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Posted on February 9, 2017 by adnan Announcement, Events, ideas, news, presentations, Report, reports, research

Algorave @ Transmediale – ever elusive

This year we took our Digital Media students from Coventry University to an exchange with Digital Media students from Leuphana Unviersity to Berlin, during the Transmediale Festival. A student excursion as a collaboration between Leuphana University, Coventry University and transmediale whereby students from the digital media bachelor programs of both schools can engage with the content of the festival while also having space and time for guided reflection, led by the organising faculty and invited guests, in the period of February 2nd through February 5th, mixing groups of digital media bachelors students from
Leuphana University and Coventry University. The aim will be for students to engage with the festival activities while having moments to reflect theoretically, artistically and technically with the material at hand.

I made a note of the following sessions at Transmediale:

Material Flows: Rafts and Bodies at Sea

Starting from the project Plastic Raft of Lampedusa (by YoHa, 2016–17), featured in the exhibition “alien matter,” this session discusses moments where technical objects such as watercraft and human life becomes inseparable. By dismantling the type of rubber boat used by refugees for crossing the Mediterranean, the project addresses an underexplored space where technical objects and human bodies historically and contemporaneously conjoin and merge into new entities. Placelessness is contrasted with the forms of governance, materials, and technical standards that have the power to hold a body afloat or allow it to drown. It is an extreme metaphor for our relationship to digital technologies, where bodies emerge that are in transversal collaboration with technical objects and the administrative machinery of advanced capitalism. This is not a project that is concerned with the morals of the European migrant crisis, nor is it an attempt to re-invoke the sublime of European aesthetics. This project is about a plastic boat whose journey takes place in the sea’s lack of fixity, the space between different state actors and scales of administrative discipline.

YOHA–PLASTIC RAFT OF LAMPEDUSA
As part of the special exhibition “alien matter” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, The DAZ (Deutsches Architektur Zentrum) hosts the disassembled rubber raft of _Plastic Raft of Lampedusa_ by artist duo YoHa. In their work, the artists explore the circulation of economic, material, and human flows that have a mutual influence on one another. 2–8 FEBRUARY 2017, DAILY 15:00–20:00 Deutsches Architektur Zentrum DAZ Köpenicker Straße 48/49, 2. courtyard, 10179 Berlin
www.daz.de

TRACING INFORMATION SOCIETY–A TIMELINE
In collaboration with the Technopolitics working group, transmediale presents the exhibition “Tracing Information Society–a Timeline” at neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK). Technopolitics turns the
exhibition venue into a curated space for knowledge. A twelve-meter-long timeline depicts the development of the Information Society from 1900 until today.

Elemental Machines

The concept of machines generally describes an assemblage of parts assigned to an overall function, designed by a human. Yet, the entwined histories of science, technology, and art are filled with ideas about nature functioning like machines, and of visions where machines become “natural” and organic. These two paths seem to merge as machines increasingly communicate autonomously and operate in fields beyond human perception and influence. Can we devise new perspectives for understanding the elemental machines that now seem to operate contingently within hybrid techno-ecologies like the forces of nature? What are the new aesthetic and political affordances or subjectivities involved in the process of technology becoming environmental?

Becoming Infrastructural – Becoming Environmental

What does the infrastructural and environmental becoming of technology really mean? Which economic, cultural, and geopolitical factors become apparent when we overcome the purposeful dematerialization of media? How can new infrastructural imaginaries, escaping anthropocentrism, embrace a different understanding of the role and impact of technology today? To address these questions, different emerging ecologies and multiple paradigms become the starting point for a keynote conversation. Lisa Parks examines entanglements of the natural with the technological, and presents the unknown use, adoption, and interruption of infrastructural sites by nonhuman species, pointing towards new conceptualizations for their uses beyond the human. Erich Hörl approaches “environmentality” as a new contemporary condition, discussing how within this new “General Ecology,” we must take into account the environmental becoming, not only of technology, but also of power, thinking, and the world itself. The keynote conversation explores the challenges and limitations of this new infrastructural and environmental condition.

Excursion: Ecologies

The event features new artistic research into messy, disperse ecologies, which characterize planetary life, as it is re-constructed in flows of data, capital, and natural resources. In order to make the underlying planetary systems more tangible, the micro- and macro-political will be connected and the problematics of scale are brought to the foreground through the projects Mycelium Network Society and Shift Register.

Mycelium Network Society, a brand new network initiative situated in a post-internet mudland, diverts the pursuit of magic mushroom, from a state of hyper-hallucination to collective fungal consciousness, and investigates the fungi culture, its network capacity to communicate and process information.

Shift Register is a research project investigating how human media, technological and infrastructural activities have marked the earth. It investigates and renders legible the material evidence of human activities on earth, registering these not as indicators of human achievement, but as ambiguous negotiations and signposts of planetary exhaustion.

Friendly Fire: What Is It to Re-think Radical Politics, Today?

In light of recent political events like Brexit and the Trump victory, the Left must re-think its approaches. The rise of Right-wing populism is transforming the arena of conflict, struggle, and antagonism, marking it with increasingly xenophobic and nationalistic politics. How can the Left question and understand this arena anew? Is there an emergent politics, which can design effective forms of organization and confrontational strategies, and extend the logics of political communication? How should the Left reconsider radical agendas and strategies? And how can it effectively adjust trajectory and mobilize forces to confront the increasingly hostile, cynical, and polarized social, economic, and political terrain? Central to this new terrain is a rapid re-articulation of relationships between the masses, communities, movements, infrastructures, and media, both old and new. This panel reflects on the role of digital media in the political field, the data infrastructure of the public sphere, and a politics of re-collectivity that reexamines conflict and struggle as progressive forces in democracy.

This panel is a cooperation between Berliner Gazette and transmediale and launch for the Berliner Gazette annual project FRIENDLY FIRE

Hegemonic Media and Their Opponents

Persistent inequalities continue to prevail on the dark side of today’s powerful media platforms. Companies like Facebook and Google possess the power to shape ideologies, beliefs, and desires by offering a range of services from providing Internet access to supplying infrastructures for the accumulation and organization of information. The panel will discuss emerging forms of digital colonialism while looking into various examples of opposition and resistance. Can we confront the subtle and hidden forms of this new cultural hegemony? Who are (or aren’t) the new digital subalterns? Focal points of discussion include the defeat of Facebook’s Free Basics service in India, the politics of the Google Cultural Institute, and new transcultural forms of resistance.

Immediate & Habitual: The Elusiveness of Mediation

With the increased networking of our digital world, media technologies—once stable apparatuses of communication—have dissolved into new ecologies. Being composed of and affected by human and nonhuman actors, users and machines, fleshy bodies and digital objects, such media ecologies overcome previously conceived separations and dichotomies between culture and technology. How does this ongoing yet unnoticeable shift transform our everyday life? And what renders the processes behind media technology today so elusive? During this keynote conversation, two prominent Media Studies scholars shed light on these questions from different angles. Richard Grusin emphasizes the role of a new immediate, radical, and ubiquitous form of mediation that transcends communication, affecting future-oriented events. Wendy Chun stresses the importance of the habitual character of media technologies today, through which media becomes part of our lives, and in reverse our lives become part of a new technological culture.

