February 9/10/11/12 and 16/17/18/19

The Media Technology MSc program is a place where students are encouraged to develop a creative approach to science. The students are educated to translate their personal interest and inspiration into research projects. The program is open to unusual questions, unconventional research methods and forms of output that exceed the traditional thesis format. This includes installations, games and books as possible result from a research. The semester project is a good example of such an approach.

Exhibition 50%

The global theme for this year's semester project is "50%". From this global theme five sub-themes are derived: mid-life, floating, halfway, layers and indivisible. The students have been working in groups of three that each have chosen their own sub-theme.

The Semester Project has three phases. First of all the students are asked to explore their theme in the broadest sense (social, mathematical, biological, et cetera) and discover what it could possibly relate to. After gaining sufficient insight in the theme they are asked to formulate compelling statements related to the theme. Only once this is stage is completed they are asked to translate their statements into an installation. Together these installations form the semester project exhibition. Watch the project descriptions at mediatechnology.leiden.edu.

Besides the exhibition the program includes a lecture by Bas Haring on non-textual scientific projects that are meant to convey a statement or trigger reflection; a graduation presentation by Alice Bodanzky on her concept for an intelligent self-moving material shape; a lecture by Wim van Eck and Maarten Lamers on the use of real animals in computer games; and a 'meet the makers' session where the participating students explain who they developed their installations.

LECTURE

Non-textual Scientific Output

Bas Haring

Thurday February 9th, 16:00
Location: WORM, Boomgaardsstraat 71, Rotterdam

Bas Haring is a Dutch philosopher and writer of popular science and children's literature. He holds a temporary special professor chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Leiden and is the initiator of the Media Technology MSc program.

In this lecture he will focus on non-textual scientific projects that are meant convey a statement or trigger reflection. Art and Science is currently a hot topic. This lecture focusses however on less conventional output of scientists that has similarities to art, and is often meant to trigger a debate within the scientific world itself.

OFFICIAL OPENING:

Welcome by Alex Adriaansens

February 9th – 17:00
Location: V2_Institute for the Unstable Media

PUBLIC GRADUATION PRESENTATION

Developing an Expressive Independent Shape-changing Surface
Alice Bodanzky

Saturday February 11th, 16:00
Location: V2_Institute for the Unstable Media

Advances in material science and engineering allow computation to be embedded everywhere. Computers will soon be designed to take any shape, thus radically changing how we interact with our material environment. To explore these developments in a meaningful way, we must first understand the properties and possibilities of computationally enabled materials. This research has led to a proposal for an actuated shape-changing surface itself and investigations into its expressive qualities. It focuses on the surface's ability to move in space following programmed variations in terms of texture and topology patterns.

MEET THE MAKERS

Sunday February 12th, 16:00
Location: V2_Institute for the Unstable Media

Get to know the what and why behind each installation in the exhibition. In short presentations, each project team explains how their work came about and what lies behind it. There is place for discussing the works and ask questions to the makers.

LECTURE

Using Real Animals and Organisms in Computer Games
Wim van Eck and Maarten Lamers

Saturday February 18th, 16:00
Location: TENT, Witte de Withstraat 50

Computer games have undergone major changes in the last decade: the Wii made us play more physically, smartphones made us play more casually, and serious gaming is the current hype. Will biological-digital games be next? What computer games can you play against real cats, pigs and hamsters? Why do crickets play Pacman? How to play Pong against bacteria? This lecture is about scientific research into hybrid biological-digital games.

Featuring artworks by Doug Back, Laura Kikauka and Carl Hamfelt, David Rokeby, Graham Smith and Norman White.

EXHIBITION TIMES

Thursday November 3rd  - 20:00 - 23:00:  SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto.

Friday November 4th - 14:00 - 23:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto.

Saturday November 5th - 14:00 - 20:00 and 21:30 - 00:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto. Closing party with custom cocktail begins at 22:00.

