[nettime-see] [transmediale] Newsletter: BASEMENT

[zeljko blace <zblace@mi2.hr>]

Newsletter 15.12.2004

transmediale.05
BASICS
Berlin, February 4 =96 8, 2005
Haus der Kulturen der Welt

BASEMENT
**************************************************
1. BASEMENT - the workspace at transmediale.05
2. SHELTER
3. KNOWLEDGE
4. COMMUNICATION
5. SECURITY

**************************************************
1. BASEMENT -
the workspace at transmediale.05

The BASEMENT project in the House of World Cultures will be the 3rd
edition of the transmediale Workspace. A hybrid of exhibition and open
lab with workshops and presentations, the BASEMENT provides insight into
the approaches and working methodologies of the participating artists, as
well as the opportunity for dialogue. The BASICS theme of
transmediale.05 is articulated in this space by the idea of BASIC NEEDS.

Projects in the BASEMENT take a closer look at basic issues such as
housing, health, food, security, mobility and communication. Several
artists and project-groups who deal with geo-political, social and
technical infrastructure are invited to present their work. What
technology is required to satisfy our BASIC NEEDS?

Connected to the BASEMENT are the workshops and the transmediale salon. On
transmediale salon's stage every day will be dedicated to one of the
BASEMENT's topics.

**************************************************
2. SHELTER

Shelter can be taken for granted. Access to fundamental technology is
BASIC. Two projects test this implicitness from the perspective of
disadvantaged groups=2E What can technology contribute to render their
situation more bearable? Temporary Service and Michael Rakowitz are
presenting plastic and 'high-tech' from the prison cell.

Temporary Services + Angelo (us) - Prisoners Inventions In 2001, Temporary
Services invited Angelo, an incarcerated artist, to write and design a
booklet about the many ingenious, practical, necessary, and sometimes
downright bizarre things he has seen other prisoners invent. Angelo has
generated about 110 pages of drawings and writings on prisoners'
inventions.=
   He has collected everything from immersion heaters with electrical plugs
made from razor blades, paper clips and Popsicle sticks, to cooking
methods for making=
   a sausage sauce with light fixtures. Angelo's drawings reveal another
side of prison existence: the need to have objects that allow the most
basic human desires to be felt. For this exhibition, we will present
enlarged type-set facsimiles of Angelo's illustrations and a selection of
copies of the objects. Brett Bloom, Marc Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin
are working as Temporary Service on projects in the social sphere and
striving to create participatory situations. They champion public
projects that are temporary, ephemeral, or that operate outside of
conventional or officially sanctioned categories of public expression. The
group prefers outdoor projects that are spontaneous and organic rather
than those planned with deliberation like exhibitions and special events.
They develop and modify strategies for working with the public that can
be further adapted by anyone that may have use for them. Continually
reassessing, re-evaluating and renaming, Temporary Services attempts to
make their processes and thought patterns transparent and accessible to
those they encounter. http://www.temporaryservices.org

Michael Rakowitz (us) - paraSITE paraSITE has been an on-going project
since 1998. The artist produces individual, clear, plastic shelters for
the homeless which are inflated and climatised by attaching them to
outtake ducts in the ventilation systems of buildings. The paraSITE units
in their idle state exist as small, collapsible packages with handles for
transport by hand or on one's back. In employing this device, the user
must locate the outtake ducts of a building's HVAC (Heating, Ventilatio
n, Air Conditioning) system. While these shelters were being used, they
functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a sign
of dissent and empowerment. Michael Rakowitz is an artist interested in
environmental issues as well as public interventions. He creates objects,
spaces, interactive installations, performances and documentations of
public interventions. http://www.possibleutopia.com/mike/

**************************************************
3. KNOWLEDGE

Consumption is BASIC. But how can we decide on what to consume? In this
section of the BASEMENT two projects offer their assistance in the
supermarket aisles. Can digital tools and participatory databases
provide the KNOWLEDGE for ethically-reflected buying?

James Patten (us) - Corporate Fallout Detector The Corporate Fallout
Detector scans bar-codes off of consumer products and reacts to the
environmental or ethical record of the manufacturer. It explores issues
of corporate accountability and individual choice. Due to increasingly
complex global supply chains, a single product we buy may contain parts
madeby various companies all over the world. We may agree with the
business practices of some of these companies, while not with those of
others. The complexity of the relationships between manufacturers can be
so great that it becomes completely unclear how to make our choice. Can
our personal convictions be at all translated into smart buying? James
Patten is an interaction designer researching the relationships between
computation, physical objects and space. His past work includes
interactive simulation systems for complex problem solving tasks such as
supply chain management. His recent work focuses on the design of
interactive systems for musical performance.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpatten/index.php

Claire Pentecost (us) - Visible Food Visible Food is a semi-open
website/database that allows users to search for food production
information by product name, brand, parent-corporation, ingredients,
toxins and 'invisibles'. This project, currently in beta-phase, allows
users to retrieve or themselves load vital information on the 'invisibles'
which impact health, labour and global trade, society and the natural
environment. Claire Pentecost has been Associate Professor of Photography
at the school of the Art Institute Chicago since 1997. She has been
collaborating with the Critical Art Ensemble on several projects and is a
representative of the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund. Currently she is
researching genetically modified foods at the Bellagio Institute in Italy.

