Program

Conferences

Pixelspaces 2008: "Pixel-Spaces"

07.09. | 13:00 - 18:00

Brucknerhaus

“Pixel-Spaces,” the latest installment in the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s annual conference series, presents selected international R&D facilities and labs that are teaching and/or working at the interface of artistic-creative media production and technological research.

The hypothesis is that these institutions and labs have one special feature in common: in the communities that form around media artists, around other media producers in the creative sector, and around the facilities in which they work and provide/partake of training, the diametrically opposed elements of the conceptual pair nomadic:settled are interlinked into a success strategy designed to facilitate innovative penetration into market segments and niche markets.

Schedule:

1 PM to 1:35 PM
Pixel-Spaces
Horst Hörtner, Ars Electronica Futurelab (Director)

Pixelspaces 2008 will investigate the innovative effects engendered by encounters among artists and creative media producers working on the basis of assorted temporary commission formats on one hand and the various organizations that grant those temporary commissions on the other. The term “Pixel-Spaces” graphically describes this specific virtual organizational form as a complex pixel pattern in which a wide array of diverse protagonists pop up and disappear again at particular coordinates within its open structure and thereby bring about the appearance of dynamic configurations as an upshot of the relative interrelationship of spatially discrete pixels in an overall arrangement.
The time-tested tradition of researcher- & artist-in-residence programs as well as a productive turnover of staff members at the Ars Electronica Futurelab clearly illustrates the effectiveness of an institutionalization of that which has become nomadic via corresponding framework programs, and the nomadization of that which has become institutionalized via accelerated circulation of knowledge and creativity.

1:35 PM to 2:10 PM
Collective and Connected Creativity
Masa Inakage, Keio University Graduate School of Media Design (Dean)

We are witnessing the emergence of a "creative society", a world in which creativity, rather than productivity or efficiency, is the driving force of the global economy. The creative society is using a foundation of advanced digital technology to redistribute resources on a global scale and to expand human creativity in everyday life. The internet has eliminated the barriers to redistribution of cultural and social resources, enabling them to flow freely. We enjoy the expressions of others and express ourselves as well by using, sharing, and distributing these resources. Collective Creativity has become a valuable activity within our day-to-day lives, through online collaboration between people with different expertise and cultures. Keio University Graduate School of Media Design (KMD) is committed to fostering creative global leaders who understand the core creative skills of design, technology, management, and policy in the field of media design.

2:10 PM to 2:45 PM
all your base are belong to us
Friedrich Kirschner & Zachary Lieberman (Artists)

Zach and Friedrich talk about their work – Openframeworks and Moviesandbox, how it is facilitated by Media-Lab environments and how changing locations, varying environments and infrastructure access have an impact on their creative practice.

Panel Discussion I / Break

3:10 PM to 3:45 PM
A New Node on the Map
Erich Berger, LABoral Centre for Art and Industrial Creation (Chief Curator)

Situated in Gijon/Asturias in the north of Spain, LABoral Centre for Art and Industrial Creation, is a space for the investigation of new and emerging forms and practises of art and a resource centre. This is mirrored in five objectives which are exhibitions, education, research, production and complementary activities. This sections are in constant exchange and equally important. LABoral is focusing on art which is able to act, speak, question and reflect on contemporary issues within our society and current times, in art which is actively participating in the process of the constitution and survey of the human condition. For this purpose LABoral endorses an extended, open and interdisciplinary view of visual arts from established practises to new and emerging artistic genres. The emphasis on interdisciplinarity opens the door towards industrial creation, which is a way of transforming creativity into a cultural asset capable of generating economic growth.

3:45 PM to 4:20 PM
Pixel – Impermanence
Naut Humon, Recombinant Media Labs (Director), in Diskussion mit Bronac Ferran (Freelance Writer and Researcher, Founding Member of Bricolabs)

Back in the pre-digital era of the seventies, the ground crew of who were to become instigators of todays team at Recombinant Media Labs (RML) was positioned to take flight in the form of audience transport and mobilization events where spectators were bussed and boated to installation & performance settings in 12 hour marathon drives between customized urban and countryside locales. As these analog based expeditionary excursions accumulated more and more technological traction, the nomadic nature of these enactments assumed a new transcultural perspective.

RML is an unsettled  research, residency and development facility for the experiential engineering of Surround Cinema, sometimes centered in California.  Having recently opted for a migration to its original itinerant inclinations, the director Naut Humon describes the media-morphosis between the fixed and locative conduct of it's structural and destabilized behaviors.   

4:20 PM to 4:55 PM
Encounters between R&D and aRt&D: The art of the accident?
Anne Nigten, V2_Lab (Manager) & Jan Misker, V2_Lab (Project Manager)

In our practice the most significant aspects become apparent when artists are participating in long-term R&D projects. This exposes some of the knowledge-building secrets in the dynamic and nomadic aRt&D practice. We bring forward some significant characteristics of artists’ work and its effects in a larger scientific or technological context. This is illustrated by several projects that were developed in V2_Lab, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

4:55 PM to 5:30 PM
EYEBEAM
Amanda McDonald Crowley, Eyebeam (Executive Director)

Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital experimentation. It is a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with the larger culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time. Eyebeam challenges convention, celebrates the hack, educates the next generation, encourages collaboration, freely offers its output to the community and invites the public to share in a spirit of openness: open source, open content and open distribution.

Eyebeam offers emerging artists, residents and fellows the opportunity to work 24/7 across three laboratory environments: Production, R&D OpenLab and Education, with state-of-the-art digital tools and the freedom to use them at will. In this open studio setting, collaboration is fostered and multi-disciplinary dialogue is constant; and the community is invited to participate in a regular schedule of exhibitions and pubic programs.

Panel Discussion II

Moderation: Daniela Kuka / Ars Electronica Futurelab (DE/AT)

In conjunction with Zachary Lieberman & Theo Watson´s openFrameworks Lab exhibition, Ars Electronica Futurelab staffers will be working in an open-format lab situation on the artistic implementation of visitors´ ideas.