{"id":400081,"date":"2002-09-30T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400081"},"modified":"2002-09-30T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-09-30T22:00:00","slug":"on-networked-collaborations-at-ars-electronica-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/kritika\/on-networked-collaborations-at-ars-electronica-2002\/","title":{"rendered":"On networked collaborations at Ars Electronica 2002"},"content":{"rendered":"
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 <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Open Air – Radiotopia<\/i>,:
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.aec.at\/radiotopia<\/a>
\r\nSearch :<\/i>
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.onair.co.za\/thetrinitysession<\/a>
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.onair.co.za\/thepremises<\/a>
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.onair.co.za\/sanman<\/a><\/p>\r\n

The\r\nfestival brochure of Unplugged, Ars Electronica2002 <\/i>featured R.Buckminster-Fuller’s\r\nRe-Mapping Our Mental Model of the World <\/i>on its introductory page\r\nan apt correlation with Gerfried Stocker, Festival Director’s statement:\r\n\u201dPerspectives obtained by looking out beyond one’s own horizon are\r\nmeant to intersect and interact with points of view held by \u201dothers,\u201d\r\nand thereby make this festival for art, technology and society itself\r\na setting for the complex dynamic of a global reorientation.\u201d Accordingly,\r\nthe various viewpoints of African theorists, artists and activists were\r\nprominently featured over the five day Unplugged Symposium. Beyond the\r\nconference presentations, concerts of the Urban African Club as well as\r\nAfrican Art screenings contributed to the conceptual remapping of African\r\nculture. The collaborative Search project, fully rounded the African panorama\r\nof Ars Electronica 2002. <\/p>\r\n

Predictably,\r\nUnplugged, offered a rich variety of events, which made choosing difficult\r\nbetween attending the symposium, participating in live performances, or\r\nvisiting the exhibits. The most exciting part for me by far, was to experience\r\nsome of the networked, process based projects. I will confine my brief\r\nsubjective report to Open Air – Radiotopia<\/i>, and Search, <\/i>as\r\nthese collaborations reflected best, in my opinion, some of the leading\r\nconcepts in the borderless landscape of digital culture. Both projects\r\ninvolved the onsite and virtual involvement of many participants.<\/p>\r\n

****<\/i><\/p>\r\n

Open\r\nAir – Radiotopia<\/i>, the most extensive festival conceived program this\r\nyear presented a global sound network data base at http:\/\/www.aec.at\/radiotopia.\r\nThe project was hailed as the first of its kind: \u201da simultaneous\r\nstorage bank of freely accessed sound material that transcends time, location,\r\ncultural and geographical borders.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

As\r\na festival visitor you could hear the live mix of sounds of Radiotopia<\/i>\r\non the Main square of Linz, in the Bruckner House festival venue, on the\r\nriver banks, on radio stations and of course on the internet. The main\r\n\u201dcontrol desk\u201d complete with a lot of gear and featuring an\r\ninfo desk (decorated with the names of participants) was located in the\r\nBruckner House, where at all hours of the day and night people congregated,\r\nwatched or participated in the broadcast sound events. Music, noise and\r\nspoken words were heard for days on end – all of this facilitated by the\r\nnetworked sound data base.<\/p>\r\n

\u201dRadiotopia<\/i>,\r\n-as Rupert Huber, the artistic director told me – can serve as a model,\r\nto bring people together who share certain ideas\u201d. Rupert’s self\r\nconfessed aim was to create a space for peaceful, creative co-existence\r\nand he felt this has been achieved. The idea for Radiotopia<\/i>, was\r\nshaped between Rupert, Gerfried Stocker, Andreas Bosshard and Elisabeth\r\nZimmerman. The concept for the sound network database originated from\r\nAugust Black and Norbert Math with contribution from Rupert. To provide\r\na better insight, I have asked August, Norbert and Isabella Bordoni from\r\nthe Radiotopia <\/i>crew, for comments on their project involvement.<\/p>\r\n

\u201dIt\r\nwas important for us – said August- to develop as easy a structure for\r\nonline uploading and downloading as possible. At the same time if anybody\r\nsent a cassette, we did our best to encode it and incorporate it in the\r\ndatabase, which consist mainly of sound and some text and image files\r\nand incorporates a play list of 500 files.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

August’s\r\nmain interest in the project was directed to the question of how to deal\r\nwith static database files and how to turn it into live elements -alive\r\nnetwork where five or six individuals or radio stations play together.\r\nHe also designed the website and organized a large part of the network.\r\nTogether with August, Norbert Math was involved in the preliminary work\r\nto set up the database, server and the online mixer. He felt that while\r\nhis contribution is often of a technical nature, it as also artwork, \u201dor\r\nframework for artwork -as he noted – because it is the creation of a system\r\nbetween people and sounds\u201d. <\/p>\r\n

