Visual Residuum – Whatsapp Cinema
Tuesday May 17th 10am-2pm
Room V1201, 12/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Gabriel Menotti Gonring lecturer at UFES
Gabriel Menotti works as an independent curator engaged with different forms of cinema. Menotti holds a PhD in Media & Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, and another from the Catholic University of São Paulo. He is the author of ‘Através da Sala Escura’ (Intermeios, 2012) and the co-editor of ‘Besides the Screen: Moving Images through Distribution, Promotion and Curation’ (Palgrave, 2015) and ‘Cinema Apesar da Imagem’ (Intermeios, 2016). Menotti currently coordinates the Besides the Screen Network with Virginia Crisp.
Workshop Description
This workshop proposes an experiment of minor archaeology with the participants’ personal media devices, in an attempt to discover what kind of visual residuum they might retain. The activity works as a crossover between group therapy session and cinematographic self-performance, in which the public will plug their mobile phones directly to a big screen and navigate their unfiltered content under the gaze of one another. By doing so, we mean to explore the imagery resulting from everyday practices such audiovisual annotation and instant messaging.
The production of audiovisual media by personal devices has taken an undeniable political and aesthetic magnitude. On the one hand, it became instrumental for the demos that have been sweeping across the world since the beginning of the decade, by allowing for dissident coverage that challenges hegemonic discourse. On the other, it has given rise to manifold photographic practices that take to an extreme the idea of a cámera-stylo. Images are now often used as a means to take and send notes, hyperdocument everyday life, and produce ephemeral self-representations.
It is tempting to acknowledge these phenomena as a renewal of traditional genres, such as photojournalism and self-portraiture. However, to consider them as mere “versions 2.0” of what was already being done might overshadow the fact that these images exist in a very particular condition within the dynamics of network communication. They are not made as visual totalities to be contemplated or interpreted autonomously.
Rather, they are a collateral effect of our increasingly mediated social interactions: mothers wishing a good day; friends showing where they are; a love interest suggesting a date.
In this context, pictures seem no longer to be performed as objects of memory but rather as fleeting speech acts, utterances delivered by instant messaging applications such as Whatsapp and Snapchat. Most of them are made to be forgotten, and indeed they are. Nonetheless, many remain carelessly stored on our mobile phones. Long after they have lost all original meaning, they might still be there, taking space among our family pictures: the noise of bare life piling over the decisive moments we have chosen to collect from it. These residual images are rarely made public; when they come to surface, it’s often due to an accident, the medial analogue of a Freudian slip.
This workshop means to dive into this collective unconscious of contemporary visual culture. The organizer will work alongside the public in order to bring forth the construction of History and identity that takes place within their mobile archives, beyond the scrutiny of social media platforms. By the means of dialogue, we will try and make sense of these fortuitous collections, sharing what was not meant to be shared in the first play. On the way, we hope to spot the neglected aesthetics of photography as a means of sharing experiences.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
The participants should bring their smartphones / mobile media devices and come prepared to explore these devices’ audiovisual content. If they have any special AV adapters for their phones, it would be helpful if they could bring these as well.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
The workshop is meant for the general public. The target audience can be anyone who uses mobile instant messengers and/or is interested in multimedia social networking. Particularly, the activity will interest media students, academics, and professionals.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Musical Selfies: Feedback and Self-Reflection through Mobile Composition
Tuesday 17th May 10am-5:30pm
Room V1310 III, 13/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Peter Bennett, University of Bristol
Peter Bennett is a researcher and designer of new human-computer interactions, working both at Bristol University and the Pervasive Media Studio. His research is driven by the vision of giving tangible form to digital bits, bringing virtual information out of the computer into the physical world.
Workshop Description
This workshop is part of a project that attempts to rethink our relationship with social media by conceiving of mediated social relations in terms of sound and music. It takes off from the assertion that social media continues to display a profoundly visual bias, and that exploring our mediated interactions with others (and ourselves) through sound can expand our understanding of social media. In the workshop we aim to explore a central theme of this work: the notion of the ‘musical selfie’. We see the selfie’s ‘fame’ as an outcome of the visual bias of social media, and seek to challenge some of the presumptions that underlie it by rethinking the selfie sonically.
In keeping with the ‘noise contra signal’ theme of the festival, this workshop will use the concept of ‘feedback’ to explore the translations between ‘visual’ and ‘musical’ selfies. In a sense, the selfie already is a type of feedback loop. We see ourselves on a handheld display, then adjust our position and facial gestures to improve our self-image, then capture the image that we want to present to the world, and then share it on social media. In this way, the act of taking a selfie can be seen as a kind of ‘self-regulating system’. What happens when we introduce a sound signal or noise into this process? Can the pursuit of interesting sonic effects override the primacy of the self-image, or will there emerge a tension between the two?