Middle Session: The Elemental Middle

As media steadily melt into the environment, they become both more naturalized and estranged in the sense that we understand the way they work less and less. The “Elemental” Middle Session highlights the unnoticeable media we live and work among, focusing equally on their material (technical) properties and their cultural meanings. Rather than relying on the worn-out critical mechanisms of “revealing what lies beneath” or “exposing hidden truths,” the discussion focuses on de-naturalization and re-familiarization. Speakers discuss areas of infrastructural intersection and entanglement, identifying ways in which structures of power reinforce each other through ubiquitous media. What are the “elemental” substrates of contemporary media? Is it helpful or possible to try and reduce a complex ecosystem of human and nonhuman actors to its elementary particles?

Prove You Are Nonhuman

From the time of the famed Turing test until today, humans have engaged with different forms of artificial intelligence, drawing comparison to possibilities of the human brain. The role of the human, capable of complex processes that machines cannot perform, has often been to intervene and secure proper functioning of machine learning systems. In today’s entangled condition, with examples of bots tweeting as humans, filtering and moderating news content, or as high frequency traders defining financial flows, it is increasingly difficult to tell who or what is acting. Is it possible to locate and comprehend the role and function of nonhuman actors? Which old and new approaches are might be of use? What would it take and what would it mean to stop anthropomorphizing computers and obtain a machinic point of view?

Singularities

A singularity is a point in space-time of such unfathomable density that the very nature of reality is brought into question. Associated with elusive black holes and the alien particles that bubble up from quantum foam at their event horizon, the term ‘singularity’ has also been co-opted by cultural theorists and techno-utopianists to describe moments of profound social, ontological, or material transformation—the coming-into-being of new worlds that redefine their own origins. Panelists contend with the idea of singularities and ruptures, tackling transformative promises of populist narratives, and ideological discrepancies that are deeply embedded in art and design practices. By reflecting on Afrofuturism and digital colonialism, they will also question narcissistic singularities of ‘I,’ ‘here,’ and ‘now’, counter the rhetoric of technological utopias, and confound principles of human universality.

Strange Ecologies: From Necropolitics to Reproductive Revolutions

In this keynote conversation Steve Kurtz and Johannes Paul Raether explore the less visible or even unacknowledged territories associated with the politics of death and reproduction in the Capitalocene. The impact of excessive human influence on life and our planet’s environments frame most progressive discussions about ecology today, simultaneously making the world both naturalized and denaturalized. Humans are typically treated as a dangerous alien force upsetting the balance of nature, and a force of reduction in terms of diversity and complexity in nature. At the same time, humans have long known that life and the environment are not balanced, nor do they have any necessary direction or purpose. Situated in the middle of strange ecologies, the challenge is to confront the full spectrum of power mechanisms and politics behind our environmental and evolutionary thinking. Through two talks and a conversation, Steve Kurtz and Johannes Paul Raether address the environment, death, and the practices, ethics, and politics of reproduction, questioning their contradictions and paradoxes.

Thanks to C-Base we had the perfect location for this series of student workshops during the Transmediale Festival. The Program was as follows:

THURSDAY, FEB 3

Presentations by Future Design City Feb 2, 15:00 – 16:00 @ C-Base Towards Urban Interactions The rise of computation embedded into objects, walls, and buildings introduces a new paradigm for the way humans interact with their environments. How will we design the relationship between people and such connected spaces? How might interactive systems scale across everyday human experience? And which new opportunities and challenges could appear, when we imagine future cities as networks of overlapping, dynamic data points?

Bio Andreas Rau
Andreas Rau is an interaction designer, creative coder and jazz pianist based in Berlin. As co-founder of the Institute for Urban Interactions, he researches the interplay of people and their environments in emerging interactive spaces. His concepts and prototypes aim to create meaningful experiences across the physical and digital worlds, always questioning the relationship between the two.
www.andreasrau.eu
www.urbaninteractions.org

Live Code and Live Algorithms – Feb 2, 16:00-18:00 @ C-Base

CTM 2017 – Fear Anger Love Feb 2, 22:00 – 05:00 Berghain/Panoramabar

FRIDAY, FEB 3

ACTIVITIY STREAM A:
TidalCycles Workshop – Feb 3, 12:00-17:00 @ C-Base led by Alex McLean & Alexandra Cardenas

TidalCycles (or Tidal for short) is a language for live coding patterns of events in time. It allows you to make musical patterns with text, describing sequences and ways of transforming and combining them, exploring complex interactions between simple parts. Tidal does not make sound itself, but is designed for use with the SuperDirt synth, and can control other synths over Open Sound Control or MIDI. This workshop will explore the expressive power of the Tidal language as a way of generating and performing musical sequences. Tidal is a very intuitive language, and thus should be accessible to total beginners using the built-in sound material Tidal provides. For those with experience in SuperCollider, you’ll be happy to know that Tidal can be used as a sequencing language for all the sophisticated synths and sample playback mechanisms you’ve created in SuperCollider. https://tidalcycles.org/

PREPARATIONS FOR THE WORKSHOP
It is important that all students attending this workshop bring a laptop and install all the pre-requisite software in advance. This means you need to install Haskell, Atom, SuperCollider (3.7 or later) and
Git.

For installation instructions use the following links:
Installation instructions for Mac Users https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJTfGv2sT-w
Installation instructions for all platforms https://tidalcycles.org/getting_started.html

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP LEADERS

Alex McLean (UK) has been active across the digital arts since the year 2000, including live coding music, and software art for which he won the Transmediale award in 2002. Alex co- founded the TOPLAP and Algorave movements, and has collaborated widely including as part of Slub, Canute, aalleexx, and xynaaxmue. He completed his PhD thesis on Programming Languages for the Arts at Goldsmiths London, during which time he initiated the free/open source live coding environment TidalCycles, connecting code and music to create a rich approach to pattern making. Alex is based between Sheffield UK, and the research institute in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where he uses live coding techniques to explore the ancient thought processes of textile weavers, for the European project PENELOPE lead by Ellen Harlizius-Klück. He releases his solo music as Yaxu on the Computer Club label, including the EP Peak Cut and forthcoming album Spicule. He curates the Festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement, and is co-editing the Oxford Handbook on Algorithmic Music with Roger Dean, due out during 2017. yaxu.org

Alexandra Cardenas (CO) is a composer, programmer, and improviser of music born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1976. She studied composition at the Universidad de Los Andes where she also carried studies in mathematics and classical guitar. Using open source software like SuperCollider and TidalCycles, her work is focused on the exploration of the musicality of code and the algorithmic behavior of music. Alexandra is among the pioneers of live coding in electroacoustic music and part of the forefront of the Algorave scene. Currently, she lives in Berlin, Germany, and is doing her masters in Sound Studies at the Berlin University of the Arts. cargocollective.com/tiemposdelruido

ACTIVITIY STREAM B:
Exhibition Tour – Feb 3, 12:30-17:30

To facilitate reflection, we ask the organisers of transmediale for a spacewhere the students can convene at specific times on a daily basis with the faculty from Coventry and Leuphana, as well as guests invited from the festival roster. For this we would only need a room to convene in at a specific time each day.

The students at Leuphana will have had a course on live coding performance and be able to contextualize and deeply appreciate the artists who perform during the Algorave events put forth in the second proposal of this package.