This exhibition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the initial exhibition and coincides with the centenary of the birth of Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan, whose writings informed and influenced much of the work in the original SAI exhibition. SAI 2.0 is presented as a three-day event in which visitors are invited to interact with their counterparts in Toronto through works of telepresence art. While telepresence has become ubiquitous in the 25 years since the original exhibition (as it predicted it would) many of these works display possibilities that still seem radical today. Instead of merely communicating visually across great distances, the works in the exhibition insist on even more intimate forms of telepresence such as communicating through touch, feats of strength, and actual physical presence across networks.

Strategic Arts Initiative was originally conceived by McLuhan scholar and SAI curator Derrick de Kerckhove as a sort of foil to the American Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars”, created by President Ronald Reagan. The exhibition represented an opportunity for artists, rather than industry, to imagine the future of telepresence. This aligned with McLuhan’s conviction that artists represented a DEW line or Distant Early Warning system that would tell a culture what was beginning to happen to it.

Graham Smith: Displaced Perspectives

The artists involved with SAI were brought together in large part because of a shared interest in the work of McLuhan and a desire to explore the artistic possibilities of communication media such as telephone, radio, television, video, and telematics. As the original exhibition’s program notes stated:

Communications technologies are putting us in touch with the whole planet, but most of us are not aware of how this situation can change our sensibility. We are all trapped in an invisible mesh of electronic talk. We still use communications to transport information. We have not yet understood that the new technologies are also transforming relationships. One of the roles of the artist in this context is to reveal these relationships. 

Far from the slow, erratic, and problematic medium of communication that it was in the late-1980s, telepresence technology is now unquestionably part of our lives.

Norman White: Telephonic Armwrestling

Exhibition Schedule:

Thursday November 3 

20:00 - 23:00: Opening of Strategic Arts Initiative (SAI) 2.0 exhibition, five telematic artworks connected live with InterAccess in Toronto, Canada. Featuring artworks by Doug Back, Laura Kikauka and Carl Hamfelt, David Rokeby, Graham Smith and Norman White, the exhibition is a re-creation and evolution of the original 1986 exhibition curated by Derrick de Kerckhove.
Welcoming remarks and short talks by the artists at 20:30.
 

Friday November 4 

14:00 - 23:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto.
 

Saturday November 5 

14:00 - 20:00 and 21:30 - 00:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto. 

Closing party with custom cocktail begins at 22:00.
 

Admission € 5,- pass for events on all three days.
Free entrance for students (college card). 

Events will be streamed live at http://live.v2.nl

Part of McLuhan in Europe 2011, a year-long celebration of Marshall McLuhan's impact and legacy on European art and media culture during the centenary of his birth. http://mcluhan2011.eu. The exhibition in Toronto is part of the Dew Line Festival.

The Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 exhibition is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Toronto Info:

Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 is a parallel exhibition taking place at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Toronto, and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam.

Location: InterAccess, 9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Date: November 3 - 5, 2011
For detailed programme information please refer to http://strategicartsinitiative.org/

To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth, this edition of Blowup will present the Strategic Art Initiative 2.0 exhibition of re-created early telematic artworks; the worldwide premiere of Them F*ckin’ Robots, a documentary on the work and influence of electronic art pioneer Norman White; a keynote lecture by Dutch thinker and author Arjen Mulder, examining the things we love and love to hate about McLuhan; and a closing party for the exhibition featuring a custom cocktail.
 

Download the We Are All Crew ebook

Contents

1. Introduction, by Michelle Kasprzak

2. Introduction to the Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 Exhibition, by Laura Berazadi

3. Texts from the original Strategic Arts Initiative catalogue,

by Derrick de Kerckhove and the participating artists

4. Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0, by Derrick de Kerckhove

5. Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0, information on the works

6. McLuhan in Europe 2011, by Stephen Kovats

7. The Normill, by Ine Poppe (translation by Sam Nemeth)

8. Marshall McLuhan Interview, by Gary Wolf

9. From the V2_ Archive: An Extremely Complicated Phenomenon of a Very Brief Duration Ending 

in Destruction; The 20th Century as Slow-motion Car Crash, by Mark Dery

10. Excerpt from From Image to Interaction, by Arjen Mulder

11. The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, Holy Fool, by Gary Wolf 

Program

Thursday November 3 

20:00 - 23:00: Opening of Strategic Arts Initiative (SAI) 2.0 exhibition, five telematic artworks connected live with InterAccess in Toronto, Canada. Featuring artworks by Doug Back, Laura Kikauka and Carl Hamfelt, David Rokeby, Graham Smith and Norman White, the exhibition is a re-creation and evolution of the original 1986 exhibition curated by Derrick de Kerckhove.
Welcoming remarks and short talks by the artists at 20:30.
 

