The last semester Baltan continued the work on the action plan for the Eindhoven region, focusing on closing the gap from concept to implementation for artistic and concept driven projects. Baltan is developing a ‘TRL (technology readiness level) inspired framework’ for this. Next to the development of the action plan we launched a video on arts and ICT collaboration projects and organized the ICT meets the Arts event exploring the role of the arts in our technological society.
Image: DANCEDEMIC performance by Razvan Stoian, presented by Ellen Pearlman in her lecture for the ICT meets the Arts event.
Action plan and TRL-inspired framework
With the action plan for the Eindhoven region, Baltan is focusing on those projects, organizations and makers who are operating on the intersection of Arts and ICT. We are convinced that there is major potential in these projects for our society in all sorts of domains: for humanizing technology, artistic visions on urban planning and sparking new ideas to climate change measures to name a few. With the action plan we are aiming at acknowledging this potential in policies and implementing projects and policies that support these arts/ICT projects on their way towards implementation in society.
For this Baltan is working together with a group of Local Stakeholders with whom we discuss the progress and developments on the action plan. In the latest Local Stakeholders Group meeting in September, we discussed the latest developments with: Manifestations, Sioux, Venturespring, Eindhoven 365 and Dutch Design Foundation.
Video
We launched a short video to introduce the RegionArts project and showcase a specific arts/ICT project: Fabricating Alternatives. For this project, design studio Imagination of Things, together with Baltan, developed a toolkit that helps you to for radical ideas and provoking questions around any topic you and your team are exploring.
ICT meets the Arts event, with Douglas Rushkoff and Ellen Pearlman
On the 24th of November, Baltan presented the ICT meets the Arts event. ICT meets the Arts is a series of events wherein the RegionArts consortium presents projects lining arts and ICT and activities that bridge the gap between the two sectors.
Luis Ferreira presented his project that unfolds a data-driven generative-design tool to find new purposes for the use of public data collected by public sensors at Stratumseind in Eindhoven. Dr. Ellen Pearlman presented her practice. Her work revolves around the question: Can Artificial Intelligence truly understand humans? In het projects she connects brainwave activity, emotion detection, pattern recognition and machine learning to stretch the boundaries between technology and human perception. The last speaker was Douglas Rushkoff. He argued that technology is slowly but surely shifting our world towards a society in which everything is controlled, predicted and quantized. He sees a role for the arts to create paradoxes, to take back reality and reclaim it for ‘Team Human’.
The presentations were followed with a live Q&A and discussion with the speakers on zoom.
You can watch the lectures by Ellen Pearlman and Douglas Rushkoff on our YouTube channel.
Full report of the event here
Next steps
In the next semester we will finalize the action plan. Also, we aim to test the TRL-inspired framework in a small pilot. We will focus more and more on possibilities to implement the RegionArts action plan. Next semester is the last semester of phase I of the RegionArts project. From June 2021 on we will move into the second phase of the project focused on monitoring the implementation of the action plan.
About RegionArts
The Interreg Europe program RegionArts aims to promote collaboration between art and ICT and how policy can contribute to this. Each partner will deliver a policy advise with recommendations to enhance art and ICT collaborations in its own region. The consortium consists of partners from: Italy, Croatia, Finland, Portugal, Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands. Within RegionArts, Baltan Laboratories focusses on the Noord-Brabant/Eindhoven region.
Related links:
Report ICT meets the Arts event
RegionArts project
Fabricating Alternatives