-los magazine | #5 | konturlos

#5

konturlos

“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”

Oscar Wilde

–los magazine #5 MMXXI Berlin cover image by João Manuel Miranda

KONTURLOS by -los magazine p. 6-7

THE NET BLVD

by Dana Barale Burdman p. 8-15

EU RHETORIC

by João Manuel Miranda p. 16-27

KNOWLEDGE, ACCESSIBILITY, DEMOCRACY AND THE “NEW/OLD SCHOOL”

by Marinos Koutsomichalis p. 28-37

THE WIFI IMPRESSIONIST

by Richard Vijgen p. 38-41

PRINT PUNCH

by Patrick Fry p. 42-49

5 FRAGEN... an Angelika Hinterbrandner p. 50-55

KONTURLOS

konturlos

by –los magazine

The nature of information is to provide facts based on independent sources and research.

Given the wide variety of tools to obtain it, the notion of information is notoriously confused.

It is widely accessible and uncontrolled at the same time.

The amount of information is so significant that its recipients start to act selective, superficial. Often reducing the input to minimum, not assimilating any details. Choosing fast news platforms over reliable information based on expertise and research. This influences the creative fields on many levels - on one hand promoting standardised aesthetics, everyone would like, on the other - making arts more egalitarian and giving more access and opportunities to it through open source projects, collectives, new ideas.

How to, however, prove a source of information reliable?

The modern tools help the designers to gather information and analyse it more effectively, improving impacts on social and environmental aspects of planning and creating. They enhance new ways of broadcasting arts and working within a broader scope of artistic mediums of representation.

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The way to approach the mass of information, to make it more efficient within the creative process, might be the next big task for architects, artists and entrepreneurs. To maintain integrity, shape opinions, be able to contribute to sustainable visions, which are based on substantial research and interdisciplinary exchange between sociology, engineering, arts as well as science.

So how to deal with this amount of information, select it, systemise it and apply it in the creative processes?

How to use it to get out of the generated information loop, where the built environment, arts and social science become a repetitive set of solutions?

Best the –los team

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THE NET BLVD

by Dana Barale Burdman

the net blvd

The cabinet of wonders of the XXI century - From collectionism to hyperarchivism The first cabinets where exotic objects were found, collected and exhibited from different parts of the planet appeared in the XVI century. As an atlas, they composed the understanding of the world; a microcosm of all knowledge.

Collecting is a tool that allows you to sort and catalogue the objects that contain our desires, but nowadays it happens in different ways. We are constant collectors of an infinite and saturated flow of information. Due to the increasing technological incorporation, registration is no longer reserved for the extraordinary. Images are the object of consumption of our collections. From the Soane Museum to my Pinterest.

How is reality archived? What are the effects of materiality transformations in the ways of collecting? Is Instagram a way of collectionism?

Social networks are the new iconic repositories that order and categorize the world. Where we expose our digital subjectivity.

Instagram is a collection of us, a network of hyperlinks that build an infrastructure of subjectivity. Matter is no longer a specific set of materials, but a more complex system of languages, knowledge and technologies. It is a more fluid and remixed visual composition.

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the net blvd

From taxidermy to my stories - The real in real time The culture of the archive is produced by memory and destined to remain eternal, but currently, culture is based on the mutable and unstable process: the virtual consists of artificial representations and simulations of the real, in real time. The event is broadcasted in streaming.

Because of the immense flow of information and images in which we are immersed, we prevent the generation of permanent memories. The virtual discards history, because it is destroyed by its instantaneity. The digital medium extinguishes the evolution of time. Time disappears in front of an infinite and accelerated present saturated with information. The real is no longer what can be reproduced, but the reproduced. Everything is replicable, editable, traceable and expandable. The digital medium has relegated the values of materiality and historical awareness to diffusion, immediacy and connection. The self lacks the experience of temporal continuity, fragmenting time into a series of perpetual presents like stories. An Instant succession of events are reproduced, as a continuous and transitory present, that expires every 24 hours. A temporary temporality. Adding stories without historical significance. A history that does not remain in memory. There is no experience of duration or memory.