What\r\nfascinated Norbert, was the possibility to create a network, which is\r\nself-organizing. \u201dIt becomes a collective decision for each node\r\n-said Norbert- it is an experiment in relinquishing control, because the\r\ndatabase is used by so many people, people with different backgrounds\r\nand different quality of work.\u201d He felt that at this point the open\r\nended approach was not made visible enough: \u201dbut it is still a learning\r\nprocess. After all we are all used to be in control.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Isabella\r\nBordoni, an Italian sound artist participated in the live Soiree performance\r\nas well as day to day live mixing. I was in the audience at the Soiree\r\nperformance and truly enjoyed her contribution to the concert. While she\r\nwas pleased by the success of the project, she has also noted that \u201dit\r\nis very important to take a next step and go further.\u201d No doubt,\r\nthey will.<\/p>\r\n

Hundreds\r\nof people signed up ahead to participate online and hundreds more joined\r\nin the course of the ongoing event. The enthusiasm was infectious. Late\r\none evening Honor Harger and Adam Hyde of radioqualia arrived by taxi\r\nfrom Ljubljana as they did not wish to miss their broadcast in Linz. On\r\nTuesday evening the long night of broadcasting lasted till early next\r\nmorning, while earlier Tuesday evening at the Soiree, presenting remote\r\nhook-ups, conference calls, concerts, and performances – online, onsite,\r\non air -festival visitors as well as remote audiences could fully experience\r\nthe sounds of Open Air -A Radiotopia,<\/i> <\/p>\r\n

***<\/i><\/p>\r\n

Search,\r\n<\/i>a workshopping discussion and collaborative project originated from\r\nJohannesburg and Capetown, South Africa. The project has been developed\r\nby the Trinity Session group: Kathryn Smith, Stephen Hobbs and Marcus\r\nNeustetter and has been realized in collaboration with the Southern African\r\nNew Media Art Network.<\/p>\r\n

A\r\nyear and a half ago, on my visit to South Africa, Marcus has told me about\r\nthe emerging new media and digital culture scene, including \u201dsanman\u201d\r\nplans. At that time, some activities and exhibitions have already taken\r\nplace, but it still looked like if pragmatic realization of these interesting\r\nbut seemingly far flung ideas would be further ahead in the future. Surely,\r\nit is a sign of the rapidly developing digital culture in South Africa\r\nthat one could experience firsthand a fully operational workshop with\r\nnine participants at Unplugged.<\/p>\r\n

\u201dFour\r\nmonths ago -told me Marcus- we began to discuss with Gerfried about the\r\nSouth African digital landscape. What does digital mean in South Africa?\u201d\r\n
\r\nIt means a wide range of things from the popular music scene to web\/print\r\ndesign all of which incorporate digital tools. The discussions led to\r\nthe invitation of Search.<\/i> The aim of the project is to chart the\r\ndifferent resources, interesting participants as a broad concept in South\r\nAfrica. The nine member teams, including Marcus and Stephen came to Ars\r\nfollowing a 3 months residency. Each team member is a professional in\r\nhis\/her ownright.
\r\nSome of the team members are more established, some are young and upcoming.\r\nTheir expertise ranges from corporate design, through journalism to online\r\nactivism. Stephen Hobbs is an urban investigator, Marcus is focused on\r\nthe art environment. The eclectic interest of the Team include pop music,\r\nstreet culture, pop culture, videos, sound art and many other things.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

The\r\nArs Electronica residency started with a two day workshop by reacting\r\ncreatively to the differences and similarities between South Africa and\r\nAustrian Linz. Videos and stills were captured, sounds and texts recorded\r\n-the often complimentary, sometimes clashing results were all reworked\r\nand uploaded in the emerging collaborative website. In the last three\r\ndays the participants were busy to develop a platform to take home. Many\r\nissues were discussed, such as the points to be defined for a build-on\r\ndigital environment. What type of communication approach should be used\r\nfor effective results? Considerations of a list of people to invite were\r\ndiscussed. All these different factors were mapped out and brought together.\r\nSurprisingly by the end of Ars, a rough business plan for the next 6 months\r\nemerged, including how to help communication and exchange towards a sustainable\r\nfuture. <\/p>\r\n

\u201dThere\r\nare many brilliant ideas for community building -told me Marcus- but people\r\nseldom follow through. In South Africa, most of us live and working separate\r\ncommunities, Search was an opportunity to operate within a larger context,\r\nand present a mix of elitist and pop culture. In addition to develop our\r\nown workshop experience our aim was to tell people informally what South\r\nAfrica is about. There might not have been enough feedback as it was difficult,\r\nperhaps even alienating for the audience that they couldn’t engage. But\r\nit is an ongoing process…\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Open\r\nAir – Radiotopia<\/i>, and Search<\/i> were linked in more than one way.\r\nOn Tuesday, September 10, local Johannesburg sound artists contributed\r\nto the Radiotopia<\/i> broadcast. Beyond this active contribution there\r\nwere many informal connections – all in the nature of collaborative process\r\nbased work. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Open Air – Radiotopia,: http:\/\/www.aec.at\/radiotopia Search : http:\/\/www.onair.co.za\/thetrinitysession http:\/\/www.onair.co.za\/thepremises http:\/\/www.onair.co.za\/sanman The festival brochure of Unplugged, Ars Electronica2002 featured R.Buckminster-Fuller’s Re-Mapping Our Mental Model of the World on its introductory page an apt correlation with Gerfried Stocker, Festival Director’s statement: \u201dPerspectives obtained by looking out beyond one’s own horizon are meant to intersect and interact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630081,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kritika"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}