The workshop organisers welcome anyone with an interest in media art, creative technologies, music technologies or social media to take part in this workshop. Prior experience with audio/music is welcome but not necessary and participants are encouraged to bring any sound/noise making apps/gadgets/synths/toys along to the workshop to help aid the lo-fi prototyping and design explorations.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
Workshop participants will be encouraged to create a 10-second audio recording that documents an aspect of their journey to the workshop. We will then use these as the starting point for thinking through the workshop concepts of feedback, self-regulation and self-reflection. For the purposes of this short exercise, we suggest that musical selfies be conceived as micro-compositions that reflect a person’s identity, a place, and a mood, and that can be easily communicated at the workshop. During the workshop we will discuss aspects of creating and sharing musical selfies, reflecting on how musical selfies represent the individual in sound, and how they are transmitted and transformed. We will introduce Echo-Snap (www.echo-snap.com), a series of apps we have designed for exploring musical selfies. We will further explore Hong Kong as a site for taking musical selfies. Finally, we propose to share our findings both at the conference and on a related Website gallery.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
The workshop organisers welcome anyone with an interest in media art, creative technologies, music technologies or social media to take part in this workshop. Prior experience with audio/music is welcome but not necessary.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Dits and Dahs of Packet Radio Networking: Using walkie-talkies to surf the internet and create long range local, on- and offline resilient networks
Tuesday 17th May 10am-5:30pm
Room V1215, 12/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Name: Dennis de Bel
Bio:Dennis de Bel (1984, NL) graduated in June 2007 as an Interactive Media designer at the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam. In June 2009, he completed the Master Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute, also in Rotterdam.
De Bel’s exploration of interactivity and utility has led him to make humorous design interventions, manifested word puns, useless software and more recently “no-ware”. This term describes some of his latest works that are no longer hardware nor software but non-products, unique multiples and mass-produced one-offs that question functionality, inventiveness and innovation. Currently he is collaborating with Roel Roscam Abbing on a practical research project on ‘Post-Digital Communication in the last days of the web’ and teaching at the Willem de Kooning Academy for Arts, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Name: André Castro
Bio: André Castro is a media artist with a background in sound art and a current practice focused on experimental publishing and offline digital libraries. André is a tutor at the Experiment Publishing MA Program at the Piet Zwart Institute and Willem de Kooning Academy’s Publication Station. In these contexts he has coordinated the development of hybrid publications Beyond Social and Refugee Phrasebook. André received his MA from the Media Design & Communication programme in 2013 and has previously studied under the Sonic Arts BA at Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts (Middlesex University).
pinknoi.so
Workshop Description
Before there was Internet, there was wireless Internet. Before there was analog radio, there was digital radio. This is the premise of our workshop that covers different (digital) modes of communication for wireless networks using analog radio waves. From Morse, to the FM band, beyond and back again.
In this (non-CA approved] workshop we will approach radio as a medium for communication, power/control and (artistic) self expression from a non-engineering point of view.
Amongst the topics covered are the transition from colonial radio [2] to broadcast radio, pirate- and community radio, amateur radio’s contribution’ to the Internet, the ‘great digital switch over’ and how all of this fits in the power structures created by communication infrastructures.
From there we will look back at ALOHANET [3], AMPRNET [4], the packet radio van [5] and examine how the phenomenon of packet radio contributed to the infrastructure of the Internet as it is still in use today. The workshop will be a hands-on, interactive demonstration of the possibilities of packet radio and its workflow/tool-chain. Participants will explore both historical [6] and contemporary examples [7] and set up a little radio network on the spot.
In true shanzhai style, participants will learn how to utilize cheap commercial walkie-talkie radios and free software to transmit and receive TCP/IP over HF or UHF radio. In other words, Internet via walkie-talkie. Looking beyond the usual “when the shit hits the fan” and “us versus them” scenarios, we will rather discuss the potentials and shortcomings of these 6km+ range wireless “routers”, the Internet protocol in general and the powers implied by these infrastructures, how it can be relevant today, tomorrow and how it fits and doesn’t fit in the OSI stack.
Depending on the wishes of the participants we can either do a demo and go through the steps and requirements of setting this up for themselves or help set up participant’s own equipment.
Participants will get a small publication that is both an introduction into the concept as well as a practical guide on how set up your Internet over walkie talkie. Each participant will get one copy as a reference for when they want to do their own experiments.
1. “Communications Authority”. Wikipedia. Accessed January 2, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Authority
2. “Radio Kootwijk”. Wikipedia. Accessed March 19, 2016. http://www.hierradiokootwijk.nl/p/english
3. “ALOHANET”. Wikipedia. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet
4. “AMPRNET”. Wikipedia. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet
5. “Packet Radio Van”. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_Radio_Van
6. “AX.25 Link Access Protocol for Amateur Packet Radio”. Accessed March 19, 2016. https://www.tapr.org/pdf/AX25.2.2.pdf
7. “Minimodem”. Accessed March 19, 2016. http://www.whence.com/minimodem/
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
MINIMAL SETUP
– a laptop with full (debian) linux install or live cd/usb stick.
and/or
– raspberry pi + usb audio card
!!NO VIRTUAL MACHINES!!
RPI SETUP
to be researched, but bring a RPI if you have one anyway.