Culture does not contain historical accounts, it is not linear or chronological, as in the past. They are isolated entities that are linked by relationships.

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the net blvd

Siri´s ritual - The knowledge at your fingertips Old collections were instruments for encyclopaedic knowledge, which allowed the order and classification of the understanding of the world. Collections, therefore, were exploration and conservation instruments that questioned the limits of human knowledge, becoming institutions dedicated to the classification in order to prevent deterioration.

How is knowledge established today?

If previously, a few people selected what needs to be known; today, they have increased the scale of people who have access to knowledge. While museums dissect and freeze their contents, Internet is constantly changing, allowing access of information immediately as soon as it is produced.

Google and its algorithms are the new curator of knowledge. The dictionaries are replaced by these digital tools. They are the new knowledge directories, the new libraries accessible to all. Internet is transformed into a knowledge network, which shapes our way of understanding the world. The fluid memory is archived and consulted online.

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the net blvd

From Colin Rowe to Google - Surveillance image of the self The subject is modelled, registered and tracked by the digital panoptic. The self is quantified in the dark transparency age.

Surveillance devices infiltrate our contemporary environment having the ability to capture, model and control us. The daily landscape is monitored and recorded by urban control systems.

Data is a material that is extracted and collected. Platforms order and process data. They are the trace of our virtual derive. The nomadic artist is constituted through the new sites he visits as the new flâneur. Will the data be what the archaeologists of the future will excavate?

Big data records the intangible layer that covers our exchange with reality. These new infrastructures linked to the territories serve us to rethink the relationship between the world and technology. The digital representation of space replaces physical space. That is, through tools such as Google Streetview and surveillance cameras we can remap the physical context in which we are located. This overlap in the landscape multiplies the way we perceive reality.

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EU RHETORIC

eu rhetoric

by João Manuel Miranda

The present ambiguous time generated a compulsory brainstorming moment regarding the essence of the European mission, its current EU member states, and their own cultural identities. Resulting reflections questioned the representation of Europe, its imaginable translation into content, and the European Union’s future. Focusing on those major guidelines, it revealed to be fundamental to first increase awareness and understanding of the European community status, to then contemplate and (re)think the current momentum as a collective project and community’s union. Consequently, after the introspective phase regarding Europe’s overview, the conclusion was a voluntary willingness to contribute to a renewal approach. To focus on the means of interaction and expression of the current EU nationstates – possibly to be translated into an updated representation.

It is definitely crucial to communicate the EU’s ‘immense potential’, working continuously on evolution, and inspiring the next generations to keep encouraging its goal, promising an even better outcome, and understanding it as a work in progress, possible to greatness.

MRND concentrated on The Image of Europe and EU Iconography developed by AMO, noted as a celebration of the European Union’s accomplishments and an exploration into the EU’s enormous untapped potential. In this way, challenging that precise celebration and the fundamental idea, the EU Rhetoric appeared as a playful direct antitheses approach to EU Iconography. Therefore, one

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of the key points was not only inheriting the adaptability or mutability obtained in the visual design (Barcode) – useful for uncertain or maybe undefined times and periods – but also focusing on the EU member states’ identity. Additionally, it was considered vital to praise the collective. As members and inhabitants being part of a Union, that while operating methodically together as a plural identity, became a (solider) continuous discourse. Definitively, its statement is clear: having its main goal as the celebration of the word and communication through dialogue. Thus, it promotes the intrinsic relation between different perspectives and ways of seeing, creating space for discussion in a debate and interchange that encompass new generations, about a future sometimes uncertain.

Furthermore, centering specifically the main goal as the celebration of the discussion through word by focusing on accurate and wise communication and information. Nowadays, it becomes essential to rethink and point these issues out, due to the massive amount of information that can be easily available.

Sometimes, the general public (involuntary) chooses the fast news broadcasts and platforms, occasionally incorrect or misinforming, over reliable information based on expertise and research.

