This is the title of a publication which covers essays linked with a workshop or more precisely a joint project of KHLim’s Media & Design Academy and art centre Z33, which took place about a year ago at Z33 and is contentwise concted with the MDA research project Hybrid City & the exhibition Place@Space (re) shaping everyday life. 
Unfortunatelly I could not make it at the time, therefore I was happy to read the essays. Editors Rosanne Van Klaveren and Niels Hendriks asked some participants to write a text about (digital) art and hybrid spaces. There is an article about CREW, and Maja Kuzmanovic (FoAM) reflects on an (changing) types of conversation in a networked society, but especially the articles of Eric Kluitenberg (Public Agency in Hybrid Space - In Search for new forms of public engagement) and Anne Nigten (Doctors have to deal with Aesthetics) drew my attention.
Kluitenberg argues that due to the fragmented landscape of hybrid media, society is changing. I like his metaphore of the ‘warm publics’ which are highly unstable and temporary constellations, mostly organised against subjects.He highlights that the there is a question that is largely left unaddressed: what with the engagement of a wider public in social and political processes? taking into account the technological changes. Discussions take place on different levels and in different spaces at the same time. We have to face a multi-dimentional public space.
Nigten investigates in her paper the way interactive media-art and electronic art is communicated. She looks at it in its broadest sense and illustrates this with two case studies. One investigates engaged interaction with the audience in such a way that virtual and physical environments mix or support each other. Cultuur Lokaal took place in Gouda and looks at new opportunities for collaboration with (in) formal local networks. It’s a collaboration between the Waterwolf laboratories (Haagse Hogeschool lectoraat Society and ICT by Dick Rijken and three cultural institutions in Gouda) and The Patchingzone student team in The Netherlands. The evaluation process confirmed that the proces of patching knowledge and methodologies from diffrerent knowledge fields in a kind of smooth, remix fashion is actually a specialism in its own right.
As the editors note in the afterword that the power of the corporeal presence in any kind of space should not be underestimated (…) Virtual elements are able to strengthen but also to alienate this spatial perception.
Preservation, digitalisation and accessibility of (audio) visual and paper/book heritage were the keywords about two weeks ago. Monday 9 June I a had an interesting discussion about the topic at the Universty Library in Ghent (as part of the research project I’m running for the Antwerp Academy/University Antwerp), and the next day it was the central theme of a workshop organised by the participants of the research project BOM-VL (Bewaring & Ontsluiting van Multimedia in Vlaanderen) at VUB.
The challenges highlighted during the workshop cross with the small research project as there are: which formats should be used when digitalizing, which quality of digitalisation needs to be used according to the purpose of the digitalized work, what about metadata and what about (re) production rights when opening up content to the wider public? How does these challenges work within collaborations between different types of organisations?
4 examples/ 4 speakers explained how they dealt (or tried to deal) with these challenges. Their projects are more than interesting to have a look at. Paul Gerhardt, running at present an independent consultancy named Archives for Creativity, works with public broadcasters and archives in the UK and the US. It was said to hear though that most of the BBC creative archive is off line now and that the project is on hold at the moment…but the idea has spread over the UK and the US now. Tobias Golodnoff is project director of the Dansk Kulturarv. I particularly liked their Bonanza project, in which they invited the public to participate in the preservation project just by voting which material should be digitalized in the first phase of the project. Marius Arnesen, working for the R&D division of the Norwegian Public Broadcast company, gave an overview of experiments with new media on the Internet using their content. Who has not received through facebook or other social network channel the hilarious clip on the medieval helpdesk. And last but not least Geert Wissinck and Johan Oomen, both working as researchers for the Duch images of the Future – project, gave an insight in the challenges while making audio-visual cultural heritage available to a wider public, save that heritage for the future and make room for innovation as well as research on the process. I’m particularly curious how the education pilot will run, a platform, combining different sources and offering teachers the possibility to use the resources to prepare their educational material for class.
The whole session has been filmed so I guess it will soon available on the web somewhere. Maybe check Cultuurlab or the e-cultuur blog?
door de drukte even aan mijn aandacht ontsnapt, maar het verslag en een weergave van de presentaties van de conferentie Cultuur in een netwerksamenleving staan sinds april online bij Cultuurlab-SMIT.
Brandpunt 23 bestaat 10 jaar. 10 sociale fotografie wordt gevierd met een overzichtstentoonstelling die vorige donderdag opende in ontmoetingscentrum Sint Andries. Zeker de moeite om even bij stil te staan. Vrijdagnamiddag had er dan een colloquium plaats rond ‘armoede en cultuur”. Alles is gebaseerd op wederzijds respect en vertrouwen. Er zijn gedurende die 10 jaar al heel wat stappen gezet, maar het thema van vrijdag geeft aan er nog een hele weg te gaan is. Spijtig genoeg kon ik zelf niet blijven tot het einde van het debat, maar op indimedia vind je een interview met de bezielers van Brandpunt 23 en uitgebreid verslag van de studienamiddag .
De genomineerden van de cultuurprijzen voor 2007 zijn gekend. Met deze prijzen bekroont de Vlaamse Gemeenschap persoonlijkheden en organisaties die op een bijzondere manier kleur en uitstraling geven aan de cultuurbeleving in Vlaanderen. Op 4 februari weten we wie er binnen zijn/haar discipline met de prijs naar huis gaat. Vanaf 21 januari kan ook de cultuurbezoeker stemmen op zijn/haar favoriet.
Maar er worden begin februari nog culturele prijzen uitgedeeld, met name de MIA’s. U hebt de spotjes zeker al zien passeren op één. Het gaat om nieuwe prijzen voor muziek uit Vlaanderen. Een initatief van VRT en Muziekcentrum Vlaanderen dat het brede publiek en vertegenwoordigers uit de muzieksector laat beslissen naar wie de prijzen gaan. Het project loopt vanaf januari op verschillende VRT-netten en eindigt met een speciale tv-uitzending op 1 februari op Eén.
En last but not least zijn er, niet echt in de kunstensfeer maar toch een fijn moment in de blogosfeer … net zoals vorig jaar, de Bwards (Belgian Blog Awards). Zes weken lang krijgt blogminnend en bloggend België de kans om te stemmen op zijn/haar favoriete blog. Meer nieuws over de uitreiking volgt later.
Kortom stemmen maar beste publiek op prijzen 1, 2, 3 !