While the younger group of students from Coventry will be able to experience this event as an expose of what is artistically possible with code. The more advanced students from the Leuphana group will have the option to perform their work during the early slot of the proposed Algorave night.

1 – Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico
Kunstraum, Mariannenplatz 2 12:30

This year’s exhibition takes as its focus the history and current state of electronic music and sound art in Mexico, guiding visitors through the various different musical styles and sound experiments that have emerged in the country since the beginning of the 20th century. Curated by sound researcher Carlos Prieto Acevedo, the exhibition features work by a number of active members of the Mexican sound art community, including Ariel Guzik, Angélica Castelló, Guillermo Galindo, Roberto Morales Manzaneres, Verónica Gerber, Mario de Vega and Carlos Sandoval. Talks and performances featuring Mexican music from the last 20 years as well as reworks and reconstructions of pieces from the beginnings of experimental music in Mexico link the exhibition to a larger international context

2 – Primitives
HAU2, Hallisches Ufer 32 15:00

Alan Warburton’s “Primitives” installation will be on display during the festival week, free of charge, exploring the intersection of entertainment and science using cutting-edge CGI “crowd simulation” software. This technology is normally used in Hollywood blockbuster films to fill out cities, stadiums and battlefields and also by researchers and engineers working in crisis mapping, city planning and events management. Warburton’s AV project explores this simulation software to “liberate the digital crowd” and allow it to live and explore more experimental parameters.

3 – On the Far Side of the Marchlands
Schering Stiftung, Unter den Linden 32-34 16:30

The exhibition “On the Far Side of the Marchlands” at Schering Stiftung explores the potential of radically new topographies through border regions (marchlands) created by the artists, composed from inextricably linked realms of experience, culture, and materiality. The 3D Additivist Cookbook, conceived and edited by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke, is the point of departure for the exhibition, bringing together radical projects by over one hundred artists, activists, and theorists.

Algorave – Feb 3, 20:00 - 00:00 @ HKW

Algorave embraces the alien sounds of raves from the past, and introduce alien, futuristic rhythms and beats made through strange, algorithm-aided processes. It’s up to the good people on the dance floor to help the musicians make sense of this unstable situation and do the real creative work in making a great party. These days just about all electronic music is made using software, but with artificial barriers between the people creating the software algorithms and the people making the music. Using systems built for creating algorithmic music and visuals, these barriers are broken down, and musicians are able to compose and work live with their music as intricate processes. Algorithmic music is no new idea, but Algorave focuses on humans making and dancing to music. Algorave musicians don’t pretend their software is being creative, they take responsibility for the music they make, shaping it using whatever means they have. More importantly the focus is not on what the musician is doing, but on the music, and people dancing to it. Organized in collaboration between transmediale, Alex McLean, Alexandra Cardenas and Jonathan Reus, the Algorave at this year’s transmediale is the first event of its kind in Berlin. It is a kind of “coming home”, a celebration of transmediale’s history of supporting the early development of live coding since the early 2000’s, as well as celebrating how far live coding has come as a practice since then. With sets by: Alexandra Cardenas & Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due (CO/NO) | Alex McLean (UK) | coï¿¥ï3⁄∕4¡pt (UK) | La verbena electronica (ES) | Belisha Beacon (BE) | Fredrik Olofsson (DE) (visuals) | Miri Kat (UK) (visuals)

ORGANISERS

Jonathan Reus-Brodsky (Leuphana University, DE)

Jonathan Reus-Brodsky is an American composer-performer whose musical work blends machine aesthetics with free improvisation. In 2009 Jonathan received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research into computationally-mediated music systems at the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam. Afterwards he worked at STEIM as a curator, research coordinator and educator. He is a founding member of the Instrument Inventors Initiative performative media collective based in The Hague. He is lecturer for Computational and Coded Cultures at Leuphana University, Lüneburg.

Adnan Hadzi (Coventry University, UK)

Adnan Hadzi undertook his practice-based PhD onFLOSSTV – Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) within participatory TV hacking Media and Arts Practices’ at Goldsmiths, University of London. Adnan’s research focuses on the influence of digitalization and the new forms of (documentary-) film production, as well as the author’s rights in relation to collective authorship.

Rob Canning (Coventry University, UK)

Rob Canning is a composer and performer with a research focus centred around networked creativity and open working methodologies. His recent work explores possible interplays between performers and network delivered instruction sets; these range from traditional ensemble pieces which utilise browser based net-scores to simultaneous network streamed sonic drifts as in his Streamscape project.

PROFILE OF STUDENT GROUPS

The organizing faculty from Leuphana and Coventry will each bring a group of approximately 25 students to participate in the excursion. Leuphana University, Bachelors Major of Digital Media

The Major of Digital Media bachelors at Leuphana University aims to educate students to have a wholistic view of the digital as it exists in its myriad formations in science, culture and aesthetics. The program originates out of a joint cooperation between the Digital Cultures Research Lab and Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media. Students receive a mixed course load from diverse teachers in computer science, history and epistemology of computing, software studies, creative coding, digital art, electronic music, net critique and similar topics. The group attending the excursion will be in their 3 rd year of study in the new digital media major, and have already completed much of the above coursework. The excursion will serve as the culmination of a hands-on seminar on livecoding and computer music.

Coventry University, Digital Media Bachelors
The group of Digital Media students from Coventry will be in their first year of study, and therefore be extremely new to digital cultures and creative use of digital media. We see the pairing of these students with the more advanced group from Leuphana as an ideal informal mentorship situation.

REFLECTION SPACE
In order to facilitate daily theoretical discussions around the experiences of the festival, we ask that transmediale provide a meeting space once per day for the organising faculty and the student groups to convene. The space should provide adequate seating for up to 50 students, a video projector and stereo sound.

ALGORAVE SHOWCASE

SYNOPSIS

We propose an Algorave showcase night as part of transmediale’s activities for 2017 – organized in collaboration between transmediale, Jonathan Reus-Brodsky, Alex McLean and Alexandra Cardenas, artists from the live coding scene who are eager to realize Berlin’s first Algorave as a celebration of transmediale’s history of supporting the early development of live coding since the early 2000’s. Next to the main Algorave club night we also propose a possible mini-symposium and public live coding workshops.

PROPOSAL

We propose an Algorave club night as part of Transmediale’s activities for 2017. The Algorave will be the first event of its kind in Berlin, and will be organized in collaboration between transmediale, live coding pioneer Alex McLean, Mexican live coder/composer Alexandra Cardenas and American live coder/instrumentalist Jonathan Reus-Brodsky. The Algorave showcase at transmediale’s historic 30 year anniversary comes out of a desire to celebrate transmediale’s history of supporting the early
development of live coding since the early 2000’s. In this way, the Algorave at transmediale is a kind of coming home, a celebration of how far live coding has come as a practice and a focal point for thinking where it may go. Along with the club night, we propose a mini-symposium and public workshops around the Genesis and Cultures of live coding.
The students from Leuphana University described in the student excursion proposal of this package will have just had a course on live coding performance and be able to contextualize and deeply appreciate the artists who perform during this event, and hopefully participate as part of an early slot during the club night.