Unfortunately, this is a recurring state in this indeterminate era, where the volume of content and information / communication is so substantial that it can provoke (and exacerbate) unawareness; aggravating irrationally or unreasonably

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behaviours – sporadically without criteria or intention – that may be shallow and superficial. Besides, due to this condition,

eu rhetoric

it is of most importance to ask ourselves: How to deal with this (tremendous) amount of information? Secondly, which communications should be traced or followed through? How to select the rightful source / intermediary and how to process it? Thanks to the expansive variety of instruments to obtain information, sometimes several communications and matters can be notoriously confused and misleading. Then, it is in the hands of the general public to choose it wisely.

Considering this critical time, EU Rhetoric intends to urge communication and information – by initiating and generating discussion based on research – about, not only the current state (or its ongoing accomplishments, happenings, or events) of the European Union, but also Europe’s representation. Subsequently, EU Rhetoric aims to understand, comprehend, and analyse: AMO / OMA’s Europe’s representations and intentions; it’s core fundamentals and ideas, intending a better outcome. Also, understanding why AMO found Europe’s representations to be ‘mute, limp, anti-modern, and ineffective, in a period mainly dominated by mass and social media. Although MRND (by Rhetoric and other representations) is not addressing anyone in particular, its focus relies on maintaining a continuous illustration stream and additional renovation on representation thoughts; emphasising a continuation of remarkable countless previous AMO’s concepts and ideas (mentioned previously), and contributing to educate not only about the activities or actions but also the origins of the EU among the general public. Since the European community must

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be a matter that concern us, it should be a civic responsibility to be aware of what this implies as citizens and professionals, who select and communicate society’s information. This is not just because this influences collectively the emotional, professional, and creative fields on many levels but also as individuals that dwell an ongoing progress EU community and European society. Plus, Rhetoric reinforces the statement and manifesto developed by AMO on addressing Europe’s representation (at large: its symbols, the visual language of its communiqués, its media presence): The Image of Europe; EU Iconography; EU Exhibition; EU Reflection Group, among others. Desiring to understand the arguments and ideology behind the EU’s enormous untapped potential, the celebration, the desire of a bold bold, explicit, popular European Union – the key idea of further exploration and constant development.

The exemplification and representation of EU Rhetoric is becoming a trigger and persuading a state of awareness in: understanding; discovering; learning; developing opinions / feelings / thoughts for particular situations or settings on both Europe and the European Union, not only history but present and future time. EU Rhetoric doesn’t intend to be art, neither an artistic representation, but to be a motivation tool to inform, research, and analyse information carefully. Likewise, ultimately it can influence creatively someone on various levels, improving and contributing to the crescent exchange of either material and data; impacting others on social and / or environmental aspects of understanding Europe and the European Union. Nevertheless, it does not function as informative content because it does not

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eu rhetoric

provide facts based on independent sources and research, but as a pre matter to it. Thus, the presented representation intends to be a transversal debate through information, where the absence of an image proposes a careful investigation on decoding its message.

Functioning as a moderate provocation on the immense visual content that is nowadays worldwide accessible, while sometimes hysterical and uncontrolled at the same time. Mostly, it intends to persuade everybody to research and maintain a curious intention, a questioning spirit, focused on shaping opinions. Also, to be able to contribute to sustainable visions, which are based on substantial research and exchange between different fields – such as anthropology, architecture, arts, engineering, psychology, science, sociology, among others.

EU Rhetoric doesn’t pretend to answer the question: How is (or should be) Europe represented? Neither does it pretend to be a visual icon that translates the powerful image of the Barcode into words. Just because can be dissected as a deconstructing of it – that functions as a principle for creating new guidelines corresponding to the base of written content. Metaphorically, as a structural ruler component for the word, hence the message.

Significantly, it seeks to ask if our growth and progress as a European society and EU members will be based on dialogue and communication, guided with and through truthful information.