STARTER SETUP
• -Walkie Talkie (suggested model: Baofeng UV-5R)
• -101 ceramic capacitor
• -3x 3.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x 2.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -For computers with Combiport audio ports:
• -1x 3.5mm trrs ‘mini-jack’ (4-pole)
• -1x 3.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x 2.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -For Apple computers with Combiport audio ports:
• -1x 3.5mm trrs ‘mini-jack’ (4-pole)
• 1x 1600 Ohm resistor
• -1x 3.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x 2.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
PRO SETUP
• -Walkie Talkie (suggested model: Baofeng UV-5R)
• -101 ceramic capacitor
• -3x 3.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x 2.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x FTDI USB to Serial adaptor http://www.aliexpress.com/item/FT232RL-FTDI-USB-to-TTL-Serial-Adapter-Module-for-Arduino-Mini-Port-3-3V-5V/2043815349.html
• – Transistors: 1x BC557 PNP, 1x BC547 NPN
• – Resistors: 2x 2.2kOhm
• -For computers with Combiport audio ports:
• -1x 3.5mm trrs ‘mini-jack’ (4-pole)
• -1x 3.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x 2.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -For Apple computers with Combiport audio ports:
• -1x 3.5mm trrs ‘mini-jack’ (4-pole)
• 1x 1600 Ohm resistor
• -1x 3.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
• -1x 2.5 mm ‘mini-jack’ stereo (3-pole) male
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
Knowledge of the (linux) command-line is a pré!
The workshop will be in English
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Empathy Engine: Sonifying & Visualizing Media Effects Workshop
Thursday 19th May 10am-5pm
LOCATION TO BE CONFIRMED City University of Hong Kong
Workshop Details:
Run By
Heidi Boisvert
Heidi Boisvert is a new media artist, creative technologist, experience designer and writer. She founded and serves as the CEO and Creative Director of the futurePerfect lab , a boutique creative agency that works with non-profits to develop imaginative applications of integrated media and emerging technology. Heidi was formerly the Media Director at Breakthrough where she designed, developed and promoted a range of viral, new media and pop culture campaigns that helped raise awareness and instigate policy change on pressing social issues. She created the first 3D social change game, ICED I Can End Deportation , to shift the frame around unfair U.S. immigration policies. Heidi also designed America 2049 , an alternative reality game on Facebook about pluralism, which was nominated for Games for Change and Katerva Awards. Most recently, she co-founded XTH , an opensource creative biowearable start up, and was named a Harvestworks Creativity + Technology = Enterprise Fellow. She received her PhD in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is currently a Media Impact Fellow at the Harmony Institute.
Andrew Demerjian
Andrew Demirjian is an interdisciplinary artist who creates alternative relationships between image, sound and text that challenge contemporary media conventions. He uses computer programming, surveillance, data sonification and motion tracking to twist perceptual relationships between the senses. The pieces take the form of interactive installations, generative poems, audiovisual performance and single channel videos. His work has been exhibited at The Museum of the Moving Image, Eyebeam, Rush Arts, the White Box gallery, The Newark Museum and many institutions internationally. The MacDowell Colony, Puffin Foundation, Artslink, Harvestworks and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts are among the organizations that have supported his work. He has performed his audiovisual compositions at Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Stone, Monkey Town and played with many celebrated avant-garde jazz musicians including Don Byron, Ray Copeland, Whit Dickey and Rob Brown. Andrew teaches theory and production courses in emerging media in the Film and Media Department at Hunter College.
Workshop Description
Empathy Engine: Sonifying & Visualizing Media Effects Workshop teaches participants how to create generative sound and art compositions using data from the Empathy Engine. The empathy engine is an embodied multi-modal, cross-media experience that combines scientific rigor, creative expression and emerging technology to offer new insights into data science and media effects research through generative art and electronic music. It is comprised of biophysical sensors that capture, amplify and parse heart beat, body temperature, blood flow, muscle contraction and spatial data along with 9 channel EEG signals to represent the rhythm and physiological response patterns of embodied thought.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
They should bring their laptops, headphones and an open mind.
If they don’t already have, they can download:
https://puredata.info/downloads/pd-extended
https://processing.org/
https://www.python.org/downloads/
be sure to grab 2.7.11
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
No prior knowledge required, we’ll go through the set & tech step by step. We believe in open-source tech and open-knowledge sharing without barriers to access. Youth are welcome
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Open sourcing programmed art: a workshop on the collaborative re-enactment of Gruppo T’s kinetic artworks
Monday May 16th 2pm-5:30pm
Room V1201, 12/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Serena Cangiano is researcher at Laboratory of visual culture/Interaction design lab of SUPSI, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland. Her work spans from interaction design to education. Her research focuses on open design and hardware practices and their impact on the interaction design and on technology driven innovation. At SUPSI, she is a researcher and coordinator of Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design and of the summer programs focusing on teaching the fundamentals of software and hardware programming through design and prototyping activities. She also manages the activities of FabLab Lugano. Her articles and essays about open source models, technology and design have been published in international magazines, books and conference proceedings. Together with Davide Fornari, she led “Re-programmed art: an open manifesto”, a project aiming at involving a group of digital artists and designer in the process of reprogramming – through open technologies – kinetic artworks that pioneered the introduction of an algorithmic approach in the artistic production. She has recently joined the team of DSI4EU, a European funded project about digital social innovation in Europe.
