Titel pagina - De Balie

Saturday March 20

Energy and information
10.00 – 12.00 CET (GMT+1)

Hosted by Julian Priest
Exploring the energetic implications of global communications. There is an intensive debate about the question how to make the internet backbone and server structure more energy efficient and ecologically sustainable, as till recently this did not seen to be a real  concern. The energy needs of networking are enormous. Various solutions are on the table, but many ‘green hosting’ initiatives tend to be ‘green washing’ initiatives, where more money is spent on green p.r. than on actual sustainability.
With Julian Priest, artist and director of Green Bench, New Zealand
http://greenbench.org
Rasa Smite, RIXC, Riga – organiser and curator of the 2009 art+communication festival: “ENERGY – Scientific and artistic, utopian and critical visions of future terrestrial energy”.
http://rixc.lv/09/en/theme.html
Sacha van Geffen, director of Greemhost.nl (tbc)


ElectroSmog is Good for You!
Exploring artists’ engagements with the spectral ecology
13.00 – 15.00 CET (GMT+1)

This program brings together artists fascinated by the invisible and most ephemeral side of electronic media, the varying densities of the electro-magnetic spectrum. The program continues the discussion started at the RIXC’s Spectral Ecology event in 2007. Besides the exploration of the invisible and intangible, also critical environmental issues are addressed. How is the body, the brain and the nervous system affected by the increasing density of electromagnetic waves around us? Since the nervous system relies on electromagnetic energy flows there are certainly effects, but which? In many countries heated debates flared up in the past about the effects of new umts transmitters (high capacity mobile phone networks), and scandals erupted over transmitters fitted on apartment buildings, apparently making residents sick.
Contributions by:
Bureau des Etudes / Spectral Investigations Collective
http://semaphore.blogs.com/semaphore/spectral_investigations_collective
Zita Joyce, ADA Digital Arts Network, New Zealand
www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/about
Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, RIXC, Riga
http://rixc.lv


Food and global mobility
Tracing the path of food to our kitchen-table
16.00 – 18.00 CET (GMT+1)

The globalisation of food distribution is a condition of everyday life and hard to escape. The debate is heated but not self-evident in outcomes: local food production (as advocated by ‘Eat Local’ movements) may well be ecologically more unsound than distributing food internationally. An interesting intervention is to make the tracing of food products identifiable for ordinary consumers, using rfid tags, bar code scanners in mobile phones and networked information resources for consumers.
Edited by Tania Goryucheva, researcher and editor of the Food and Global Mobility theme for ElectroSmog
Representatives of consumer organisations
Researchers on Food Mobility
Artist Esther Polak will present findings from her project under development Nomadic Milk
Nomadic Milk


Deep local and remote technologies
21.00 – 23.00 CET (GMT+1)

What does it mean to become Deep Local (again)? How can we reconnect to the local, without giving up the rest of the world and without burning up the last remaining carbon-hydrates?
Is going local a solution for the global energy  and mobility crisis?
Can we reconnect the remote by means of the new networking and communication technologies without ravaging the environment?
Can traditional life-styles be accommodated with global connectivity?
Or is a no-tech scenario the only option? Is that scenario still possible?
With Stefan Agamanolis, director of Distance Lab, Forres, Scotland.
www.distancelab.org

Hosted by: Zita Joyce & Eric Kluitenberg


TeleTrust
Participatory performance by Karen Lancel & Hermen Maat
Daily: 9.00 – 11.00 & 20.00 – 22.00 hrs CET (GMT+1)

Artists Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat are conducting a series of networked performances in public spaces involving a wearable ‘data-veil’ that covers the entire body. The veil is touch sensitive and by touching her or himself the wearer triggers stories he/she can listen to inside the veil, while the audience around can follow the same story on public screens and via the web. All stories are interviews conducted around the public performances with the TeleTrust veil and centre on issues of trust in public space and the question of veiled presence in public space:
“Do I need to see your eyes in order to trust you?”
How is trust established under veiled conditions?
The project can also be seen as a metaphor for the hidden presence of people in digital networks, where ‘the design of trust’ (Nevejan) remains a highly problematic issue.

More about TeleTrust

The performance will be staged simultaneously in Banff, Canada, Dunedin, New Zealand and Amsterdam, The Netherlands – covering a time-zone stretch of 20 hours.