EU Rhetoric intends to function as a dialogue between different perspectives and perceptions. It creates a space for (present and) new generations to express themselves without ever forgetting the importance of those who taught us. Acting as continuous care for decoding words and conversations once created, aiming for a constant understanding, and eager to never cease to communicate

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and connect. Comprehending that, if some parts of the discourse are absent of content – blank spaces –, maybe this should establish an exchange and consider making those connections again, to (re)open that line of thought and words acting towards a unifying principle. Ultimately, EU Rhetoric does not aim to accomplish clarification, only dialogue, hopefully marking new eras in Europe(ean Union) evolution, progression, and prosperity. © MRND EU Rhetoric (V. 31/01/2020) 2019 - ONGOING

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rhetoric südsee, eu palmen, curryurst

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KNOWLEDGE, ACCESSIBILITY, DEMOCRACY AND THE “NEW/OLD SCHOOL”

Knowledge, Accessibility, Democracy and the “New/Old School”

by Marinos Koutsomichalis

When it comes to techno-scientific culture, Data is most certainly the catchword of the last decade. But, what is Data? Well, certainly not some immaterial/unstructured something standing in opposition to contextualised knowledge or applications thereof— even if early cybernetics rushed to celebrate such a view. It is quite explicit nowadays that there is no such thing as disembodied or unstructured information that exists autonomously of a physical reality. Data appears to be always intertwined with the means we rely upon to store, access, process, and use it; these, in turn, define what is possible/easy to do within some situated context and what not. Consider, e.g., that all major data repositories routinely promote particular kinds of content (for profit or other reasons); can we still speak of ‘raw’ data when a library is designed to be this way biased? Certainly not. Data is always already knowledge of some sort and there is no way to deal with it disregarding the particular infrastructures of access that are at play. Cybernetic processes, cultural traits, (intelligent) machines, complex communication protocols, and a concrete physical reality governing the specifics of the former are all requisites for Data to even exist and contribute nonnegligible semantic hues of their own. Data is knowledge; and knowledge is necessarily situated and enactive—that is,

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arising through a dynamic interaction between an agent and its environment.

More simply put, it takes ways to reach it and something to do with it, for knowledge to make any sense at all.

Data is often dealt with as some kind of currency, too. So that the ones who access data acquire power and wealth. This is certainly true enough for stakeholders nowadays to invest astronomical amounts of money to state-of-the-art technologies allowing them better or faster access to data—be it for high-speed stock trading or super-computer driven machine learning. In principle, this is how science, religion, or magic has worked hitherto: access to books, sacred texts, spells, design blue-prints, or patents, did give scholars, priests, freemasons, shamans, prestidigitator, alchemists, and engineers some special status within a society. All the way from antiquity to the era of Big Data, access to knowledge equals power. Still, never before in human history had such a massive quantity of knowledge being readily available to that many, so that Big Data has profoundly transformed the ways we think, do science, listen to music, or do business in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Other things aside, it is evident that we are becoming progressively more dependent upon intelligent machines to make sense of the world. On this construal, accessing and employing knowledge becomes a question that pivots on entirely different technologies of access.

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Knowledge, Accessibility, Democracy and the “New/Old School”

Such technologies can be also employed to redefine of one’s broader material and social environment so that, I believe, they may also accelerate an investigation of individual, collective, and hybrid kinds of selfhood. This might sound a bit convoluted or altogether nonsensical; yet, contemporary trains of thought across several disciplines do meet in that human mind appears to be distributed across our material surroundings. That is to say that chairs, hammers, smartphones, emotions, and complex cultural practices employing them are all sound parts of our intellectual apparatuses—pretty much the same way thought and imagination are. Consider that memorising a number versus storing it to one’s cellphone are kind of the very same mental function—only that in the latter case it is externalised outside the cerebrum. The university analogy makes it easy to conceptualise. Where lies the university? In, e.g., the library, the sports centre, the dormitories, the classrooms, the professors’ offices, the various research labs, or the administration building?

A increasingly more popular answer among scholars is that it lies on the dynamic and emergent cross-interactions between

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the above. In this sense, a mind is always embodied, distributed, in-process and in-the-making. It, literally, is what it does—so that knowledge is necessarily embedded to a broader out-there and the ways in which we can access it. On this construal, enactive ecosystems can become experimental playgrounds wherein the making of individual and social mind/selfhood may be (creatively) investigated.