Laboratory of visual culture
SUPSI – University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
www.reprogrammed-art.cc
Workshop Description
Programmed art is the definition given to the body of works by a group of Italian artists active between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. This definition was introduced by Bruno Munari and Umberto Eco in 1961 in the Almanacco Bompiani and used in 1962 on the occasion of an exhibition hosted at the Olivetti show room in Milan, featuring works by the artists of Gruppo T. Gruppo T pioneered the introduction of technology and of an algorithmic approach in the process of artistic production and their artworks embedded the utopia of an interactive democratic art made for everyone and open to everyone’s participation. Started in 2015, the project “Re-programmed art: an open manifesto” aimed at involving a group of digital artists in the process of reprogramming artworks by Gruppo T. The goal was to build prototypes of kinetic artifacts that would translate the main principles of Programmed Art into the codes of contemporary culture, following the tenets of peer production, namely open source hardware and software and digital fabrication technologies.
The workshop at ISEA16 aims to open and foster the discussion of the application of open source design and open hardware approaches to support reproducibility, extension and further participatory developments of re-programmed artworks by the public at large. The workshop proposes an interactive format where participants will be involved in the process of creating an open source derivative of a kinetic programmed artwork through collaborative design sessions. The sessions are based on sketching and low-fi prototyping through electronic kits based on Arduino. A special focus will be on the documentation and the sharing through on-line community platforms dedicated to DIY projects. The hands-on activities will be facilitated in order to discuss on the topic of DIY and open source and their impact on interactive art preservation and investigation. The workshop program and the outputs will be documented on the official website of the project: reprogrammed-art.cc.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
Participants have to bring their own laptops. Few technical information might be requested via email to registered participants.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
The workshop is open to scholars, artists, designers and students interested in the field of interactive art and collaborative practices. In particular, we seek for participants who are investigating or developing projects that reflects on DIY and open source practices in art and design as well as on alternative strategies for preserving and communicating media based art through on-line collaboration and community platforms. Furthermore, knowledge of programming and generative art and design tools is welcome even if the prototyping activities will not involve programming.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Designing Wearable Technologies that Evolve with Users in China
Tuesday 17th May 2:30pm-5:30pm
V1310 II, 13/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Ziping Zhao
Ziping Zhao, Director of Software Engineering in Tianjin Normal University and CCF member. He received his Ph.D. Degree in computer science at Nankai University in 2008.
He began his teaching career as an Assistant Professor in 2008 at Tianjin Normal University. In 2010, he joined the Key Laboratory of Trustworthy Computing of East China Normal University as a visiting scholar. In the same year, he was promoted as the Director of Soft Engineering in Tianjin Normal University. Professor Zhao’s research interests encompass the fields of speech synthesis, machine learning and natural language processing. He undertakes the project of National Natural Science Foundation, Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin. His research has resulted in many journal articles, book and conference contributions.
Joonsung Yoon
Joonsung Yoon, Scholar in 1000 Talent Program of Tianjin at Tianjin Normal University, China, and Professor at Global School of Media, Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea. Dr. Yoon is doing interdisciplinary researches on the convergence of art and science in terms of media aesthetics, media art and media design.
Workshop Description
Wearable technology has become a ubiquitous tool for tracking steps, measuring heart rates and taking calls n just a few years. But where is it taking us beyond that? The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum to gain more insights about the potential market for wearable technology in China, to inspire attendees on what are the most important design issues for wearable technology, to discuss and identify practical challenges related to designing wearable technologies that can evolve with their future massive customers in China.
The workshop is designed for students and professionals in the fields of technology, art, design, and engineering. Although anyone with an interest in wearable technology is welcome to join this workshop, we strongly encourage people with an expertise in fashion design, technology in performance arts, and/or wearable technology engineering to sign up.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
Participants are expected to bring the necessary or special equipment with them to the conference. And they should confirm if they are able to bring their hardware, wearable device or demo for demonstration.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
The workshop is designed for students and professionals in the fields of technology, art, design, and engineering. Although anyone with an interest in wearable technology and basic knowledge of electronics is welcome to join.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Interactive practice in writing: Entering private human encounters
Monday 16th May 2:30pm-5:30pm
V1215, 12/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Anastasios Maragiannis
Academic Portfolio Leader, Principal Lecturer in Design, University of Greenwich, London, UK
BIO
Anastasios’ is the Academic Portfolio Leader and Principal lecturer in Design Theory & Practice, in the department of Creative Professions and Digital Arts, University of Greenwich, London.
He convenes the Design Roast Open discussion group for anyone interested in creative design practices and theories of cross-disciplinarity, interactive design, new media technologies, visual communication and philosophies of the state-of-the current and future design.
His work has been shown in various places including the BFI London and the V&A museum.
Anastasios is also the Deputy chair of the DRHA International organisation and the research leader of the “Digital Grand Challenge”, a series of research projects that investigates how theory can shape digital practice and vice-versa; as a way to enhance multiple interactions across numerous disciplines, including, Architecture, Arts, Design, Computing, Humanities and Mathematics and other Sciences.