Friday November 4 

20:00: World premiere screening of Them F*ckin' Robots, a documentary on the life and work of electronic art legend, and participant in the Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 exhibition, Norman White. Directed by Ine Poppe and Sam Nemeth.

14:00 - 23:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto.
 

Saturday November 5 

14:00 - 20:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto. 

20:00 - Keynote lecture by Arjen Mulder: Things We Love and Love To Hate About Marshall McLuhan (and cybernetics)
.

21:00: Response to the lecture and commentary on the SAI 2.0 exhibition by Derrick de Kerckhove
.
21:30 - 00:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto.
Closing party with custom cocktail begins at 22:00.
 

Admission € 5,- pass for events on all three days.
Free entrance for students (college card). 

The event opening and Arjen Mulder's keynote will be streamed live at http://live.v2.nl

After the event, the Blowup e-Book Reader for this event will be made available for download. 

Blowup: We Are All Crew is part of McLuhan in Europe 2011, a year-long celebration of Marshall McLuhan's impact and legacy on European art and media culture during the centenary of his birth. http://mcluhan2011.eu. The exhibition in Toronto is part of the Dew Line Festival.

The Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 exhibition is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

"Hello Worlds"

It's sometimes difficult to grasp how Augmented Reality could change our world. The current technological framework often confines the design and development of new AR applications. Artists and artworks can inspire us to envision what the future could look like. It’s the principal motivation of the artists in this exhibition to review and revise how we perceive and interact with the world around us.

We selected four works out of 24 submissions for further improvement and production in V2_'s Lab. These four brand new productions will be presented in the exhibition together with eight installations that form highlights in the history of artistic research in AR technology. Another two works are included as mock-up videos, a category that looks beyond the current technological limitations, and envisions exciting new applications in the field of Augmented Reality.

The Art Exhibition will be co-located at the electronic arts festival SHIFT, running simultaneously with the ISMAR conference. The unique collaboration with the SHIFT festival will provide a dedicated platform for AR artists to present their work in an artistic environment and provide a bridge with the ISMAR conference.

www.ismar11.org

www.shiftfestival.ch

Selected Works

Cashback (give me more) by Nicolas Henchoz (CH)

Geek Run by Emilie Tappolet, Maria María Beltràn, Raphaël Muñoz (CH) (Produced by Master Media Design, Head – Geneva, with support of V2_Lab)

Re: Newspapers by Akitoshi Honda (JP) (Produced by V2_Lab)

Interstitial Space Helmet by James Auger (UK)

Jekyll and Hyde by Martin Kovacovsky and Marius Hügli (CH)

lifeClipper3 by Jan Torpus (CH)

Besides the artistic video documentation shown at the exhibition venue, lifeClipper3 offers visitors an augmented walk during ISMAR11. Visitors can make a reservation on the website http://www.lifeClipper3.torpus.com

Perpendicular Cinema by Julien Maire (FR)

Reverse Blinking by Ief Spincemaille (BE)

Sensible 1.0 by Bram Snijders (NL) (Produced by V2_Lab)

Solace by Nicky Assmann (NL) (Distributed by V2_Agency)

Static by Wim Janssen (NL)

The ... by Kasia Molga (PL/UK) (Produced by V2_Lab)

USB Organs by Wu Juehui, CN

Augmented (hyper)Reality by Keiichi Matsuda (JP/UK)

Mediating Mediums by Greg Tran (US)

NGA Experience by Tate Strickland (US)

Sports++ by Sander Veenhof (NL) (Produced in collaboration with V2_Lab)

Protei is an autonomous sailing robot that tows a long oil sorbent boom. Oil spilled at sea drifts downwind, following surface currents. The most efficient way of collecting an oil spill is to sail upwind to capture the oil. Protei uses the power of nature - specifically wind- to collect a man-made problem- oil. Protei is unmanned, so no human health is at risk. It will operate continuously at a low cost, it will be hurricane-ready, self-righting, unbreakable, cheap and easy to manufacture for immediate deployment, even in rough weather far from the shore. Besides oil spills, many other applications are envisioned for Protei such as plastic debris collection in the oceans, radioactivity sensing, physical oceanography and much more. All components and the design are open source: meaning that Protei can be reproduced and modified by anyone forfree.