ORGANISERS

Jonathan Reus-Brodsky (Leuphana University, DE)

Jonathan Reus-Brodsky is an American composer-performer whose musical work blends machine aesthetics with free improvisation. In 2009 Jonathan received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research into computationally-mediated music systems at the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in
Amsterdam. Afterwards he worked at STEIM as a curator, research coordinator and educator. He is a founding member of the Instrument Inventors Initiative performative media collective based in
The Hague, and teaches as lecturer for Computational and Coded Culture at Leuphana University, Lüneburg.

Alexandra Cardenas (MEX/DE)

Alexandra Cardenas is a Colombian composer and improviser based in Berlin, who has followed a path from Western classical composition to improvisation and live electronics. Her recent work has included live coding performance, including performances at the forefront of the Algorave scene.

Alex McLean (UK)

Alex McLean is a software artist, live coding musician and researcher based in Sheffield UK. He is active in the live coding community, including creating the live-coding environment TidalCycles, an co-founding the TOPLAP and Algorave movements. He has performed widely since the year 2000 in several collaborations including Slub with Dave Griffiths and Adrian Ward, Canute with Yeeking (Rephlex), and aalleexx with Alexandra Cardenas. Alex performs solo as Yaxu, releasing music on the Computer Club label, including Peak Cut EP which Bleep.com described as a “.. polyrhythmic and hyperreal strand of techno .. showcased on cuts like Public Life and Cyclic showing that he is not just testing the confines of how music can be consumed but also how genres can sound.” He won the Transmediale Software Art award in 2001, the British Science Association Daphne Oram Award Lecture in 2015, and is sound artist in residence at the Open Data Institute during 2016. He is currently
co-editing the Oxford Handbook on Algorithmic Music with Roger Dean.

ALGORAVE CLUB NIGHT

We propose a club night featuring a showcase of some of the top artists from the Algorave scene, presenting a whole night of live coded electronic dance music and presented in collaboration with
Alexandra Cardenas and Alex McLean . The club night ideally begins early (7pm), with an early slot
for the more advanced students of Leuphana University’s digital media program to perform with
their work from the previous semester’s seminar on live coding. After the early slot we transition
into a full club evening with the featured artists, going late into the night. Leuphana University is
able to contribute towards the fees of the artists, as they will also participate in more intimate
encounters with the students.

VENUE & TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

• A medium-sized dance venue with loud stereo sound system
• Multiple projectors & projection screens for visualists and projection of code.
• A long standing-height table where multiple artists can set up simultaneously.
• It will be necessary to have a sound technician for the evening.
ARTIST TRAVEL & FEES
• Leuphana University is able to provide fees for a limited number of invited artists in so far as
they provide guest tutoring/mentorship for the student groups.
• transmediale provides assistance with artist travel and lodging costs.
DOCUMENTATION OF PAST ALGORAVES
Algorave article in Wired
• http://www.wired.co.uk/article/algorave
Algorave at OCCII, Amsterdam
• http://motherboard.vice.com/nl/read/algorave-coden-in-de-club
Algorave at Leeds Digital Festival, 2016
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTBMHE1Tj48&feature=youtu.be&t=33m11s
Canute at Algorave Karlsruhe 2015
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAq4BAbvRS4

LONG LIST OF ARTISTS MUSICIANS
• Jonathan Reus-Brodsky (US/NL) + Colin Hacklander (US/DE)
• Alexandra Cardenas (MEX/DE)
• Alex McLean (UK)
• Renick Bell (JP)
• Hlodver Sigurdsson (IS)
• Alberto de Campo (AT/DE)
• Frederik Oloffson (SW)
• Benoit and the Mandelbrots (DE)
• Shelly Knots + Jo Anne = ALGOBABEZ (UK)
• Nick Collins (UK)
• Thor Magnusson (UK)
• The Void* (NL)
• Till Bovermann (DE)
• Luuma (UK)
• Sean Cotterill (UK)
• Calum Gunn (UK)
• Polinski (UK)
• Belisha Beacon (UK)
• Anny (UK)
• Lil data (UK)
VISUALISTS
• Jack Rusher (DE)
• Francesca Sargent (chez) (UK)
• Dan Hett (rituals) (UK)
• Antonio Roberts (hellocatfood) (UK)

ALGORAVE WORKSHOPS AND MINI SYMPOSIUM

Taking advantage of the high caliber of invited artists, we propose the possibility for doing one or two public workshops related to live coding and Algorave. And potentially a small symposium or panel discussion on the Genesis & Cultures of Livecoding. The workshops and mini-symposium follow a successful similar format to those presented in Amsterdam during their Algorave events in 2014. Two workshops from that event, an introduction to SuperCollider and a more advanced workshop of livecoding with live instruments could be presented, as well as a possible workshop on Alex McLean’s Tidal environment, which is beginner friendly and would potentially appeal to a larger public audience.

POTENTIAL WORKSHOPS
• Intro to SuperCollider
• http://www.codedmatters.nl/workshop/learn-basics-sound-synthesis-supercollider/
• SuperCollider & Live Instruments
• http://www.codedmatters.nl/workshop/supercollider-live-instruments/
• Intro to TidalCycles
• http://tidalcycles.org/
• Link to mini-symposium held in Amsterdam
• http://www.codedmatters.nl/workshop/algorave-mini-symposium/
SPACE & TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
• A medium-sized workshop space with tables and chairs
• stereo sound system
• projector/screen

Throughout the run of the festival, excursions, and closing weekend, around 180 international thinkers and cultural producers will reframe the question of the role of media today through panels, performances, workshops and screenings.

FESTIVAL 02.–05.02.2017 [1]

transmediale’s new publication _ACROSS & BEYOND – A TRANSMEDIALE READER ON POST-DIGITAL PRACTICES, CONCEPTS, AND INSTITUTIONS_ is out now! This collection of art and theory analyzes today’s post-digital conditions for critical media practices–moving across and beyond the analog and the digital, the human and the nonhuman. The contributions also look across and beyond the field of media art, staking out new paths for understanding and working in the transversal territories between theory, technology, and art.

In the keynote conversation _Becoming Infrastructural – Becoming Environmental_ (Fri, 03.02.2017, 18:00), LISA PARKS and ERICH HÖRL discuss entanglements between nature and technology, where infrastructural sites are interrupted by nonhuman species and a “General Ecology” of new power
structures emerges.

WENDY CHUN and RICHARD GRUSIN talk about mediation beyond the media and the habitual patterns of immediate communication in the keynote conversation _Immediate & Habitual: The Elusiveness of Mediation_ (Sat, 04.02.2017, 18:00).

In the keynote conversation _Strange Ecologies: From Necropolitics to Reproductive Revolutions_ (Sun, 05.02.2017, 18:00), STEVE KURTZ and JOHANNES PAUL RAETHER explore unacknowledged territories amid the politics of death and ethics of reproduction in the Capitalocene, questioning their
contradictions and paradoxes.

transmediale and CTM Festival [2] will feature _LEXACHAST_, a collaboration between PAN label founder BILL KOULIGAS and futuristic sound design duo AMNESIA SCANNER. The performance introduces a mangled dystopian soundtrack that revolves around generative live-streaming visuals by artist Harm van den Dorpel (Fri, 03.02.2017, 21:00).

