Titel pagina - De Balie

Friday March 19

e-mobility versus immobility
10.00 – 12.00 CET (GMT+1)

The bandwidth in closed societies like for example Iran and Syria are low because of political reasons. Even though at the same time it slows down business opportunities. Thereby the system of filtering and blocking on line content is sophisticated. Both countries have a young population (50 – 70% younger than 30 years) and lots of them want to connect with and have access to information. No surprise that circumvention tools are widely used.
How can this politically induced slowness of networks be addressed in a discussion of global connectivity?
In collaboration with Monique Doppert, Hivos, The Hague & Tactical Technology Collective (London).
With: Sami Ben Gharbia, co-founder of nawaat.org (which means the core in Arabic), a Tunisian collective blog about news and politics, and Advocacy Director at Global Voices.
http://samibengharbia.com/


Designing for (im)mobility
Host: John Thackara
13.00 – 15.00 CET (GMT+1)

ICT developers have been working on video communication since 1946 – but the experience still ‘sucks’. If massive amounts of bandwidth are not the answer, are there more artful ways to enhance remote communication? John Thackara discusses how they would approach it with game designers, theatre directors and artists.
With:
Martin Butler, choreographer, artist and co-founder of The Liminal Institute, who produced the real-life avatar game The Girlfriend Experience (2007) with Mediamatic in Amsterdam.
www.liminalinstitute.nl
The Girlfriend Experience
John Thackara s the director of  Doors of Perception an international network that tries to find new ways of designing information and communication technology (ICT). He also blogs on design and mobility.
www.doorsofperception.com/archives/mobility_design/


Book Launch of Plan B, by John Thackara
15.00 – 16.00 CET (GMT+1)

At the occasion of the launch of the Dutch translation of John Thackara’s book “In the Bubble”, now titled “Plan B”, with 4 new chapters added, John Thackara will introduce the main topics of his book and devote special attention to the relationship of design, telepresence, and (im)mobility.

About the book:
“We’re filling up the world with technology and devices, but we’ve lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centred on technology, so it would be no small matter if “tech” ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the ends it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we’re unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff, and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now — not in a remote science fiction future; it’s not about, as he puts it, “the schlock of the new” but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can’t. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology — ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centred world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles — above all, lightness — inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.”

www.thackara.com/inthebubble
www.doorsofperception.com


Public media art projects and sustainability
20.00 – 22.00 CET (GMT+1)

What are the prospects of making of on-line and media art practices more sustainable? How do artists and cultural initiatives position themselves in the discussion on the ecological impact of networking technology?
What are the new models making more intelligent use of current media technologies and tools?
With Horst Konietzny, curator and director of Reframes, Munich.
www.reframes.de
Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, and editor of the Networked Performance blog, Boston.
http://turbulence.org
http://turbulence.org/blog


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.