Web: www.gre.ac.uk/ach/study/cpda/staff/anastasios-maragiannis
Professor Janis Jefferies
Professor of Visual Arts and Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
BIO
Janis is an artist, writer and curator, Professor of Visual Arts in the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London, Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios. GDS is dedicated to collaborations among practicing artists, cultural and media theorists, and innovators in computational media, who together are expanding the boundaries of artistic practice, forging the future of digital technologies and developing new understanding of the interactions between technology and society
As artistic director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Jefferies convenes: the PhD in Arts and Computational Technology. Janis is also the Associate Pro Warden, Creative and Cultural
Industries, her interests are in emergent business models and artists cultural rights (CREATe)
Web: http://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/staff/j-jefferies/
Workshop Description
“The world is in flux, and so is writing. As creators in a networked world, we can sit by the shore and wait for a defining text…” [1]
Since its popularisation in the late 1970s, the screen has acted as a gateway for easily communicating with other ‘people’ and on any topic. However, in recent years, its status as a ‘tool’ for knowledge extraction has been far surpassed. The screen has become an engaging space and through the various communication apps, people choose to spend time: socialising, living and dying. With the advent of Web2.0, the screen has moved from informational navigation tool to a community and this marks a new form of social phenomenon. This workshop aims to provide participants with a framework to understand how social media and the daily updating of the self is challenging our preconceptions of screen-based communication and influencing the development of our cultural/ personal identity(s) and sense of self. The so-called herbivore or “grass-feeding human. [2]
As practitioners we aim to highlight and encourage interest in this area as a rich space for engaging visual communication and creative writing practices. Personal interaction and narration of the self is surrounded by anticipation as well as apprehension and anxiety. Digital innovative augmentations of human/human or human/technology communication have created a lively and restless online/ offline environment. We are currently at a crossroad between being completely overwhelmed by mass ‘non-communicative’ communication and trying to be involved with reproductive technologies as much as we can. In this workshop we would experiment with these ideas and will debate that the tacit nature of communications online cannot be understood from a purely technical perspective (search algorithms) but must instead be approached creatively. To this aim we will address the cultural implications and imaginative opportunities of recent innovations in creative practices of writing and how these practices are entering into the private human encounters.
This workshop is the final of a trilogy. The two previous workshops took place in London [3] and Vancouver [4] and the outcomes and data will be published online and in print.
1 Penflip. T. Abba, This is not a book https://www.penflip.com/TomAbba/this-is-not-a-book (accessed 22 Dec 2015)
2. www.newstatesman.com (accessed 2 Jan 2016)
3.DRHA 2014 – Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts, International Conference, London www.drha2014.c.uk (accessed 27 Dec 2015)
4. ISEA2015 – Vancouver,
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
We are looking for participants interested in writing and reflecting on their personal experience of the process through social media. No previous experience is required. They can be artists, designers, scientists, academics, students, or from any other discipline with an interest in creative practices, creative writing, and visual communication. They should have basic knowledge of internet and social media. Participants will be asked to present a recent online experience that shows some intercourse with ‘real’ or robotic entities as an example that demonstrates how advanced technologies enter private human encounters. Then creatively will rearrange/deconstruct/randomize all of the words and re-construct a short narrative, prose or poem using the words in any order they like. Afterward will spend about 30 minutes individually or in pairs or in groups and think about making the piece of writing up to around 140 characters so we can further discuss in the workshop. This exercise is based on Oulipo, or Workshop of Potential Literature. This is a group of writers and thinkers interested in the notion of “constraint”. You can think of constraint as something like the rules of a game. For example, the rules of the sonnet game result in the creation of a sonnet. The rules of the short story game result in the creation of a short story. Are there other rules? New games? New things to create? By asking those questions, the Oulipo has become a workshop of potential literature.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
Any age, with an interest in Arts, design, creative writing, social media.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Open Source Estrogen: Detecting and Extracting Xenoestrogens in Local Ecosystems
Tuesday 17th May 3pm-5:30pm
V1201, 12/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Mary Tsang, MIT Media Lab
Mary Tsang is an artist-biologist practicing in civic biosciences, open source organisms and tools, and how to deploy them. Her projects explore the biopolitical nature of new synthetic biotechnologies, their roots in society and transhumanism, and the question of who gets access.
Byron Rich, Assistant Professor of Electronic Art & Intermedia, Allegheny College
Having grown up on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in western Canada, where a seemingly endless wild gives way to the rapidly expanding influence of human hubris, Byron was compelled to make things that ask unanswerable questions. He now teaches Electronic Art, Intermedia and Painting at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Workshop Description
Open Source Estrogen combines do-it-yourself science, body and gender politics, and ecological ramifications of the present. It is a form of biotechnical civil disobedience. We do not seek techno-solutionism but instead, through the creation of a DIY estrogen protocol and increased endocrinological know-how, the project becomes a public platform for discussing the ethics of self-administering self-synthesized hormones, and a critique of the institutionalized control apparatus that defines current methods of hormone administration.
