The Future of the Lab « Baltan Laboratories

Archive for the ‘The Future of the Lab’ Category

LABtoLAB

Baltan will participate in the upcoming LabtoLab meeting from June 8-10, 2011 in Nantes (FR) where professionals from across Europe and beyond will meet to share practices and knowledge. There is also a great open programme of workshops and performances. LabtoLab is initiated by Constant (BE), Kitchen Budapest (HU), Medialab-Prado (ES) and PiNG (FR).

From LabtoLab’s website www.labtolab.org:

LABtoLAB is a network of media labs that aims to create a platform for:

sharing experiences and ways of doing;
studying specific cases;
exploring the role of the lab in offering spaces for collaborative learning and knowledge exchange;
examining the possibilities of life-long learning in the context of the lab.

From 2009 to 2011, meetings, workshops and seminars took place in Budapest, Madrid, Brussels and Nantes. Each encounter opened up to a wider community of labs and individuals, and extended beyond European borders. This website documents the process and its outcomes.

LABtoLAB project is supported by the Grundtvig’s Life Long Learning Program

Seminar: Structural challenges for media art in Europe and Norway

(re-posted from PNEK)

Date/time: Tuesday May 3rd, 10 – 4PM
Place: National Museum of Art, Kr. Augustsgt 23, Oslo (auditorium, 8th floor)
Free entrance incl. lunch (pre-registration at bottom of this page)

Keynote speakers:  Angela Plohman (CAN/NL), Annette Schindler (CH), Sarah Cook (UK)

PNEK invites to an open one-day symposium discussing the current structural challenges facing media artists, producers, art labs/institutions with regard to funding, curating, distribution and cultural policies around Europe.

Our three keynote speakers are all well-known practitioners and theorists who will each come with input, analysis and experiences based on their work at prominent European institutions. Our aim is to bring some of these discussion to the surface, as the conditions for media art are definitely changing very quickly these days.

After the keynotes there will be plenty of time for open discussion and reflection. (more…)

Digital Art Conference

07/10/2010 09:15 to 13:00

@ Playgrounds Festival, Tilburg

Does digital art isolate itself or is it being forced into isolation by existing institutions and structures? And is this isolation a bad thing, or is it important for the development of these relatively new art forms? Speakers with different perspectives – that of critic, medialab, curator and artist – will give their views on this issue, and will provide starting points for future policies.

Keynote (in Dutch) by Arie Altena (V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam) – Is digital art a special kind of art?
Lectures by: Angela Plohman (Baltan Laboratories, in Dutch), Shane Walter (onedotzero) en James Medcraft (United Visual Artists)

In the afternoon people can visit the Playgrounds festival program, but there is also an exhibition about digital art and a lecture about wearables starting at 14.00 at the bkkc. A select group of journalists and art critics will take a tour accompanied by an expert (organised by bkkc in collaboration with Virtueel Platform).

More information: Sarah Lugthart, s.lugthart[at]bkkc.nl, www.bkkc.nl (more…)

Labs as repair shops?

05/09/2010 14:00 to 17:00

On September 5th Angela Plohman from BALTAN Laboratories will participate in the panel “Labs as repair shops?” as part of the Pixelspaces conference at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz.

“If labs want to continue to lodge a claim to design excellence that they have rightfully earned, we’ll have to deal with the world around us. Incessantly progressing global warming, the widening of the so-called digital gap between urban areas and regions with lower-grade infrastructure and between industrialized and developing countries are just a few of the scenarios on which labs are expected to take a stand. The labs of the future will (have to) deploy their entire creative potential in order to utilize technology as a means of bringing about advances in other sectors (like social welfare and education) that have a major impact on culture.” http://new.aec.at/repair/en/program/future-factory/pixelspaces/#post-1257

With Horst Hörtner (AT), Angela Plohman (CA), Masa Inakage (JP), Zachary Lieberman (US) and Gary McDarby (UK).

The Future of the Lab book launch

23/08/2010 17:00 to 18:00

BALTAN Laboratories launches its new publication The Future of the Lab, a collection of essays and statements that challenge and debate future strategies and forms of the laboratory (or media lab). Stemming from the international expert meeting The Future of the Lab held in Eindhoven in 2009, the book highlights some of the issues raised during those sessions and continues the conversation, acting as a context for future connections and action.

The publication features contributions by Andreas Broeckmann, Eyal Fried, Nik Gaffney, Eva De Groote, Horst Hörtner, the LABtoLAB network, Melinda Rackham, Joost Rekveld, Edward A. Shanken, and others.

In collaboration with 2018Brabant Cultural Capital of Europe | Candidate

Opening remarks by Geurt Grosfeld
Culture broker, Breda, 2018Brabant Cultural Capital of Europe | Candidate (NL)

With an introduction by Angela Plohman
Director, BALTAN Laboratories, Eindhoven (NL)

And a toast by Floor van Spaendonck, Director, Virtueel Platform (NL)

Location: E-CULTURE FAIR 2010
Dortmunder U – Centre for Art & Creativity
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
D-44137 Dortmund
Germany

The book launch is part of the BALTAN Laboratories international Future of the Lab presentation at the E-CULTURE FAIR 2010.