Why Protei?

Environmental disasters have become an almost daily subject in the media. Human activities are threatening the environment and it has become necessary to develop and test environmental cleaning technologies. Many of our current lifestyles are unsustainable and our environmental remediating technologies costly and inefficient. In the anthropocene, pollution does concern each of us.

The Protei Community

In April 2010, the explosion on BP’s oil platform ‘Deepwater Horizon’ caused the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the most devastating environmental event in the history of the United States. Cesar Harada, at the time a MIT project leader, left Boston to move to New Orleans envisioning Protei, a fleet of oil collecting sailing drones.

The issue was too big for Harada alone to solve, so he started sharing his idea publicly through social media platforms. Hundreds of people donated money through kickstarter.com and soon a community of organisations and people from all over the world started working together to make Protei a reality. Protei prototypes are regularly tested at the Kaag Watersport Academy on Kaag Island. This summer, the success of Protei in the gigantic port of Rotterdam may lead to the spawning of many other Protei projects around the oceans.

Exhibition info

Wereld van Witte de With:

Friday 9 September: 17:00 - 23:00

Saturday 10 September: 12:00 - 23:00

Sunday 11 September: 12:00 - 18:00

Admission: free

http://festivalwww.nl

24 Uur Cultuur

Cesar Harada will give an exclusive tour through the exhibition for holders of the 24 uur Cultuur passe-partout at Sunday 11 September at 15:00 www.24uurcultuurrotterdam.nl.

Translife

The subject matter of the NAMOC exhibition is timely and reflects global developments in media art in a contemporary context:   

Amidst the global challenges of climate and ecological crises that threaten the very existence of humanity, the exhibition TransLife reflects on the whereabouts of humankind in relationship to nature through a unique perspective and philosophical speculation, calling for citizen participation in facing these imminent challenges with artistic imagination to advocate a new world view of nature and a retooled humanist proposition.

From: http://mediartchina.org

NAMOC managed once again to design an impressive entrance for the show. The big temporary architectural piece called The Weather Tunnel contains 13 works relating to the theme of ecology. Visitors can discover such works as Britain's Kasia Molga’s installation Oil Compass, produced in connection with Cesar Harada’s Protei project, co-produced by V2_ this summer. Edwin van der Heide's Evolving Spark Network, on view at V2_ earlier this year, has also been shipped to China and will be on display in the main exhibition. Bernie Lubell, who had a major exhibition in 2009, is presented with Aphasiogram. The 300-page catalogue features writing by thinkers including Bruno Latour, Peter Sloterdijk, Eugene Thacker, Zhang Ga, Chris Salter and essayist Arjen Mulder. 

An electric spark is the most elementary way of creating light and produces the briefest audible sound. The Rotterdam artist and composer Edwin van der Heide took inspiration from these facts in developing this spectacular installation, in which sparks fly back and forth 15 feet above the audience’s heads, flashing and crackling. The light and sound installation Evolving Spark Network symbolizes the human nervous system. Like the neurons in our bodies, the sparks form a complex network of connections, and the installation responds to external stimuli just as a nervous system does.

Acquaint yourself with a new 3D film experience on the iPod or iPad at the Palm Top Theater exhibition. V2_ initiated a workshop for students and artists to generate new artworks for this intimate 3D environment. Experiments with space and interaction will form the heart of the exhibition.

Visitors will experience film and animation in a way that is strikingly similar to pre-cinema, when watching a moving image was an intimate and individual experience. At the same time, the Palm Top Theater will offer a glimpse of a cinema of the future in which the developments in mobile communication technology and the changing roles of users and producers will have a profound effect on the future of cinema.

