BALTAN Session with Naut Humon and Tapio Mäkelä

February 15th, 2010
March 1, 2010
 
6:00 pmto8:00 pm

On Monday, March 1 from 18:00 – 20:00, BALTAN invites you to its first BALTAN Session of 2010 featuring lectures by Naut Humon, Director of Operations at Recombinant Media Labs – founded in 1991 to research, create, preserve and portray Spatial Immersive Synthesis (the science of projecting image, light and sound objects into 3 dimensional space) – and Tapio Mäkelä, one of the co-founders of M.A.R.I.N. - a mobile residency programme set on board a catamaran sailboat, redesigned and equipped to be a sustainable environment for transdisciplinary research in arts, sciences and technology. Tapio was also founder of the first Finnish artist-run media lab MuuMediaBase. As part of BALTAN’s research into the laboratory of the future, we will explore the history and new forms of the laboratory through their specific experiences and initiatives.

Naut Humon’s lecture is made possible in collaboration with the Sonic Acts Festival (February 25-28, 2010 in Amsterdam). For full programme information see: www.sonicacts.com

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Location: BALTAN Laboratories, Glaslaan 2, SWA building, 8th floor, Strijp-S, Eindhoven, NL
Date: Monday, March 1, 2010
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Entry: free

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On openness, the lab of 2030 and passing on

February 12th, 2010

After the morning mapping session led by the Social Space research group on the second day of The Future of the Lab, we had 3 short case study presentations to inspire working group discussions on the themes of the afternoon: New conditions (with a presentation by Eva De Groote from Timelab in Ghent), From knowledge exchange to knowledge production (with a presentation by Irene Hediger from the Swiss Artists in Labs program) and Opening up (with a presentation by Marcos Garcia from Medialab Prado). The working groups then delved further into these topics and were moderated by Melinda Rackham (RMIT University), Angela Plohman (BALTAN) and Anne Nigten (The Patchingzone).

CASE STUDIES

Eva De Groote was asked to address the question “What challenges and new conditions do future labs need to respond to?” In her presentation she presented a series of statements (a more detailed overview can be found on Timelab’s blog) – “Future labs don’t have to be (very) technical, lab-inhabitants have to be omni-interested”. “A lab is not a mini-fort”. It was great to have this theme addressed from the perspective of a lab that is just starting its activities.

Irene Hediger explored the issue of fostering knowledge transfer between peers, disciplines and sectors. She presented a number of cases from the Swiss artists in labs program and how artists and scientists have been working together, positing the notion of a ‘3rd culture’, that of artists and scientists working together on something that isn’t necessarily either. Read the rest of this entry »

Interview with Geert Mul

February 12th, 2010

By Ties van de Werff
Translated from Dutch by Jane Hardjono

“Echolocation”, interactive installation, Geert Mul, 2009, Roombeek, Enschede.

Geert Mul is one of the four artists working on research projects at BALTAN Laboratories under the umbrella of Poème Numérique. Mul started his career back in the 90s as a VJ in Rotterdam, which later led him towards interactive video and audio works within different contexts. He  has exhibited in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, India, China, Japan and South Africa. As a member of the artistic staff at BALTAN, Geert Mul has exciting ideas about Poème Numérique, the synthesis between art and science, the implications of new media for the arts, and the future of BALTAN. An interview with one of BALTAN’s artistic thinkers.

Database as spirit of the times

During my interview with Lucas van der Velden (Telcosystems) it became quite clear that Poème Numérique is completely different to its precursor, Poème Electronique. For the artists at BALTAN, it’s more about the synthesis between different disciplines. Geert Mul: “The idea of interdisciplinarity and the connection of architecture with other disciplines is nothing new. The cathedral is an example of a multidisciplinary building and acoustic design. Poème Numérique is about a possible integration of architecture, imagery and sound.  Poème Numérique is literally the starting point, meaning we are leaving it behind. But we are  trying to pull the concept into the now, and into the future.” Our current era, according to Geert Mul, is defined through digital media that form a fundamental and structural watershed with everything that has come before: “To me, it’s all to do with the digital database, a tool through which real-time information can be ordered and re-ordered. A library is a wonderful database, but that is where information is always ordered physically, in a space. A digital database does not possess intrinsic ordering; a digital database can be randomly ordered and re-ordered within milliseconds. That to me is the most elementary quality that separates new media from old media.” Read the rest of this entry »

CASE STUDY 8

January 29th, 2010

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If one projects a MONDRIAAN painting on the wall, and use a computer to generate the depth lines according to the position of the viewer (tracked by a sensor), a virtual depth will be visible.

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The case of TESLA – Report from The Future of the Lab Day 1

January 28th, 2010

In October 2008, the TESLA-Berlin association organised a workshop in Berlin called Labs for Art and Media. They invited a number of international media labs to come to Berlin to share three days of discussions around how artistic practice is changing today in relation to media, and how art labs, workspaces, production spaces and art institutions can best support artists in pursuing their work. In the context of The Future of the Lab, BALTAN invited Andreas Broeckmann, member of the TESLA curatorial team, to reflect on the outcomes of this workshop and on the experience of TESLA in Berlin from 2005-2007.

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CASE STUDY PRESENTATION BY ANDREAS BROECKMANN (U-CENTRE FOR ART AND CREATIVITY, DORTMUND, GERMANY)

The idea of the TESLA Media Art Lab in Berlin was, essentially, to create a space where artists could work. We had some funding and a building, and we opened up for residencies (lasting from a few weeks to a year) to work on specific projects which were proposed by the artists directly. TESLA informally looked at the proposals, and then invited the artists. From the residencies, we created the core of our public programme, running four days a week. We were, in retrospect, surprised how much we could do in three years. One of the big projects was a series of symposia and performances with the artist Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag, who is interested in the history of electricity connected with Nikola Tesla, which made it a perfect key project for the TESLA lab. After two and a half years of operations, TESLA had to close down: the funding was pulled and the building was taken away. Read the rest of this entry »

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