Consider Inhibition, a four years old project of mine pivoting on prototype wearable technology (a headset for neurofeedback and algorithmic sound synthesis). In another lifetime I could have simply exhibited the result as a valuable art-object the technological specifics of which would remain forever disclosed.

Instead, I set out a much more ambitious project drawing on exactly those specifics and the ways in which they may be accessed by the general public. Through a dedicated website and, most importantly, leading a series of situated workshops, Inhibition became a meeting place for makers, artists, scientists, hackers and creative technologists that (co-)produced individuated headsets under my guidance, exhibited them alongside my original prototype, and collectively improvise with me in front of living audiences. In this fashion, I have initiated a creative interlocking with realworld audiences and employing certain technologies of access.

Over the last ten years I have realised several similar DIWO (do-it-with-others) projects.

They all pivot on creative ways to fuse artistic research with education, hands-on audience participation, community-

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driven technological/material experimentation, DIY making, open-sourcing, and co-design. They all seek to demystify and

Knowledge, Accessibility, Democracy and the “New/Old School”

to democratise knowledge and to promote what I understand as ‘post-selfhood’—that is, erasing oneself in a broader hybrid that attains own agency.

This particular take on DIWO echoes John Dewey, the ideas of who I find as fresh as ever even if expressed more than a century ago. Dewey altogether rejects that knowledge can be transmitted.

He suggests that it is only possible to practice it via studying with people and objects (rather than producing studies of them). He advocates that the cornerstone of a democratic society is a handson learning-by-doing kind of education that prioritises creativity over excellence or reward. (Ingold’s book on the reference list in the end is also a great introduction to Dewey). Similar views have been (more or less independently) expressed by a few other scholars throughout the 20th century, and have been put to practice in a few cases. E.g., at the dawn of the 20th century with Escuela Moderna, founded by Catalan anarchist Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia in Barcelona and by followers of his in New York, or

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with the so-called “Reggio Emilia” approach in post-WWII Italy. The keyword is always the same: Democracy. Accessible technological experimentation necessitates an adequate enactive ecosystem—a (micro-)democracy of persons, things and processes alike. So how establish one?

Even if theoretical debates span a few millennia, its is quite straightforward to understand what it takes to have a Democracy of persons. From a very pragmatic point of view, one simply has to realise that co-existing does require that we are all willing to live alongside people that we do not always or necessarily understand, agree, or get along with. All the rest pretty much arise naturally from there: respect one another and their take on things, act/express oneself freely to the extend that others are not suppressed, be open to have one’s views and life changed as it goes, and so on. Obviously this is not the easiest thing to implement in substantially sized societies; yet, given some concrete real-life experience, it is quite straightforward to achieve in a DIWO workshop context. Establishing a Democracy of things and processes is an altogether different affair; largely because we are so used to regarding nonhumans as inferior ‘things’ upon which we exercise control, that it takes lots of effort passing them ‘rights’ whatsoever. Still, they are equipotent actors in a creative/ design process and they certainly exercise agency of their own in many pragmatic respects. (By the way, the view of material ‘things’ as legitimate actors has been concretely brought forth

by Bruno Latour in the 80s, spawning a number of very topical ‘new materialisms’ across contemporary philosophy and social sciences.) Consider everyday life the way it now unfolds in some first or second world society. I have personally spent months

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Knowledge, Accessibility, Democracy and the “New/Old School”

witnessing my entire professional and social life diminishing to simply accessing/processing information with a laptop or smartphone. This is certainly not a Democracy of objects! And even if I do, indeed, access a very broad array of content, I am essentially doing so utilising the very same object: an LCD screen with a rather limited touch-responsive interface.

My world is confined to its material affordances alone. That’s certainly not the way I want to spend my life. I want out of this techno-solutionist bubble! Out of the generated information loop.

So how escape oscillating between the very same ways of knowing, ways of listening, ways of seeing, ways of being?

