Mon 23 August 2010
13:00–14:30h
Volkshochschule Dortmund, L 102b
Convened and moderated by Angela Plohman (nl), BALTAN Laboratories

In collaboration with 2018Brabant Cultural Capital of Europe | Candidate.

As a follow up to the international expert meeting The Future of the Lab held in Eindhoven (NL) in 2009, BALTAN Laboratories hosts a session around the changing and future roles and forms of the media lab. In order to build on the experiences and challenges shared during the meeting in Eindhoven, this session will take a number of specific key issues that were raised and delve more deeply into them at ISEA2010 RUHR. Five representatives from media art labs around Europe have been invited to respond to these themes. Following their statements, session participants will break into smaller working groups led by the respondents to further explore the proposed topics. The results of these working groups will take the shape of recommendations or proposals for action to pursue in the next steps of The Future of the Lab research, aiming to facilitate continued knowledge sharing between labs.

Please note: this session is aimed at people who work in, for or with labs.

Topics

1) Knowledge sharing & working within a network of labs
(keywords: LABtoLAB, resources needed for knowledge sharing, documentation, working within an ecology of labs, strengthening capacity through resource sharing, ownership)

Respondent: Attila Bujdosó / Kitchen Budapest, HU
Attila Bujdosó architect, research supervisor at Kitchen Budapest. He is member of KÉK - Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre, organizer of Pecha Kucha Night Budapest. Formerly he worked as an architect for ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd] on the CET Budapest project. He graduated as an architect but he wants to design not only buildings but the whole world. He is especially interested in the field where technology, culture and society meets and interacts, a field that he describes as webitics. Attila never likes to be bored. He is addicted to coffee, large cities and the Internet.
www.bujatt.com/
www.kitchenbudapest.hu

2) Communicating artistic research to a wider audience & the significance of cultural mediators
(keywords: translation, transformation, accessibility, communication, mediation, teaching, sharing, “a lab is not a mini-fort”, dissemination of lab research)

Respondent: Victoria Tillotson / iShed, Bristol, UK
Victoria joined iShed in 2008 to take on the role of Project Manager. She has since produced a number of projects that support creative technology research and development. Highlights include R&D commissioning scheme & publication Media Sandbox (2009); the Creative Technology Network; and a host of events that seek to enhance discourse around technology and creative practice. Victoria graduated in Fine Art and began her career as New Media Coordinator at Ffotogallery. She has a passion for artists' moving image so in her recent spare time, worked with Safle and artist Jennie Savage to curate the Portable Cinema Project (2008). Victoria has also worked as an Associate Lecturer at Cardiff University and is currently on Ffotogallery’s Board of Directors.
http://installtechnicalculture.tumblr.com/
www.ished.net

3) On issues of space and openness
(keywords: “openly agnostic towards technology”, temporality, fluidity, passing on, “open doesn’t always mean accessible”)

Respondent: Nik Gaffney  / FoAM
Nik Gaffney is a founding member of FoAM, where he operates as a tangental generalist, designer, programmer and sous-chef. He prefers breadth-first searches and bottom-up design; randomness as a strategy, and depth where required; dynamic to static; Lisp to C; realtime rather than recorded; and complexity over the complicated. He is also part of ‘farmersmanual’, a pan-European, net-based, multisensory disturbance conglomerate.  {buzzing, clicking, destructuring and ecstactic flickering}. Partially Luminous.
www.fo.am

4) Transforming conditions & new ways of working: on the relationship between artists & the lab environment 
(keywords: have conditions changed significantly?, how can labs best respond to artists’ needs?, mutual benefit, residency formats, from hardware to (human) software, flexibility)

Respondents: Lucas van der Velden / Geert Mul, BALTAN Laboratories
Lucas van der Velden is a Dutch artist and director of the Sonic Acts festival in Amsterdam. Van der Velden studied Image and Sound at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and currently working and living in Rotterdam. He is a founding member of the audiovisual collective Telcosystems and a member of the artistic board at BALTAN Laboratories since 2007, a new facility for artistic research, located in Eindhoven.
www.sonicacts.com
www.telcosystems.net
www.baltanlaboratories.org

Geert Mul studied at the Academy of the Arts in Arnhem where he eventually specialised in computer animation. To become financially independent, in the mid-90s, Mul started to create video screenings combined with pop music, which marks his first steps as a VJ performer. These events grew into interactive video and audio environments in a variety of settings: museums, pop festivals, public space and concert halls. From 2000 on, Mul made site-specific installations and artworks in Holland, U.S.A., Italy, Spain, India, Japan, China and South Africa. Geert Mul is represented by gallery RONMANDOS Amsterdam, and is a member of the artistic board of BALTAN Laboratories, Eindhoven.
www.geertmul.nl

Further Information: BALTAN Laboratories