In response to the various biopolitics of hormonal control on female and trans bodies prescribed by governments and institutions, the Open Source Estrogen project is developing a system of DIY/DIWO protocols for the emancipation of the estrogen biomolecule.
This workshop will give participants the opportunity to detect and extract xenoestrogens from local waterways via a simple endocrine-disruptor detection system and the construction of a reverse-osmosis filtration system.
In particular we will examine three fundamental questions:
1. Can we look to bio-technoscientific capabilities for eradicating gender binaries in human society?
2. What does this say to the current reproductive havoc on aquatic species as a result of endocrine disrupting compounds in industrialized coastal zones?
3. Can we harness the potential to emancipate not only female, trans, and queer bodies from pharmaco capitalism and institutionalized hormones but also the bodies of non-human species, extending feminist health care across species of our shared environment?
The workshop is not intended to demonstrate a viable solution, instead offering participants a deepened sense of the complex intersection of culture, ecosystems, and body politics.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
Please bring a water sample from a local waterway. 500ml-2000ml is suggested.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
No prior knowledge is required.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Reality as a Medium: Context Engineering Hybrid Ecology Framework
Monday 16th May 10am-2pm
V1215, 12/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Carl H Smith is Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC) and Principal Research Fellow at Ravensbourne. His background is in Computer Science and Architecture. He is an academic and developer with over 15 years experience conducting R+D into the application of hybrid technologies for perceptual and cognitive transformation. He is currently working on 4 EU projects including the newly funded Horizon 2020 project ‘[WEKIT] Wearable Experience for Knowledge Intensive Training’ which will use the latest in wearable and motion tracking technology to create ‘wearable experience’ – an entirely new form of media. He has also worked on a number of large-scale FP7 and Leonardo Life Long Learning European projects. His research interests include Embodied Cognition, Spatial Literacy, Perceptual Technology and Human Centric Methodologies and Pedagogies.
MARCEL SCHWITTLICK, is an independent German artist living and working in Berlin. With
his work, he is examining new possibilities of modern technology. He is interested in digital culture and its
inclinations on society and is working in strong connection to various fields in the arts, forging a connection
between physical and digital media. He is experimenting with a variety of media ranging from digital images,
physical and interactive installations, videos to physical acrylic paintings. The play with media is a basic
property of his work challenging the spectator to see his work outside of the context of one specific media
and immerse into the underlying story. www.mrzl.net
Workshop Description
Context Engineering is concerned with the technological extension of the human condition through the investigation of the ethical use of emerging technologies to enhance human and cognitive capacities. The power to rapidly shift our perspective is becoming a new form of currency. Context Engineering provides the ability within one field of view, to be both in the world and to see yourself in it, the power of looking through and occupying, your own field of vision (Gibson, E. J. 2006).
Hybrid technology can directly shape how our brains interpret and experience reality.
The practice of Context Engineering produces ‘experience coders’ who manufacture content as direct sensory experience (context). One of the core concerns of Context Engineering is whether we can gain a significantly greater capacity to develop and influence our brain function and crucially if that will then help us to better understand the reality that the brain creates. As a result there is an ethical responsibility to context engineer with as much knowledge of the affordances and dangers of these technologies and techniques as possible.
This workshop on Contextual Engineering will investigate hybrid technologies and techniques that combine the affordances of the analogue with the digital to enable a new era of Hyper Function, Sensory Augmentation and Perceptual Adaptation. Context Engineering will give us new abilities, control over our senses and the ability to develop new forms of perception, providing us with a new type of self-control. HCI that relies predominantly on vision alone or the engagement of a limited range of senses can cause individual (and by implication – societal) dissonance creating a diminished rather than an augmented reality. To counteract this, making more of the context available for human centred augmentation is crucial. Greater immersion (involving all the senses) will lead to entirely new states of awareness. The game ‘Blood Sport’ increases the sense of immersion by removing actual blood from your body in the physical space whenever you get hit or killed in the virtual space. Context Engineering only actually occurs when that blood is then donated, to activate the societal benefit. This example provides a potential working definition for Context Engineering: when the content introduced has the power to completely augment the whole context then Context Engineering is achieved.
Context engineering creates a new economy where we focus less on transforming content (as the primary activity), and more on how we can make our own perception the ‘content’. This is made possible by new advances in various fields including biotech, neuro-electronics and mixed reality technologies meaning that the lenses through which we experience the world are becoming more adjustable than ever. Products are being developed to intentionally manipulate various components of our own physiology. For instance f.lux modifies the computer’s display colour wavelength to shift with the natural external light, reducing potential circadian rhythm problems that can develop from using devices at night. These subtle shifts can produce real changes in our bodies. Other examples and applications of context engineering include: New auditory systems, new visual systems, combining senses, adjustable senses.
Timetable
The session will start with the exploration of Hybrid (VR and AR) technologies to enhance our perception and help us see, hear, and feel our environments in new and enriched ways. During the second half of the workshop we will create resources, collaborative processes and methodologies for the design of hybrid (analogue and digital) interventions.
