Organized Networks

Training Programme in Cultural Network Management

Press Release

Press release, December 3, 2009

ORGANIZED NETWORKS

Training Programme for Cultural Network Management, Information about changes:

Since Eric Kluitenberg will not be able to come for his lecture “Sustainable Immobility Design”, media artist and researcher Tapio Makela will instead present his lecture on “sustainable mobility design” issues, which is considered to be significant in the context of current design discourse:

Lecture by Tapio Makela:

ECOLOCATEDNESS: ART, ECOLOGY AND INFORMATION DESIGN

December 3, 19.30, at Spikeri

On Thursday, December 3 at 19.30 RIXC and kim? invites to Spikeri to the opening programme of Organized Networks which will feature the lecture “Ecolocatedness: Art and Science Practice as Situated Information Design” by media artist and researcher Tapio Makela (FI/UK), where he will discuss sustainability issues in relation to ecology and mobility.

The term environment seems to resist constructive positions for the self that would be in favor of agency for action. How to challenge environmental passivity? How, then to make environment in a given point of time and location, more tangible, open for interaction and constructing response-able positions? Ecologists find it difficult to use second hand data sets because they lack the first hand experiential information of the environment that had been surveyed. Makela also argues that ecological data is often presented through regional rather than locational interfaces.

Media artists and designers have skills in constructing participatory processes, interfaces, and tangibility to information. Makela is arguing for art+sci collaboration methods beyond (yet perhaps including) visualization, having to do with how knowledge is constructed in relation to environment, and how it is offered for public engagement. As such a paradigm, he suggests “ecolocatedness” as a way of combining environmental data with experience and location, thus basing art and science practice on situated information design.

The lecture will introduce M.A.R.I.N. networked residency and research initiative, which integrates artistic and scientific research on ecology of the marine and cultural ecosystems. In 2008 M.A.R.I.N. initiated a mobile residency project set on a catamaran sail boat, redesigned and equipped to be a sustainable environment for transdisciplinary research in arts, sciences and technology.

Tapio Mäkelä is a researcher and a media artist based in Manchester, UK and Helsinki, Finland. He is currently an AHRC Research Fellow with department of Creative Technology, School of Art and Design, University of Salford. He is researching social and cultural uses of location based media and environmental interaction and information design. Mäkelä is a co-founder with Marko Peljhan, of Marin Association and M.A.R.I.N. (Media Art Research Interdisciplinary Network), an art, science and ecology research residency and network initiative.

* * *

The following Organized Networks work programme on December 4 and 5 at 20.00 in Spikeri will feature art and culture project presentations by seminar participants: Kultivator / Sweden, Baltan Laboratories / the Netherlands, One Minute Video Festival / Armenia, Survival Kit / LMC, Latvia, Serde / Latvia, Arctic Perspectives Project / Lorna, Iceland; MoTA / Slovenia; MARIN mobile residency project / Finland; GeoAir / Georgia; Homo Novous / JTI, Latvia; Norden-Baltic Videoarchive project / Noass, Latvia, Pixelache festival network / Finland.

In addition to that, on December 4 and 5 (11.00-18.00 in Spikeri) seminar work groups will discuss cooperation networks as a new form of institution, issues of cultural sustainability development, organised networks, p2p infrastructures, alternative economics and creative industries.

Promoting the idea of immobility the seminar will also feature on-line participants: Ned Rossiter author of the book „Organized Networks” (on-line from Shanghai), John Tackara expert on sustainability issues and founder of design forum „Doors of Perception” (on-line from India) and Armin Medosch media theoretician, social media researcher and exhibition “WAVES” curator (on December 5 at 15.00 on-line from Vienna).

Entrance free

Locations:

Spīķeri, kim? Building, 3rd floor, Maskavas street 12/1, Rīg (and/or RIXC Media Space, 11. Novembra krastmala 35, entrance from Minstereja street).

Organizers: Center for New Media Culture RIXC in cooperation with Latvian Contemporary culture NGO association and international partners.

Support: European Culture Foundation, Nordic Culture Point and State Culture Capital Foundation, Hotel Elizabete

Contacts:

[email protected]

tel. 26546776 (Rasa Šmite)

tel. 67228478 (RIXC office)

http://rixc.lv

http://orgnet.rixc.lv

* PROGRAMME

Thursday, December 3

Location: Spīķeri, kim? Building, 3rd floor

19.30 – 21.00 Public Lecture: Tapio Makela (FI/UK) “Ecolocatedness: Art And Science Practice As Situated Information Design”

Friday, December 4 (Day 1)

Location: RIXC Media Space / Spikeri

10.00 – 14.00 [Work Session 1]: Networks (/ Organized Networks)

15.00 – 18.00 [Work Session 2]: Sustainability (/ Design for Resilience)

20.00 – [Open Programme] Screenings / Public Presentations

(Kultivator / Sweden, Baltan Laboratories / the Netherlands, One Minute Video Festival / Armenia, Survival Kit / LMC, Latvia, Serde / Latvia, Arctic Perspectives Project / Lorna, Iceland, etc.)

Saturday, December 5. (Day 2)

Location: RIXC Media Space / Spikeri

11.00 – 14.00 [Work Session 3]: p2p Infrastructures (/ Energy Issues)

15.00 – 17.30 [Work Session 4]: Open Code Infrastructures (/ Social Media)

20.00: [Open Programme]

Presentations (MoTA / Slovenia; MARIN mobile residency project / Finland; GeoAir / Georgia; Homo Novous / JTI, Latvia; Nordic-Baltic Videoarchive Project / Noass / Latvia, Pixelache festival network / Finland, etc)