aka Björn Eriksson (Sollefteå)
North Zipper, aka Norman Lowrey (Madison)
Paco Mariani, aka Chris Wittkowsky (Regensburg)
Wirxli Flimflam, aka Jeremy Owen Turner (Vancouver)
Xisuthra Lomu, aka Erik Rzepka (Vancouver)
Zonzo Spyker, aka Viv Corringham (Minneapolis / London)

• Second Front (http://SecondFront.org)
Live performance art. Group-members at different locations all over the world perform real-time together with their avatars via the virtual world Second Life.

• RaaskalBOMfukkerZ (http://myspace.com/Raaskalbomfukkerz)
Saturday, March 20, 23.00 CET (GMT+1)

• Virtual-Urban_Wilderness: Mixed-Reality-Party
ElectroSmog Underground Club Beats & Visuals
Sunday, March 21, 00.15 CET (GMT+1)
- DJ Jce Emoto – Streaming live from Amsterdam
- DJ Ninah Puchkina – Streaming live from San Francisco
DFM RTV INT & Meta.Live.Nu present parallel parties happening in a Real Squat (Amsterdam) and a Cyber-Nomad Camp (Second Life)
Teleport: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/22/222/22

Tango Panopticon

Art project and urban dance interventions initiated by Robert Lawrence
Saturday March 20, 22.00 – 23.00 CET (GMT+1)
Locations: Tampa (Florida) and other. Screened in Schijnheilig.

Combining urban dance interventions with cell phone videos streaming live to the Web, Tango Panopticon initiates a sensual incursion on corporate and government video surveillance. It is the latest in artist Robert Lawrence’s series of site-specific art interventions, Tango Intervention. Innovatively combining actions in public places with contextual information and live interaction on the Internet, Tango Interventions use Argentine Tango to reclaim public space and also to reveal local hidden histories or social issues at the location of each intervention. The Tango Panopticon series all take place in urban places where there is government or corporate video surveillance. Project collaborators include Dr. Adriana Iamnitchi and Michael Stillo. Participants and the public can use free Tango Panopticon software on their cell phones to upload live videos to the web where they are visible live at the project website.
To be able to stream your video from your smatphone, download the free software at:
http://bambuser.com/

During ElectroSmog festival, video will be streamed live from Tango Interventions taking place in Tampa, Florida; and several other cites to be announced. Streams of these videos will be simultaneously projected live during the Urban Wilderness Party in Schijnheilig in Amsterdam, where they will be mixed with other live streams from people at Schijnheilig
www.tangointervention.org/events/panopticon/live.php
www.schijnheilig.org

Workshops

SkillShare on tools and models for online collaboration

Venue: Eyebeam, New York
Saturday, March 20, 2010 | 10AM – 5PM (Eastern Standard Time / 16.00 – 23.00 CET (GMT+1))
Free with RSVP
Limit of 30 participants (in New York).
The entire workshop will be streamed live on the internet and be archived for future reference in the ElectroSmog archive (details about the live stream tba)

On Saturday, March 20 Eyebeam will run a day-long series of presentations on tools and strategies for online creative collaboration. Eyebeam’s senior fellows will cover software solutions as well as practical and conceptual models for making and distributing collaborative work. This SkillShare was conceived as part of the ElectroSmog Festival, a new, three-day, international festival that will introduce and explore of concept of “Sustainable Immobility”: a critique of current systems of hyper mobility of people and products in travel and transport, and their ecological unsustainability.
Tools and Models for Online Collaboration will be exploring and expanding the practice of “sustainable immobility.” Eyebeam will holding a free public SkillShare on March 20 at 10AM, led by Eyebeam senior fellows Ayah Bdeir, Michael Mandiberg, and Jeff Crouse; with Eyebeam honorary resident Mushon Zer-Aviv, intern Patrick Davison and free/open source advocate and theorist Jonah Bossewitch. This SkillShare will investigate the potential uses of current online collaborative tools.
Beginning by exploring the definitions of collaboration, setting goals, and rules and etiquette for collaborating online, to identifying their deficiencies and benefits, and expanding the usage of these tools; this series of focused SkillShares will demonstrate technical sessions on existing tools, with the goal of collecting a toolbox of ideas and knowledge to create a better future for online collaboration.
Please feel free to join for the whole day, or drop-in for specific sessions. The afternoon sessions will break into two groups. Refreshments will be served in the afternoon, and donations are greatly appreciated.

Schedule

10AM: Doors Open

10:30AM: Michael Mandiberg, Jonah Bossewitch, and Mushon Zer-Aviv (online) will present current models and challenges of online collaboration:
• What is and is not collaboration? What are the advantages and disadvantages of different models?
• Distributed Collaboration as promsing new model of group online development and collaboration
• Online collaboration methods as a way to bridge cultural as well as geographic distance
• Discussion of their work together in Berlin on Collaborative Futures
11:30AM: Patrick Davison on Online Documentation: best practices for photo and video making and sharing:
• How to produce a good image
• Tools: editing, sharing/tagging on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook
• Video: Planning video documentation for every project

12:30PM: Refreshments served

1PM – 4PM: Hands-on workshops from Ayah Bdeir and Jeff Crouse. Participants will break into two group, dependent upon interest:
• Ayah Bdeir (online with assistants working with groups at Eyebeam) — Have you ever wanted to make a “real” PCB (printed circuit board) and not known where to start? “Ciruit Design with Eagle” will teach you the basics of the most used, least friendly circuit, but greatest PCB design software out there. It’s not exactly open source, but it is free, and that makes it the preferred software for hackers, diyers and engineers alike.
• Jeff Crouse — For those of who would love to have their own myYouTube.com or want to use video sharing for global educational campaigns, learn how with the open source video sharing platform Panda and several Amazon cloud computing services. This workshop will assume some experience with JavaScript and/or PHP, and valid credit card to get your Amazon account up and running. NOTE: Free Panda beta accounts will be supplied for participants.

How Eyebeam Skillshares work
Eyebeam’s SkillShares are peer-to-peer working/learning sessions that provide an informal context to develop new skills alongside leading developers, technologists, and artists. They are for all levels and start with an introduction and overview of the topic, after which participants will work on specific technical topics in small groups while getting feedback and additional instruction and ideas from their group. It’s a great way to level-up your skills and meet like minded people.
All levels of skill are welcome. If you consider yourself a beginner make sure to check SkillShare topics and material beforehand. Bring a laptop. We supply WiFi and coffee.
This workshop is inspired by the Collaborative Futures Booksprint, recently held at the Transmediale Festival 2010 in Berlin.
http://eyebeam.org/events/electrosmog-skillshare-tools-and-models-for-online-collaboration
www.transmediale.de/en/collaborative-futures
http://en.flossmanuals.net/collaborativefutures/

Riverrun: A collective and experimental online artwork.

Venue: Medialab Prado, Madrid

Riverrun could be described as an emergent “Exquisite Corpse.” It focuses on social interaction, with more than a hundred creators collaborating in the making of a collective story in real time. Each person participates, using their own computer (client), by writing a small part of the collective story which is housed in a central computer (server). Each participant is asked to log on to the project from their own computer for a short period of time (the duration of the experiment). These creative experiments can be performed in different languages and the story will be available online to the general public.
The project of artist Kevin McCourt and theoretical physicist Bartolo Luque is executed as an open, participatory workshop during ElectroSmog, organised and hosted by the Medialab Prado, Madrid.

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