Another highlight is the screening of _THE SPRAWL (PROPAGANDA ABOUT PROPAGANDA)_: With their debut feature film, METAHAVEN investigates the role and power of propaganda in the social media age. The film is a paranoid digital trip in which form and content continually influence each
other. The screening is followed by a talk between Metahaven and artist and researcher Susan Schuppli (Sat, 04.02.2017, 21:00). Trailer [3]

Find a list of confirmed participants on our updated website [1]. The full program is soon available. read more [4]

EXHIBITION 02.02.–05.03.2017 [1]

Within the scope of _ever elusive – thirty years of transmediale_, the special exhibition “ALIEN MATTER”, curated by Inke Arns, will be on view at Haus der Kulturen der Welt from 2 February to 5 March 2017.

“Alien matter” refers to man-made, and at the same time, radically different, potentially intelligent matter. It is the outcome of a naturalization of technological artefacts. Environments shaped by technology result in new relationships between man and machine. Technical objects, previously defined merely as objects of utility, have become autonomous agents. Through their ability to learn and network, they challenge the central role of the human subject.

Approximately 20 exhibiting artists from Berlin and around the world will present works about shifts within such power structures, raising questions about the state of our current environment and whether it has already passed the tipping point, becoming “alien matter”. Find the full list of artists and their artworks here [5]. [6]

ACROSS & BEYOND – A transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions

In the upcoming weeks transmediale is publishing a selection of essays of this publication on transmediale/journal [6]. You can already read the introductory essay “Across and Beyond: Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions” by Ryan Bishop, Kristoffer Gansing and Jussi Parikka here [7].
_across & beyond_ was developed by transmediale and Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.

Order your copy now or grab it at transmediale 2017 _ever elusive_! read more [8]

Links:
——
[1] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1741&qid=123250
[2] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1742&qid=123250
[3] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1743&qid=123250
[4] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1744&qid=123250
[5] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1745&qid=123250
[6] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1746&qid=123250
[7] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1747&qid=123250
[8] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1748&qid=123250
[9] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1749&qid=123250
[10] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1750&qid=123250
[11] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1751&qid=123250
[12] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1752&qid=123250
[13] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1753&qid=123250
[14] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1754&qid=123250
[15] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1755&qid=123250
[16] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1756&qid=123250
[17] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1757&qid=123250
[18] https://spot.transmediale.de/sites/default/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1758&qid=123250
[19] https://spot.transmediale.de/civicrm/mailing/optout?reset=1&jid=2081&qid=123250&h=0f7a801e00d63ed2

Posted on February 2, 2017 by d.tv Deptford.TV, mazi, news, regeneration, Report, reports, research, ReSynced

Post unitary

Ongoing MAZI research into DIY networks and complimentary solutions has turned up many great options. Our current favorite is Sandstorm.io a a collaboration suite of open source software which continues to develop and swell with features.

Three new servers in centres of activity, have been introduced where the rising need for safe, secure and stable alternatives to corporate cloud is called for by subscribers and collaborators.

Mazi is well on track to present combinations of network and collective development tools in 2018, a pick and mix of hardware, software and scenario conditioning, though we are not there yet! Adoption of ultra low power ARM based pc’s like Raspberry Pi for a multitude of tasks is on a rocket. On the flipside, a mountain of small format, legacy laptop and powerful low cost / free desktop i386 hardware is in great abundance, a glut even, these are perfect hosts for Sandstorm.

As we concluded the third Creeknet meet-up at Stephen Lawrence Centre this week, it was great to welcome this group of residents from the boating community of Deptford Creek.

The large converted coal barge, Luna, moors alongside a nest of boats in the mud at No2 Creekside and this is where will next meet-up again in March. It’s home to ten young people who share the residence and have expressed enthusiasm to shape their own futures here by improving communications between boat owners and public awareness of river living. Concerns over continuity of mooring for the many boats here is uppermost in everyones mind as development plans emerge that throw assumption about tenure into questions.

When we last spoke to Julian Kingston, he mentioned how difficulties in communications between the new LLP owning the yard, the DLR and boat owners was provoking anxiety. Land access here for moored boats depends on continued good will and understanding from all parties. Shoreside utilities, access to clean water and sanitation, power and telecoms are vital.

SPC are working with OU and Creeknet friends to establish a network of interactive installations along the tidal creek, that forms a DIY networking trail from Brookmill Park to the Swing Bridge. Using a combination of low power computing and mesh wireless technology, this initiative aims to support existing neighbourhood activity and inform Mazi toolkit development. Follow it along the length of the tidal creek from beacon to beacon, each point presenting locally sourced and augmented information.

Each Mazizone consists of a reconfigured Rasbian operating on a Raspberry Pi that hosts, webserver and database tools that are arranged and refined to suit local conditions. They are connected to existing broadband internet or as standalone ‘offline’ systems. Each offers ‘Creeknet’ wireless access, which responds to your web request by presenting a captive ‘portal’ page loaded with guides for use, selected collaboration tools, and a view on each neighborhood.

The current MAZI toolkit release is V1.6 with the project sources bug tracking and development notes at Github. We invite all those interested to get in touch, download and install the development images and contribute feedback and follow our progress. The details of how best to configure and deploy a mazizone are being accumulated as we experiment.

Project partners at Univesity of Thessaly in Greece have the job of building and managing the development of the toolkit software, adding and adapting to the evolving requirements. You can preview the default Mazi toolkit, but for better insight into how progress is being made in London please visit one of the Creeknet Mazizones and try out the options. We now also have berryboot versions of the toolkit hosted by Alex Goldcheidt alongide the hundreds of alternative OS for the Raspberry Pi at Berryserver.

Since loosing the boat in a fire in January, Minesweeper Collective are operating in Deckspace and at DIY Space for London. Their Undercurrents gallery at Birdsnest was first to be installed to support the group art exhibitions updated each month.

We have been meeting Creeknet friends regularly at Hoy kitchen on Creek Road where a Mazizone was installed in March. We will return there this coming Monday at noon for a research session with those specifically interested in clean-up of the Hoy Steps.

Artist Karen Barnes mazizone is Eileen Ford named after her pinhole camera truck parked in the yard at N02 Creekside. It has a built in camera and other sensory extensions, fitted inside her human sized portable ‘box camera’ to record and publish pinhole images on the move. It operates in ‘offline’ mode and presents a guestbook, image galleries, and reports on changing conditions.

When we return to Brookmill Park in May the fourth Creeknet Mazizone will be installed at the Park keepers hut by the pond. It will help friends of Brookmill Park co-ordinate public events, present wildlife images and environmental conditions.

Our UK partners at Open University have set up a mazizone installation of their own to demonstrate to their colleagues and experiment with new features whilst in their work space in Milton Keynes.

Posted on February 1, 2017 by d.tv news, Report, reports

Layered stakes

The very recent death of friend and collaborator Armin Medosch has us all shocked. A stomach cancer diagnosis in December 2016 was all too late to avert such rapid and devastating effects.

We last met at a memorable post Hybrid Cities dinner in Athens, September 2015, where he had talked on ‘Cities of the Sun’ and recalled early wireless network adventures in Hackney, celebrating the network commons process so many of us continue to work on. Perhaps there is a recording of the keynote he presented there..? I just found this interesting talk on the rise of Network Commons, one more of so many on a wide range of subjects!