My particular way out is what I now call the “New/Old School” (hence on, N/OS): a very conscious ‘hybridise-or-die’ attitude in my professional and everyday life. Rather than allowing older or seemingly irrelevant media/paradigms to withdraw in obsolesce, I try re-introducing them in my life to ever-further complex remediation loops. (Some overlapping with Media Archaeology— that is, the systematic study of new and emerging media through close examination of past, often dead, ones—is apparent herein, of course.) As far as my recent artistic practice is concerned, a N/OS approach is evident throughout. Hyperstition Bot mingles construction materials (concrete and steel chicken wire) with DIY electronics, evolutionary data retrieval, digital audio/video mashups, and AI-generated poetry that is printed on paper strips in real-time—note that the core idea could be much more easily implemented with just a laptop. Then, Sāk vitt ok vītt of verold hverja concerns pretty much everything from audio recordings

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of whale calls, to knitting with Faroese sheep’s wool, to cooking, to interviewing fishermen, and to DIY electronic instruments for multimedia performance.

The N/OS is certainly not a manifest or anything like that; it is more of a natural trait of my generation that I have decided to further invest upon. I have always ascribed to both the analogue and the digital, the vintage and the emergent, the old the new—not through some oppositional lenses or as alternating fashion trends, but rather in terms of playful interplays and accidents. Before I turn 20, I had already indulged in crafting cut-up mixes of radio recordings in cassettes, reading zines, mail-exchanging things, developing B&W negatives, soldering toy amplifiers, overdubbing Guitars in 4-track recorders, watching Taskovsky and Bergman in VHS, listening to LPs in wrong speed, but also using DOS/ POSIX command line prompts, playing games in Ataris/Amigas, backing up Data in floppy disks (I was even planning to buy that magnetic tape driver for larger backups, but missed the chance), accessing BBS across a dial-up modem connection, applying non-real-time digital filters to audio recordings of domestic power-tools (that would typically take a couple of days to only export silence), and writing small programs in QBasic, Common Lisp, or C. The N/OS is nothing more than trusting my particular coming of age that, luckily enough, seems to set out a hybrid, distributed and paradigm-agnostic way to be. I just allow my material surroundings to bring forth new narratives and ways of

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knowing and, accordingly, to reformulate and to

Knowledge, Accessibility, Democracy and the “New/Old School”

repurpose me—not so much surrendering agency, but rather realising that agency was never mine to have, so why not let go? It is quite fun actually.

So I am very open to loose myself in all kinds of topical, not so topical, and not at all topical objects/paradigms out there. I spend a great deal of my life totally immersed in contemporary computer-oriented culture, of course—in the (not always) good company of a number of programming languages and frameworks, NTS radio, YouTube, Instagram, emacs, terminal emulations, pdf books, academic e-journals, and the likes. I also share a great deal of my life with other interesting things/media. I buy real books, comics and magazine in many different languages some of which I do not even understand—why not? In the end of the day it turns out that, much more often than not, the things we do not understand shape us much more deeply than those we do.

I listen to LPs, CDs, and shortwave radio (no cassettes thought, I have had enough of that in the 90s) and use radio scanners to tune in haphazard (amateur) radio communication and parasitic noises. I practice Japanese calligraphy, keep my own sourdough cultivation, tinker with electronics, collect stones, different kinds of soil, and other objects that I find interesting to touch, and I sharpen regularly my handmade Shirogami Steel knife on a fine waterstone (I’m somehow obsessed with the idea of a knife so sharp that could literally cut through Space itself! But that’s properly too much for the reader to follow). I want to share my life with objects that have their own unique and weird personalities,

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and I trust them teach me new ways of being in this world. Being an artist, magic is rather abundant in my life as I often find myself surrounded by the weirdest outworldish fucked-up kinds of hybrids: AI pipelines, and pieces of lava, and non-sensical 3D printed artefacts, and temperature measurements, and recorded fish migration patterns, and esoteric programming languages, and awful smells, and beautiful noises,… Not finding a better way to conclude, I think I will just leave here a few photos of what’s around me as I’m writing these lines—that pretty much sums it all up.

Further reading 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Avrich, P. (2014). The modern school movement: Anarchism and education in the United States. Princeton University Press.