Guest curator:
Maki Ueda

New artworks for the Palm Top Theater exhibition are being developed by artists Joost Rekveld (NL), Geert Mul (NL), Lia (AT), Arno Coenen (NL), and FoAM (BE) together with Performing Pictures (SE).

Thanks very much to our workshop leaders: Kasper van der Horst and Denise Pakes. The participating artists: Emmanuel Flores Elías, John Fanning, Pablo Dias / Luciano Leite Barbosa, Ronald Schelfhout, yy / Tom Laan, Robert Pravda / Peter Max, Bonne Knibbe, Shihui, Ludmila Rodrigues, Amelia Kaczyńska, Klararavat, Andre Cavalheiro, Yolanda Uriz. 

On November 12, the exhibition opens at 16:00 at the Zollverein World Heritage Site in the City of Essen, with some opening words from Asli Sevindim (Artistic Director of the "City of Cultures" at Ruhr2010). Main feature for visitors of the 3rd i exhibition is the interactive exploration of a scale model ideal city of the future, using remote controlled video robots to take a stroll through the landscape. The visitors can steer the robots using a body controlled step pad.

The exhibit is connected via the internet with the project website and with the virtual exhibition site in Wakefield at Beam Gallery so that virtual visitors can also steer the robots in Essen. 

Both exhibitions sites also facilitate communication between the German and English visitors, using especially developed "telepresence furniture" to meet, talk, debate and share with each other. The telepresence technologies are developed by media artist Graham Smith in cunjunction with students from the Utrecht School of the Arts, TU Delft and the University of Rotterdam.

See also the German Newscast on the 3rd I project here: Live: Cybercity Ruhr [03:39]

http://www.wdr.de/mediathek/html/regional/rueckschau/2010/11/18/lokalzeit_ruhr.xml?

Details

Live Exhibition in Essen, Zollverein World Heritage Site, Hall 5, Shaft XII [A5], Gelsenkirchener Str. 181, 45309 Essen, www.zollverein.de , 12.11. - 12.12. 2010, Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00 - 18:00 hrs, 3, - € / 1,50 €

Virtual Exhibition, Beam Gallery The Orangery, Back Lane, Wakefield, WF1 2TG, UK, www.beam.uk.net, 12.Nov. - 12.Dec. 2010, Monday – Friday, 9:30 – 16:30 hrs (local time), free admittance

Online Exhibition, Drive a robot from home, online catalogue: www.the-third-eye.org

3rd i is a TWINS project of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010.

In 2010 the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality  (ISMAR) took place in Seoul, Korea. The symposium focused on the impacts of Mixed and Augmented Reality on industry and society. In this highly interdisciplinary field it aimed to bring together signal processing, computer vision, computer graphics, user interfaces, human factors, wearable computing, mobile computing, computer networks, displays, sensors, to name just some of the most important influences. 

Mixed and Augmented Reality concepts are applicable to a wide range of applications. Since 1998, ISMAR and its forerunner events, IWAR/ISAR and ISMR, have been the premier forums in this field.

http://www.ismar10.org

http://www.nabi.or.kr

Exhibition

In the framework of the ISMAR, the Nabi art center in Seoul organized the exhibition Borderless Reality in collaboration with V2_ that will be open for the public for a month. V2_ contributed three works, all of them co-produced by V2_Lab.

Selected works:

Mirror Piece, by Marnix de Nijs is a mirror version of his previous work Physiognomic Scrutinizer. The installation detects and scrutinizes the faces of the people looking into the mirror. Rather than trying to identify the person, the software developed for this interactive installation probes for facial features and characteristics that are similar to one of the over 250 pre-selected persons in the database: all chosen for their controversial or infamous acts, but at the same time people that contributed to our contemporary culture. Mirror Piece is co-produced with V2_Lab.

RE: is an audiovisual installation by Bram Snijders (Sitd) and Carolien Teunisse. RE: is a 360 projection-mapping installation that uses mirrors to allow a projector to project on its own surface. The mirrors bounce the projections back onto their source. Virtual pixels become points of augmentation in actual space. ‬

The reflected projection makes a mixed reality appear and disappear. In most cases the projector has a functional role in a video-installation; the projector in RE: functions as a symbol for both sender as receiver of the medium light.