Tributes from friends and colleagues around Europe are stacking up in Nettime.org each pinpointing personal reflections on his great character, warmth and passion for the social in digital, a critical eye on culture, network politics, his commitment and courage. Obituaries in Rizhome, Wired and Telepolis now also detailing a life’s work and lasting impact. Now also a book! wow so perhaps this account will continue to be amended for a while!

Memories flying thick and fast, thinking back over many years of his intensity and enthusiasm. We first met in autumn of 1995 when he arrived at Obsolete offices in Clink Street, fresh from a bruising experience aboard ms.Stubnitz. His passion then, fixed on non-linear video archives, but we were already too distracted by WWW to take it on. It wasn’t long before he was in regular contact, at Backspace, activating Cybersalon, co-ordinating Artservers Unlimited , always making Waves!

His constructive involvement in so many activities, with such critical sensibility, influenced and inspired us all. During so much of this period we were all effected by the ‘rush’, spinning ahead of the times. We ranted about DIY networking ideas that fused as Consume, morphed with Berlon into a mesh awakening that grew internationally.

Armin wrote for Mute, Telepolis, Acoustic Space and formulated the MA in Digital Theory at Ravensbourne College. He launched into work on The Next layer blog whilst compiling of his New Tendencies Phd at Goldsmiths and delivered talks at many public events across Europe. With the publishing of most recent book New Tendencies, he was again traveling to promote ideas and expand minds with flair and passion. Now as ever he has rushed on to cross the gap ahead of us all, to who knows where!

See you on the other side mate. Thanks for everything.

Posted on January 20, 2017 by d.tv Deptford.TV, mazi, news, projects, Report, reports, research, ReSynced

Hoy Meet-ups

This coming Monday 23rd January we will again meet up with Creeknet friends to continue some great conversations and push on with DIY network research. Our host for the last few Mazi Mondays has been the Hoy Kitchen on Creek Road at the Deptford and Greenwich border by Creek Bridge. We have been starting with teas/lunch at noon and drifting on in discussion till 4pm.

Claire is the proprietor of Hoy and grew up in the Hoy Inn as it was previously known. Her family moved into the area from Belfast in the 70’s at a time when SE8 was comparatively naked, few street lights, road signs and empty buildings in a very industrial maritime landscape. The pub was a notorious social hub and she has many stories about these earlier times to tell! Her great familiarity with local history, society and current wave of transformation is proving most entertaining and illuminating.

When Quayside redevelopment took off in the streets all around them during the 90’s her family faced fresh and unexpected challenges. Land which had always been linked to the Hoy was assumed part of the property development package. It triggered a fight to hold on to access and the infamous Hoy Steps. Successful but lengthy resistance has meant that the steps have been retained but a road wraps around the building to the new build properties adjacent.

Perhaps as a consequence, Claire has good contacts with local business including Millenium Quay who have responsibility for the recently installed swing bridge. She has also suggested making historical steps accessible for the first time since the dispute!

The illustrious privateer Sir Francis Drake may well have been knighted by Queen Elisabeth by the Hoy Steps, his ship ‘The Golden Hind’ certainly ended it’s days in the creek, scrapped to shore up the sea wall of the creek. Today the replica boat is a popular tourist destination in Clink Street by London Bridge very close to our very own Backspace which prevailed till turn of the last century!

Please join us in February when we will meet-up at Stephen Lawrence Centre for a further three weeks of more practical workshops At these events we will work with low-cost technologies to host and promote a range of DIY neighbourhood publishing tools, discover more about the options for OWN mesh access meet its resident groups and friends from that area of the river by Brookmill Park.

Cast in this light and with rising sense of expectation from those around us, we set out on the second phase of neighbourhood engagement and activity around our Mazi pilot – Creeknet. It explores use of DIY networking methods and promotion of ‘offline‘ information systems, that express awareness, sustainability and determination for greater data autonomy.

To date, we have met with a wide range of local people living and working alongside Deptford Creek, each with a view on local issues and an intensity to shape outcomes in whatever form of public campaign or personal agenda they may fix on. Help us identify the tools for success in such situations and to foster the development of home grown options to introduce into the MAZI toolkit.

We begin a series of weekly meetings and workshops at venues up and down the creek this month, to channel some energies into discovery, discussion and expression on subjects closest to heart. The quality of lived environment tops that chart, as any local resident, worker or student will assert. Unbridled property speculation, deteriorating air quality and wealth disparity, contribute to the sense of dis-empowerment, isolation and anxiety for the future.

Much we have learned, as the storm of chaos around us builds, reminds us that we can never again take personal freedoms and privacy for granted. As of 30th December, the Investigatory Powers Act permits targeted interception of communications, bulk collection and interception of communications data by UK government and intelligence agencies.

Educating and informing ourselves on conditions of change are now critical steps for us to take for future health of communities, cultures and capital. Our faith in each other, open collaboration and social justice are at stake. Your insight, inventiveness and expertise are key to unlocking neighbourhood value and identifying solutions to act on locally.

During February, we are hosting Creeknet meet-ups at Stephen Lawrence Centre where friends of Brookmill Park and Deptford Creek will gather to share stories and publish reports.

As part of the MAZI pilot we are all working together to install interactive beacons along the creek where significant points of interest and DIY network activity coincide.

We have booked three weekly meetings in this riverside lecture room, starting Monday 13th Feb so please join us there between 12 and 4pm. Please register so we know how may to expect at lunch!

Our emphasis is to support the many local groups along the creek as they promote their respective activities and publish to their networks. In preparation, we have been resetting some of their legacy, corrupted and entangled WordPress installations, so a clean start is possible!

Friends of Brookmill Park are now ready to bring their designs into effect to feature the nature and diversity of the park, planting plan and to begin animal species monitoring.

Terry Edwards is a local musician and model gardener who leads the Crossfields Estate community garden project Wonky Prong and has begun posting and planting again in time for spring. He may well join Karen Barnes on Wednesday’s open mic event at the Birdsnest.

She has been very busy scanning some of the many pinhole camera prints she has made in situ around Deptford as well as on occasional trips to Westminster. They feature at thearmed909 alongside accounts of living and working in the area. The Undercurrents gallery in the back room of the Birdsnest has been showing Minesweeper art and photographs of the boat that survived the devastating fire in January. Karen recently added a Piratebox to collect up some memorabilia and share donated audio recordings and artwork. Next time you pop in for a pint, try logging on to check the collection.

Friends of Deptford Creek, started by those living on house boats in the creek also have a refreshed website to voice their current concerns not least in light of redevelopment plans effecting their mooring and land access at 2 Creekside. John Cierach is also the owner of 3 Creekside where we recently reviewed the plans for development to feature stacked shipping containers and reworked mooring strategy that won’t include all the current boats!

A Kumu map of working relationships between interested parties along Deptford Creek is emerging form the mud of our interaction. Further interventions and activity will continue to extend these impressions, your comments and contributions are most welcome.