**************************************************
4. COMMUNICATION

Within the past years radio has again become a media of increasing
importance due to interesting new perspectives in merging its technology
with wireless LAN and streaming. But radio is more, it is vitally
important. For most people it is the media of choice as a source of news
and communication. We will show two contributions to the current
'rediscovery'-debate of radio: Arnoldo Coro and umatic present two
different views from diverse perspectives.

Arnaldo Coro (cu) - Radio Havana Cuba, BREAKTHROUGH Radio Havana Cuba was
the first international radio station in Cuba - 'a friendly voice that
travels around the world.' In 1961 Fidel Castro Ruz put it like this:
'Cuba has a radio station that is already transmitting throughout Latin
America and is heard by countless brothers and sisters in Latin America
and the rest of the world. We are in the age of radio and the truth can
travel far and wide!' Today, RHC broadcasts in nine languages with a
varied programming that includes news, music and features. Arnaldo Coro is
producing BREAKTHROUGH, a weekly update on science, technology and the
environment. The issues discussed in his broadcast range from
sustainable energy resources to computer recycling and software
engineering. Arnaldo Coro will contribute his view on these topics with
a series of workshops and presentations in the BASEMENT. Prof. Arnaldo
Coro Antich is Senior ICT Consultant to the Cuban National Commission for
Cooperation with UNESCO, Chair of the New Information and Communications
Technologies at Instituto Internacional de Periodismo 'Jose Marti',
Havana, Cuba and Professor at the School of Social Communication at the
University of Havana Cuba. http://www.radiohc.cu/

umatic, Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer (nl) - Soundscape.fm: Berlin
Soundscape FM is collaborative sound-art and field-recording database
project. Its goal is to critique the 'one-to-many model' of existing
radio, as wellas a technological exploitation of both electronic and
electromagnetic means of transmission. It takes the form of an FM radio
broadcast, combined with a loadable database filled with field-recordings
taken from all over the world=2E During four days of transmediale.05,
sound artists, amateur sound hunters, phonographers among other interested
participants, will collaborate on gathering sounds from different
locations within the city of Berlin. A physical workspace will be
created in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt that is meant to=
   be a post-production booth for the gathered sounds which can immediately
be uploaded in a database-system. The uploaded sounds are accessible
online - as well as the user-uploadable interface - and are broadcast
via several local fm-radio-stations within Berlin and the net. The Project
deals with questions of collaborative artists' practices and networking
communities, as well as the use and creation of open software tools and
the creative re-use of 'old' media such as radio. umatic is a media lab
founded in 2003 by five media-artists working in the fields of net-,
video- and soundart. umatic functions as a platform for audiovisual art by
organising workshops, presentations and initiating cooperative projects.
http://www.umatic.nl

**************************************************
5. SECURITY

'Technology for security' is a popular formula to fight 'evil'. Makrolab
takes this concept very seriously and offers a solution to arm
independent observers.

MAKROLAB - S-77CCR (System-77 Civil Counter-Reconnaissance) S-77CCR is a
tactical urban counter-surveillance systems for ground controlled UAV's
(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and airborne drones to monitor public space =2E
The violence of classical theatres of battle is overshadowed by the rise
of low intensity conflicts in highly developed societies of capitalist
democracies. The increasing privatization of security asks for solutions
towards transparency and a balance of power. To allow for equilibrium of
skills in surveillance and a broad education of the public in control
technologies, access to a technology for the people seems necessary. In
respect to abuse of civil and human rights defensive public intelligence
is well advised to use advanced techniques of crime mapping and spatial
representation of conflict. Recent public conflicts have made it clear
that technology for independent monitoring of operations is necessary for
staying on top of developments and news but also for issues of legal
procedures and court cases. http://s-77ccr.org

MAKROLAB The MAKROLAB project was born in 1994 during the wars that were
raging in the former Yugoslavia. Its initial purpose was to function as an
autonomous and mobile performance/tactical media environment. It was first
realized during Documenta X in 1997. Its final state will be as a
permanent art/science/tactical media station on the Antarctic in 2007, the
only trans-national territory of the planet. The primary research focus of
the project consists of three global fields of interest:
telecommunication, climate and migration. Up to now, the project has been
set up in Germany, Scotland, Slovenia, Australia and Italy, with future
plans for India, Canada and South Africa.

Marko Peljhan graduated from the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and
Television in Ljubljana in 1992. In the same year he founded the arts
organization Projekt Atol and in 1995 Project Atol's technological
branch Pact Systems. Peljhan is the operations coordinator of the
Makrolab project. http://makrolab.ljudmila.org

**************************************************
transmediale.05
BASICS
international media art festival berlin
http://www.transmediale.de
info@transmediale.de
**************************************************

---------------------------------------------------
transmediale.05 - BASICS - 4-8 february 2005
international media art festival berlin
---------------------------------------------------
transmediale - Klosterstr.68-70 - 10179 Berlin
tel. +49 (0)30.24749-761 fax. +49 (0)30.24749-814
info@transmediale.de - http://www.transmediale.de
---------------------------------------------------
Member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net

...............................................
Nettime-SEE mailing list
Nettime-SEE@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-see