The work is the outcome of the question what could the role of the projector be, explored in an installation presented by Bram Snijders at the Academie Gallery of the HKU (NL) in 2010, and is inspired by the research Carolien Teunisse has done on Augmented Reality during her internship at V2_. With the help of V2_Lab the artists have been able to take RE: to a higher technological level.

Serendipitor, by Mark Shepard, is an alternative GPS navigation software application for mobile phones that determines a route to a destination that the user has not previously taken, designed to facilitate finding something by looking for something else. Serendipitor was developed during Mark Shepard's Summer Session 2010 at V2_Lab and is part of his broader project Sentient City Survival Kit.

Andy Gracie (UK), Annina Rüst (CH), Chris Salter (US/QC/CA), Erik Olofsen (NL), Henrik Menné (DK), Herman Asselberghs (BE), Herwig Weiser (AT), Ionat Zurr/Oron Catts (AU), Jonathan Shipper (US), José Manuel Berenguer (ES), Kristoffer Myskja (NO), Michael Najjar (DE), Michiko Nitta (UK), Ralf Baecker (DE), Studio Roosegaarde (NL), Tuur van Balen (BE).

The exhibition has an emphasis on the transformative and manipulative forces of technology instead of its symbolic and representative qualities. Understanding how basic forces work and what kind of structures spontaneously arise through interaction is one of the underlying topics in the art works presented at the exhibition. In the art works this is expressed in the design and use of networks; the relationship between power, control and self-organization; the issue of diversity and variation; and the question of form finding principles of organic and non-organic materials through different sorts of interaction.

The Metamorf biennale presents workshops, screenings, public art work, several conferences amongst which the 11th Consciousnous Reframed Conference from Roy Ascott, a one day conference focussed by the artists participating in the exhibitions and conceptualized by Angelica Schmitt and moderated by Michel van Dartel, and a one day conference on Art & Technology and the Pubic Sphere by Jeremy Welsh.

Performing artists are: Tomoko Sauvage (JP/FR), Antoine Schmitt/Jean-Jaques Birgè (FR), Staalplaat Soundsystem (NL), Roberto Paci Dalò (IT), Audiovision: Karl Bartos/Mathias Black (DE), Pierre Bastien (NL), artificiel: POWEr (CA), iIn c i t e / (DE), Tore Bøe (NO/SP), Kai Kobi Mikalsen (NO), Alexander Rshaug (NO), Origami Boe (NO/SP), Greg Pope (UK/NO), Brucemcclure (US), Sohnified (NO), Kaos (NO), Hands up silver spacesuit (NO), Killing Fields (NO), Flymodus (NO), Lumisokea (IT/BE).

Anouk Wipprecht studied fashion design and communication at the Utrecht School of the Arts and body, fashion and technology at the University of Malmo in Sweden, where she worked with Arduino applications and smart fabrics. In the fashion arena, she is particularly interested in exploring the degree to which we experience fashion emotionally, intellectually and sensually and the extent to which we are capable of realizing a stronger connection between clothing and the body. 

Wipprecht worked with techno-artist Daan Roosegaarde and V2_ on the Intimacy project, also on view at the Centraal Museum Utrecht during the festival. The Birds received production support from the V2_Lab.

www.centraalmuseum.nl

www.anoukwipprecht.nl

Better City, Better Life

In 3rd I, artists, architects, students and pupils from China and the Netherlands presented their views of the future of their cities. They have built models of their ideal cities and talk about the future in video portraits. They were responding to the motto of the World Expo 2010 currently taking place in Shanghai: “Better City, Better Life”.

Shanghai–Rotterdam 

Models of future and imaginary buildings were exhibited in Shanghai. Special robots, equipped with small video cameras, move down the streets between the models. These “third eyes” could be steered by audience members in Shanghai, in Rotterdam and by visitors to this website. The Chinese and Dutch visitors were able to use “telepresence furniture” to communicate with each other. 

Control a Video Robot

It was possible to drive one of the robots virtually at the Shanghai exhibition venue from www.the-third-eye.org. One could  find the instructions for driving a video robot there as well. The connection between you and the robot was made via the program Skype. 