What are the shitboats you may well ask

Posted on September 25, 2016 by adnan Announcement, news, presentations, publications, Report, reports, research

after.video at the indefinite vision symposium @ whitechappel art gallery

after.video will be presented during the indefinite vision
symposium @ whitechappel art gallery, see:
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/indefinite-visions/ (before the
symposium during a workshop on methodologies – see schedule below ->
after.video is in the 4-5.30pm slot)

WORKSHOP: THE AUDIOVISUAL ESSAY WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, LONDON

WEDNESDAY 22nd JUNE

11.30am-1pm. Forms
Themes:
Audiovisual essay forms (close analysis, artistic/poetic montage,
supercut/thematic montage, ‘interstitial’).
Techniques: temporal manipulation, overlays, split-screen, voice-over
Audiovisual essays as supplements to written scholarship and as core
methodology.
Questions:
What types of scholarship are audiovisual essays suited (and not suited) to?
What more could audiovisual essay achieve critically and aesthetically?
11.30-11.45. Presentation: Kevin B. Lee on the current state of the art
11.45-12. Presentation: TBC
12-12.30. Break-out discussions
12.30-1. Group discussion

1pm-2pm. Lunch

2pm-3.30pm. Contexts
Themes:
Role within film journalism, as a critical tool
Role within teaching, as a heuristic tool
Relationship with film-making (‘theory’ vs ‘practice’)
Relationship with artists’ film and video
Questions
How to further incorporate audiovisual essays into mainstream scholarship
via academic legitimation (e.g. increasing publishing opportunities)?
via refinement of the form and its methodologies?
via databasing?
How does the audiovisual essay fit within current copyright law in the
UK and beyond?
Do different distribution models (e.g. peer-reviewed, ‘self-published’,
programmed by cultural gatekeepers) suit different kinds of audiovisual
work?
2.30-2.45. Presentation: Catherine Grant on videographic film studies
and academic publishing
2.45-3. Presentation: David Rodowick on negotiating film theory and film
practice
3-3.30. Break-out discussions
3.30-4. Group discussion

3.30pm-4.00pm. Break

4.00pm-5.30pm. Methodologies
Themes
Terminology (video essay, audiovisual essay, videographic film studies,
digital film studies)
Alternative technologies and methodologies:
Quantitative:
data analysis (e.g. cinemetrics, ECGs and eye tracking)
visualisation – e.g. Volumetric Cinema, Software Studies Initiative
Qualitative:
Annotation (e.g. Popcorn.js, ANVIL, Lignes de Temps)
Creative:
Critical media art (e.g. after.video)
Interactive documentary
Questions
How can audiovisual essay production be connected to adjacent, less
prevalent, digital humanities activities?
What can be learnt from the use of digital technologies in other
humanities disciplines?
What models of collaboration could help audiovisual film scholarship
develop in scope, complexity, and impact?
4.30-4.45. Presentation: David Verdeure on adjacent methodologies
4.45-5. Presentation: Richard Misek on adjacent technologies
5-5.30. Break-out discussions (open)
5.30-6. Group discussion

Viewable during breaks:
Don’t Look Now: paradoxes of suture (interactive video on Mac laptop)
After.Video Assemblages (videos on Raspberry Pi)
Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness (VR experience, at Close Up Film Centre)

Posted on September 1, 2016 by d.tv Deptford.TV, news, Report, reports, research, ReSynced

reTransmission

YT has recently rekindled contact with Indymedia activist network members as part of an initiative to build a new hosting platform, an Activist Media Proxy – AMP.

Little in the way of social documentary, street protest and public information material exists outside of the youtube/googleplex. Of the many attempts to change assumptions, Engagemedia and Undercurrents have lead the way.

Our hope is that in collaboration with activist media makers and producers, further good use can be made of this vibrant social history, to review past action and inform on current struggles.

The first move of the founding group has been to appoint a coordinator and gather together an information base, to establish communication and suitable support framework. With this foundation in place is has been possible to activate new services to begin working with the existing video collections, present tools for annotation and prepare selections for review.

Please visit the AMP project wiki for more information.

The video, audio and text archives will be stored in a web accessible database. Pan.do/ra offers the combination of media processing, context annotation and collaboration management tools needed. Several other media collections are being drawn together in London using this same great system.

Community archives are reactivated at Maydayrooms events where documents are scanned and media resources organised. Their collection features a selection of period film and event documentary, available over their local area network, alongside an extensive document catalogue for researchers to explore.

A complete set of the DAU film sequences, it’s huge image collection of period artifacts and extensive wardrobe as worn during filming and by residents of Kharkiv, features in their intranet media project. The DAU feature film is itself now due for release in 2017 the centenary of the Russian revolution.

Posted on July 1, 2016 by adnan news

Besides the Screen conference

The 2016 conference in Coventry marks the end of a cycle of activities sponsored by the British
Arts & Humanities Research Council , meaning to articulate an international research network
devoted to the many territories of dispute in the contemporary arrangement of audiovisual
media, such as piracy, curating, and projection practices.

The conference series Besides the Screen began in London in 2010 at Goldsmiths College,
University of London. The event meant to gather research projects focused on an apparently
secondary subject in the field of screen studies: the instances of film distribution and
consumption. By that time, it already seemed important to promote debates around these topics,
considering that some of the most meaningful effects caused by computer networks on
audiovisual media are connected not to image production, but rather to the emergence of new
dynamics of circulation – from peer to peer filesharing to mobile screens, from VJing to
video on demand.

Wednesday 20th July 2016
Ellen Terry Building, Coventry University

14:30 Coffee and Registration (Foyer, Ellen Terry Building)
15:00 Conference Welcome (ET101)
15:15 16:45: Panel 1 (ET101)
17:00 18:30: KEYNOTE Charlotte Brunsdon & The Projection Project (ET101)

18:30 19.30: Break

19:30 Exhibition opening and music from Accelra @ The Box, FarGo Village

Thursday 21st July 2016
Ellen Terry Building, Coventry University

10:00 11:30: Panel 2 (ET101)
11:30 12:00: COFFEE
12:00 13:30: Panel 3 (ET101)
13:30 14:30: LUNCH
14:30 16:00: Panel 4 (ET101)
16:30 17:30: Performance (Ricardo Carioba) (ETG34)

17:30 18.00: Break

18:00 Leafcutter John (Performance & Q&A) @ The Box, FarGo Village

Fri 22 (Ellen Terry Building)
Ellen Terry Building, Coventry University

10:00 11:30: Panel 5 (ET101)
11:30 12:00: COFFEE (Foyer)
12:00 13:30: PANEL 6
13:30 14:30: LUNCH (Foyer)
14:30 16:00: KEYNOTE Nelson Brissac (ET101)
18:00 Performance (mirella & muep) (ETG34)
20:00 Close