Bolter, D., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding new media. MIT Press.

Edwards, C. (1993). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Ingold, T. (2017). Anthropology and/as Education. Routledge.

Koutsomichalis, M. (2016). From music to big music: Listening in the age of big data.

Leonardo Music Journal. MIT Press.

Koutsomichalis, M. (2020) Rough-hewn Hertzian Multimedia Instruments. In Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, pp 619-624.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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Koutsomichalis, M. (2020) Technology as the means to democratic, participatory and community-oriented practices in museums.

In Free/Libre Technologies, Arts And The Commons Unconference Proceedings (Nicosia, CY).

Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press.

Malafouris, L. (2013). How things shape the mind. MIT press.

Parikka, J. (2013). What is media archaeology?.

John Wiley & Sons.

5 FRAGEN...

5 fragen...

an Angelika Hinterbrandner

Angelika Hinterbrandner (* 1992) studierte Architektur an der TU Graz und der Chinese University of Hong Kong. Sie arbeitete u. a. bei MVRDV, Buchner Bründler Architekten und als Projekt- und Studienassistentin an der TU Graz. 2018–19 war Sie redaktionelle Mitarbeiterin bei ARCH+. Seither arbeitet Sie für Brandlhuber+ und studiert parallel Leadership Digitale Innovation an der UdK Berlin. Neben sozialen wie politischen Aspekten der Architektur liegt Ihr Fokus auf aktuellen Tendenzen in Technologie und Kommunikation.

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Digitalisierung: Dystopie / Utopie ein schmaler Grat.

Wie können wir die Utopie wahr werden lassen?

Mir stellt sich primär die Frage, was genau diese (digitale) Utopie ist, oder besser gesagt: Ich verstehe die Frage über Digitalität hinaus. Es geht darum wie wir in Zukunft zusammenleben wollen.

Was sind die gesellschaftlichen, ökologischen und ökonomischen Maximen nach denen wir gesellschaftliches Zusammenleben ausrichten wollen? Wer entscheidet über diese Wertegrundlagen?

Wer hat Mitspracherecht? Die voranschreitende Digitalisierung ist nur ein Teilaspekt eines größeren Diskurses: Wir erleben gerade Krisen in einer überfordernden Schnelligkeit. Einerseits die Generation der Boomer die sich überwiegend in konservative oder abwartende Positionen zurückziehen, andererseits eine junge Generation, die nicht mehr warten kann (und will) und sich aktiv am öffentlichen Diskurs beteiligt. Gruppen und Themen, die in Mainstream Medien bis vor kurzem noch keine große Plattform hatten, schaffen sich ihre eigenen digitalen Netzwerke und organisieren sich: Kinder und Jugendliche (Fridays for Future), BIPoC (#BlackLifesMatter), Frauen (#metoo), etc.

Genau hier beginnt die Umsetzung: Bildet Banden! Die nächsten Schritte müssen meiner Meinung nach in demokratischen Prozessen gemacht werden. Diese müssen so gestaltet sein, dass es möglichst allen Menschen ermöglicht wird, informiert an den Diskursen unserer Zukunft teilzuhaben.

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5 fragen......

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Wo liegen für dich die Potentiale neuer digitaler Design Tools abseits der ökonomisierung von kreativen Schaffensprozessen?

In meiner Idealvorstellung – ich gestehe ich bin Idealistin – ermöglichen uns digitale Werkzeuge in Zukunft freier in der Gestaltungsarbeit zu sein, fundiertere evidenzbasierte Entscheidungen zu treffen und kollaborative Ideen unmittelbar zu testen und umzusetzen. Und nein, ich denke hier nicht an BIM-Kollaboration und die Rigidität der Systeme in denen wir derzeit arbeiten, sondern schon drei Schritte weiter. Zu denken, dass sich dieser Wandel „abseits der Ökonomisierung“ umsetzen lässt, halte ich für naiv und geradezu fatal. Wenn Dinge schneller, effizienter, besser mit digitalen Tools erledigt werden könne, wird sich der Markt diese Tools zu eigen machen. Das tut er im Übrigen bereits (siehe Archilyse). Im Umkehrschluss heißt das: Architekt*innen müssen sich neue Kompetenzen aneignen, um selbst fundiert zu entscheiden, wie sie mit Daten, neuen Tools und Prozessen abseits der klassischen Architekturarbeit arbeiten wollen und/oder ob sie sich ganz neu aufstellen. In diesem Zwang zur Neuausrichtung, was es heißt Architekt*in zu sein, sehe ich das größte Potenzial für die Branche.