Interaction
The core problem is how to (re)design a workable balance between digital and analogue modes of interaction. Without thoughtful design, digital interventions are simply distracting people away from meaningful engagement with the learning opportunities and social situations that they are actually designed to augment. This workshop will enable the exploration of potential methodologies, structures and actions between the participants. The overall intention is to use hybrid technologies, techniques and methodologies to deeply analyze how a Hybrid Ecology Framework can be developed.
Takeaway
The take away will include the Context Engineering Hybrid Ecology Framework which will evolve in relation to the following questions for workshop: How adaptable is our perception? How neuro-plastic is the brain, what are the biological risks of Context Engineering? How can hybrid technological devices, of often-prosthetic alienation, help us to reconnect to ourselves and to the surrounding environment? How important is immersion for over coming and subverting the human condition? To what extent can content create context? How can we find an appropriate balance in this hybrid environment?
Outcomes
This workshop will look beyond augmented reality to the latest hybrid technologies and techniques that are enabling a new era of Sensory Augmentation, Perceptual Adaptation and Context Engineering. The ability to alter our senses and develop entirely new ones provides us with the possibility of creating new forms of pedagogy and knowledge. The outcomes of the session will be distributed amongst the participants and placed online
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
Interests in hybrid/trans tech, post-humanism and exploring the human condition are relevant and useful
but not a requirement.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
Open to everyone (16 years and above)
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
ConcreteCity: An ultralight approach to urban interventions
Monday 16th May 10am-5:30pm
V1310 III, 13/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
INSERTIO (http://insertio.com) is an interuniversity research lab that unites four researchers-creators: James Partaik, Luc Lévesque, Hernando Barragan and Thomas Ouellet Fredericks.
James Partaik, (http://jamespartaik.ca) artist, professor of digital arts and Director of the SCAN (http://www.uqac.ca/scan/) at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. He is director and of the research-creation lab INSERTIO. Since 1990, he has been committed to initiate and facilitate artistrun projects, notably co-founding member of Avatar, creation of association and sound diffusion,http://avatarquebec.org/en/about/
Luc Lévesque (https://ateliersyn.wordpress.com) is an architect, professor of the history and theory of architectural practices in the history department of Laval Université in Quebec City. In architecture, he has collaborated with various offices in Quebec and abroad, including the Zoom workshop (Quebec), Peter Eisenman (New York) and Rem Koolhaas / OMA (Rotterdam and New York).
Hernando Barragan (http://barraganstudio.com) is currently the director of the Department of Design at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. Artist and designer, he initiated and developed the Wiring open source project, a prototyping platform consists of an innovative programming language (derived from the Processing) and an electronic board (microcontroller) with input and output (I/O). His invention has spread globally as the Arduino.
Thomas Ouellet Fredericks is an independent artist, teacher and consultant. He has developed several libraries for Wiring and Arduino. He makes software, installations, audiovisual performances and interactive objects. He lives in Montreal and regularly contributes to Open Source hardware and software platforms. He is a member of Perte de signal (http://perte-de-signal.org) and a researcher with Insertio. He teaches several electronic art forms at UQAC, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and at UQAM (Montréal).
Workshop Description
In the past few decades, the intensity of the transformational forces that disrupt the “urban condition” has called into question the claims to control and stability upon which the ambitions of the urbanistic project have traditionally been based. This state of things is not without repercussions on the ways of imagining, theorizing and putting into practice urbanism and the territorial project. If the relation to fluxes can be operated by the action of bigscale architectural infrastructures, the deployment of a constellation of urban microelements would constitute another way of thinking and implementing the idea of infrastructure as an equipment that is atomised, reticular, open and malleable. An ultralight approach to urbanism reframes the role and ambition of microintervention in the urban project as a strategic territorial vector of action. What was usually belittled or simply not even seen by the conventional architecture and urbanism approaches– the very small, the moving, the informal : the “plankton” – thus regains a new informative and operational value to imagine territorial intervention. “Plankton” not as a cluster of indistinct, apathetic and passive organisms, but rather as a virtually multitude of small devices meant to facilitate varied performances and uses, a moving myriad for a creative colonization of the spatial and temporal potentials of the urban landscape.
The workshop ConcreteCITY aims to incite participants to conceptualize, construct and implement an ultralight, largescale wireless intervention of audio elements inserted in a public space, transforming a section of the city into a sound experience. The work will be achieved through a hands-on approach constructing and deploying an ephemeral wireless ubiquitous computing network, by temporarily grafting actuators, small devices “plankton”, that inhabit, tap (solenoids), shake (DC motors), stimulate (piezos/servos) objects and urban infrastructures, (…can a stop sign shudder ?). These urban elements, diverted from their primary use, create a furtive audio orchestration. The resulting composition is a largescale spatialization of sound with multiple points of listening. The spatial forms include elements of the site’s material things, social activities, phenomena and the processes that are concomitantly taking place, specific to a time, place and culture. ConcreteCITY focuses on the imagination of urban sites, their materiality, usage and memory. By interfering with what is normally a given “state” of operations, the intervention reveals an “augmented everyday soundtrack” leaving the field open to exploring the potential of the sounds of the city, the interaction with urban spaces and objects and the diverse interpretations of what surrounds us. ConcreteCity reveals itself as a sonic experience of inexplicable beauty, evoking the Sharawadji effect.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
We will post suggested reading on the webpage if participants wish to prepare.