Keynotes

Projection, the Moving Image and the Transition to Digital
Charlotte Brunsdon, Michael Pigott and Richard Wallace
This plenary session will be presented by Charlotte Brunsdon, Michael Pigott and Richard
Wallace who are working together on the AHRCfunded Projection Project (201418). This
multimethod project takes projection as its starting point in an exploration of cinema’s transition
to digital. In this presentation we will outline some of the premises of the project, and present
findings which range from interviews with former projectionists to sounds from the projection
box. Our project includes archival and oral history research into the neglected history of the
cinema projectionist through which we challenge the primacy of the image in theorisations of
cinematic specificity, revealing in contrast the role of hidden labours of cinema exhibition. While
we are attentive to the human cost of the transition to digital in terms of redundancies and
redeployments, we are also concerned with the new possibilities of the emergent uses of digital
projection outside of the cinema space. Here we attend to practices – such as projection
mapping enabled by the portability and flexibility of digital projectors, and situate them within a
long history of projection. By investigating the role of outdoor projection as a means of both
advertising and protest, as well as the figure of the nightclub VJ, the project seeks to identify
continuities and differences that pertain within the extracinematic everyday uses of moving
image projection. As a multipart presentation we will seek to give a sense of both what is
hidden and lost in the projection box, and what is imagined outside it in a wide range of venues
and practices.
Professor Charlotte Brunsdon has been Principal Investigator of the Projection Project. Her
most recent research had been concerned with the spaces of film and television and she has
just completed a book on T
elevision Cities t o be published by Duke University Press in 2017.
Dr Michael Pigott is coinvestigator on The Projection Project and author of J oseph Cornell
versus Cinema (2013). He teaches visual cultures and audiovisual performance at the
University of Warwick. He also works as an artist and has been known to do some VJing.
Dr Richard Wallace is Research Fellow on the Projection Project. He has research interests in
British film and television history and technology, historical research methods and screen
documentary and has published in the J ournal of British Cinema and Television.
All work at the University of Warwick, mostly in the Department of Film and Television Studies.
projection.project@warwick.ac.uk

Posted on June 30, 2016 by d.tv Deptford.TV, mazi, news, regeneration, Report, reports, research, ReSynced

Triangulated

The brexit debacle has so far proved to be a substantial distraction from much else going on this week. However, work toward the first of many MAZI reports to satisfy conditions for EU support, has been completed on time. Our academic partners at the Open University now have an additional part time researcher (Gareth) in post to help prepare the ground work for the next phase of neighborhood engagement which SPC are for preparing now. Here is Mark pointing out the Minesweeper floatilla on the creek.

We haven’t had many visitors to the recent Brookmill Park, Monday meetups, though great progress has been made with those attending to clean and prepare the space for Redstart Arts who take up residence later this summer. Their current exhibition at the Deptford Lounge is result of 8 months work with learning disability artists and called ‘weatherSCAPE’. It has been installed in the 4 story atrium space there, very impressive!

Much of the Brookmill conversation so far, has been concerned with how to improve on use of the park and encourage a wider appreciation and support for the events and activities organised by the ‘friends’ group. Last weekend YT joined the Picnic and met with near neighbors as well as some more familiar faces. There was great interest in the MAZI activation initiative using the park keepers building and many questions on what and how might be possible. We sat in dappled light beneath a giant London plain tree with it’s bat and bird boxes, adjacent to the large pond with resident heron and frolicking water birds, to share stories, savories and cakes!

Later this month we will meet again with MAZI partners Common Ground in Berlin to review progress of the new Prinzessinnengarten building in progress and enjoy the bloom of midsummer. Terry Edwards has been in a battle with slugs at the small gardens in Crossfields Estate he tends and will join us on the trip this time.

Here in Deptford there is no shortage of building work underway as seen here in this site view adjacent to CET. Directly opposite, preparations for the Tideway tunnel excavation are also advancing quickly. Intensive building work in progress on both sides of the creek reach are reaching crisis point as project increasingly coincide and collide. Any plans for environment monitoring, neighborhood awareness and useful responses may be foiled if we don’t make some rapid progress before long.

Posted on May 8, 2016 by d.tv mazi, news, Report, reports, research

Vexed, hashed and ported

Battlemesh 09 was the latest in a series of intensive exchanges organised and attended by the prime of mesh firmware developers, hardware hackers and community activists – An international movement of open wireless network innovation with it’s root in the earliest moments of net culture.

More than 80 contributors from Korea, Colombia, India, Argentina and across Europe gathered at the Faculty of Engineering in the University of Porto (Portugal) for a week in the deep code of OLSR, Babel, B.A.T.M.A.N, BMX and Batman-ADV, each contenders for eternal glory!

All use the OpenWRT operating system first issued at the outbreak of contemporary mesh networking in 2004, when discovery of GPL code in the very affordable Linksys WRT54G router triggered release of it’s proprietary sources for open re-engineering.

Each afternoon lightning talks and presentations were held in a space between the busy workgroups. We listened to memorable accounts from international groups and community actions, a film première of Sarantaporo documentary (Greece) and reviewed GNUnet and netJason projects two of many others listed in the packed event schedule. Our hosts even arranged us a cruise on the Douru River with spectacular views, bridges and fresh air!

Work progressed on setup of the Battlemesh ‘Wibed’ testbed, itself an ambitious and complex set of configurations, to allow for easy switching between competing firmware to enable monitoring of the 30 or so wireless routers now dotted about the university. Inevitable bugs obstructed completion but we start to see results at the eleventh hour, hoorah!

Key members of the OpenWRT developers group gathered to announce it’s community reboot as new project LEDE which resolves to shake off legacy constrictions in the operational structure of the old system. There was widespread delight mixed with a sense of some trepidation this news should schism the project. Overall it seems, this is an overdue shift toward a more flexible approach to future development of firmware for embedded devices, so good luck with that!

Overshadowing the event for all this year is the news that FCC have followed steps taken at EU to legislate a lockdown of firmware on equipment (RED) featuring 5ghz wireless devices, so that critical weather and aviation radar systems cannot be compromised by non standard radio uses. New hardware will not permit firmware modification and improvements by community in the future will no longer be possible! It’s hard to follow the exact conditions that have lead to this unfortunate situation, certainly manufactures have taken flight and entirely re factored their products to adhere to the rules as they understand them, in fear of heavy fines should they fail.

Suspicions were voiced, that telecom interests have influenced authorities to revise controls allowing them capture pubic access spectrum for more exclusive commercial uses. Here is the joint statement from the wireless network community, more needs to be done to highlight the situation.

Posted on May 5, 2016 by adnan Events, news, presentations, projects, publications, Report, reports, research

after.video @ LibreGraphics

Adnan presented the after.video project at the LibreGraphics conference.

after.video is a new online service which will be making available a series of variably aged video presentations which cover a collection of topics. What it represents then is a repackaging (Assemblages) of material from a variety of sources, presumably professionally edited and augmented. If you visit their website, you see they are not quite operational, and that this is a paid subscription service.

Now in its 11th year, the international Libre Graphics Meeting turns its focus for 2016 to the theme “Other Dimensions”, encompassing time-based media and the third dimension, new additions to LGM’s established focus on graphics.

From its first edition in 2006, held in Lyon, France, Libre Graphics Meeting has been a locus for software contributors, artists, designers, and users to come together and share their knowledge and to experience camaraderie. This year will see four days of presentations, talks, hacking sessions, workshops, and meetings.

Prominent software projects such as GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, GNOME, and others will come together to demonstrate the progress on their projects and to discuss them within the context of the larger Libre Graphics community. LGM 2016 will play host to animators, architects, artists, book designers, cartographers, developers, documenters, educators, engravers, graphic designers, git visualizers, hackers, photographers, rasterizers, reverse engineers, tool makers, type designers, and video archivers (among others!).

The 2016 edition of LGM will have a full program of workshops, presentations and talks across the entire spectrum of Free/Libre and Open Source graphics projects and communities. The full program can be found online http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2016/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/LGM2016program.pdf

With a great after party: Autonomous Tech Fetish & also check out Lara’s project dataunion.

The next LibreGraphics meeting will be in Rio De Jaineiro.

D.TV