Dutch Culture Centre

The DCC has been created specially to showcase Dutch culture in China parallel to the World Expo 2010. Six exhibitions and performances will take place over six months, with an emphasis on collaboration and dialogue between Dutch and Chinese artists. The exhibitions will be organized by various Dutch institutions that have worked regularly with Chinese artists and institutions in recent years. The Netherlands China Arts Foundation expects that work will be able to go into greater depth at the DCC than at the bustling World Expo pavilion.

http://www.2010dcc.com

3rd i The Process

The exhibition Adaptation: Designing the Future City will also feature B.A.R.C. , a project by Dynamic City Foundation. 

 

The following partners were involved in the development of Adaptation: Designing the Future City:

• eArts Festival, an annual event in Shanghai focusing on contemporary art in the context of technological culture;
• workshop partners including Shi Xi Highschool in Shanghai, Cybercity Ruhr, Delft University of Technology, the artists Angelika Oei and René Verouden, and Rotterdam University;
• Video robot development partners Mohammed Abdelghany of the Rotterdam University media and IT department; Aadjan van der Helm of the industrial design master’s program at Delft University of Technology; and the Canadian inventor and media artist Graham Smith, affiliated with Cybercity Ruhr;
• Virtueel Platform 
• Couscous Global, Amsterdam;
• Cybercity Ruhr, which developed the concept for 3rd I and is coordinating the workshops.

 

The 3rd I project has received support from:

• ACER Ltd., China (main sponsor)
• The City of Rotterdam
• The Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
• The Netherlands China Art Foundation

For five years, Hans Kalliwoda and Delft University of Technology worked on the technical development of the shell-shaped container, in which he will have to survive in climates ranging from polar to tropical. Sustainability is a central concern. The World in a Shell generates its own electricity, recycles water, and is generally as self-sufficient as possible. But in the age of globalization, sustainability is also a social and cultural issue. On his around-the-world trip, Hans Kalliwoda will organize cultural activities for and by local populations. He will take the results away with him in the container, amassing an ever-growing worldwide exhibition that will bring different peoples into contact with each other.

The World in a Shell premiered in Rotterdam, thereby starting its journey. Since art, technology and architecture come together In the container, the Netherlands Architecture Institute and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media joined forces to organize a number of activities in and around the container. There were workshops and a seminar on sustainability in art, architecture and science on April 1 at V2_.

Follow Hans Kalliwoda's journey at http://www.worldinashell.net.

RTV Rijnmond, March 26, 2010

The World in a Shell is made possible with the support of: 

Mondriaan Foundation, Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds, SNS Reaal Fonds, Stichting Doen, UNESCO.

Partners:

TU Delft, NAi, Blindpainters

January 22 at 17:30: Introduction & Welcome by Alex Adriaansens

A visit to World Skin is a poignant experience. Armed with a camera, visitors are placed in a sinister war zone that is visualized on a large projection screen in 3D animation and video.

The war images are a collage of photographs and sequences from news reports from different zones and theatres of war; they show a world filled with mute violence. By operating photo cameras that are suspended from the ceiling, visitors may take pictures of the war scenes and experience how the camera becomes a 'weapon' that enables them to wipe out the projected images. The outline of the images that are taken out is left as a silhouette in the projection, which becomes increasingly empty as the visitors take more pictures and permanently change the landscape of war. Visitors can take a print of the photos they took with them.

The interactive soundtrack (musician Jean-Baptiste Barrière), reproduces the sound of a world in which to breathe is to suffer. The audio is there to enable the visitors to go beyond the play of images and to experience this immersion as real participation in the drama. World Skin makes us think about the status of the image and the relationship between war and media. What is it that the photographers appropriate when they press the button?

Benayoun presented the first version of world skin in 1997. In 1998 the impressive installation won the Golden Nica Award in the interactive Art Category at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. Back then, World Skin was a CAVE environment but it has now evolved into a 3D animation with video on a flat screen. In this new set-up at V2_ Benayoun applies the latest 3D projection technology, combined with a new and sophisticated interactive scenario.