http://insertio.com/concretecity/
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
The workshop ConcreteCITY is an interdisciplinary workshop. It aims to gather academics and practitioners interested in ubiquitous computing, urban interventions, audio and device art, computational and contextual art. Youths are welcome and no untechnical knowledge is required.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
#NEWPALMYRA Cultural Heritage Preservation Workshop
Monday 16th May 10am-5:30pm
V1310 II, 13/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Barry Threw
Barry Threw (@barrythrew) is the Interim Director of #NEWPALMYRA. He is a designer and technologist focused on spatial media, cultural infrastructures, and cultural heritage. He works in collaboration with institutions, artists and organizations at the intersection of technology and culture. He is Director of Software at Obscura Digital, and is a curator with the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.
Jon Phillips
Jon Phillips (@rejon) is Founder of Fabricatorz, a global design and technology company. Phillips manages a global team of creative developers with primary offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, San Francisco and Berlin, and other sitespecific local offices. Fabricatorz handles a diverse set of software, hardware and consulting projects constructed to the specific needs of client companies, operations and infrastructure. Phillips began his career operating between art and technology, before helping start the open source drawing app Inkscape; he then went on to found the Openclipart online art community, and scale-up the Creative Commons community and business globally, ultimately founding Fabricatorz in 2007.
Workshop Description
#NEWPALMYRA is an online community platform dedicated to the capture, preservation, sharing, and creative reuse of data about the ancient city of Palmyra. It’s workshop event in Hong Kong will bring together researchers, developers, and artists to contribute data, 3D modeling, software development and other creative works to virtually reconstruct Palmyra’s cultural heritage. Participants will learn about the efforts underway for digital preservation, learn the current community needs, and learn how they can contribute. Anyone can join regardless of skill set or experience, the group will collaborate on projects based on the skills present. The event will culminate with a pop-up art exhibition, showcasing the results of the workshop.
#NEWPALMYRA is:
– A Digital Archaeology project, collecting data from international partners, analyzing it, creating a reconstruction of Palmyra in virtual space, and sharing the models and data in the public domain. We are using digital tools to preserve the heritage sites being actively deleted by ISIS.
– A Cultural Development project, hosting live workshops and building a network of artists, technologists, archaeologists, architects, and others to research, construct models, and create artistic works.
– A Curatorial project, creating exhibitions and experiences in museums and institutions globally, celebrating the cultural heritage of Syria and the world through the lens of architecture embodying culture and power.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
Participants should gain basic familiarity with the #NEWPALMYRA project before the workshop. All participants should bring their laptops or other creative materials (paint/canvas for painters, markers or other art making materials).
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
Participants should come prepared to find solutions and contribute to the project with whatever their background and skill sets are. Project needs will be discussed, and resources will be explained to enable project creation. Collaborative projects may arise depending on the constitution of the group.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/
Critical Manufacturing: A Hackathon for Speculative Design
Tuesday 17th May 10am-2pm
V1310 II, 13/F, Innovation Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Workshop Details:
Run By
Ian Wojtowicz
Ian is an artist and researcher working in new media. His projects have exhibited internationally at venues including ISEA, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the British Computer Society, The New School, California College of the Arts and Harvard University. He graduated from MIT with a Masters in Art, Culture and Technology where he received an MIT Fellowship Award. He has contributed to projects nominated for Emmy and Webby Awards, as well as featured in Wired Magazine, a TED talk and a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign. Ian was also the Founding Editor of one of the first cultural magazines published online and has taught at Emily Carr University.
Workshop Description
Design fiction is a technique that employs the tools of product development to speculate about the future. It is pure marketing. It is product development without the product. It is science fiction for the present — it preempts, upturns, discusses, warns, and ultimately improves upon the present. It is a creative process that bridges production with critical inquiry and can enable new forms of mimetic public protest. Design fiction brings together new publics around current social issues by using the language of commerce and advertising, selling new worlds that cannot (or should not) currently exist. It is cultural critique embedded within the vehicles of consumerism.
By inverting the normal agenda of product design (seducing, soothing and satiating customers), design fiction provokes unsettling new questions about reality and the futures that await us.
Join us for Critical Manufacturing: A Hackathon for Speculative Design where we will employ design fiction to create projects that address issues of social justice, public space, personal agency and autonomy, and other contemporary collective issues.
Details on how the participants should prepare and what to bring
No preparation necessary.
Participant background/profession/prior knowledge/age
Should have some comfort with drawing and an interest in designing products.
SIGN UP
To participate in the workshops, you need a Workshop Pass or a Symposium Registration including workshops. After you have signed up, we will email you to confirm your participation. To secure your seat, we need the confirmation code of your workshop pass purchase / symposium registration. If you have not registered / bought a workshop pass yet, you may do so at: https://isea2016.isea-international.org/registration/