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Digital legislation: Wie kann diese aussehen?

Was sollte sie beachten?

Welches Thema haben wir gerade nicht im Blick?

Unter dem Überbegriff Digital Literacy versteht man vereinfacht gesagt die Fähigkeit, sich Wissen durch, über und mit digitalen Medien anzueignen. Digital Literacy stellt somit eine Grundlage der erfolgreichen Teilhabe in einer Gesellschaft dar, die zunehmend von digitalen Medien, Techniken und Prozessen durchdrungen ist. In Zukunft werden wir als Bürger*innen viel bewusster mit Daten umgehen (müssen), als wir das heute tun. Die Einschätzung darüber, ob sich hinter dieser These eine utopische oder dystopische Weltanschauung verbirgt, möchte ich hier ganz bewusst den Leser*innen überlassen.

Was ich gerade in diesem Kontext sehr beobachtenswert finde sind Denkmuster: Das Zeitalter der Digitalisierung ist geprägt von exponentiellen Entwicklungen. Unser Denken ist dagegen geprägt von linearen Verläufen. Sehr viele Themen, die in zehn Jahren unser Leben prägen könnten, haben wir gerade nicht im Blick, weil wir uns die Umbrüche und Veränderungen schlicht nicht vorstellen können, die uns erwarten. Ich versuche zu beobachten, reflektieren und im besten Fall nicht durchzudrehen.

Sich zu informieren und politisch zu positionieren halte ich für unabdingbar, um sich an aktuellen und kommenden Entwicklungen beteiligen zu können.

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5 fragen......

4

Wenn ich vor fünf Jahren schon gewusst hätte, dass...

… ich lande wo ich derzeit stehe, hätte ich alles und nichts anders gemacht. Ich arbeite gerade in einer Schnittstellenposition, die mich sehr erfüllt. Wenn ich gefragt werde, was ich mache, kann ich keine richtige Antwort – im Sinne einer klassischen Stellenbeschreibung – geben. Irgendwas zwischen Inhalt, Research und Kommunikation, sehr 2020 würde ich sagen.

Ich verstehe mich nicht als Architektin, doch die inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung mit strukturellen, gesellschaftlichen und digitalen Themen rund um Raumpolitik sind mein Ding. Warum funktioniert unsere Welt, wie sie es tut? Was treibt Menschen an? Die systemischen Fragen, die mich beschäftigen lassen sich problemlos auch aus einer anderen Perspektive, als der der Architektur stellen. Ich bin also vielmehr gespannt wo ich in 10 Jahren sein werde, als dass ich über die Vergangenheit nachdenke.

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5

.

Eine Empfehlung: die letzte Arbeit, Text den du gelesen hast welchen du Freunden weiterempfehlen würdest.

Nicht der letzte Text, den ich gelesen habe, aber ein Buch, das ich allen Gestalter*innen, die über den Tellerrand von Ästhetik hinausblicken wollen, nur ans Herz legen kann: Are We Human?

Notes on an Archaeology of Design (Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley). Eine Zeitung, die gerade alle meine Freunde von mir in die Hand gedrückt bekommen, ist die Arts of the Working Class #120: The New Serenity. Haltet die Augen offen, die Zeitung zirkuliert auf der Straße!

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THE AUTHORS Patrick Fry Patrick Fry is a graphic designer from London. Patrick founded CentreCentre in 2018, a publishing house that celebrates unexpected collections of art and design. https://patrickfry.co.uk

Dana Barale Burdman

the authors

Dana Barale Burdman is an Architect from Madrid. She has complemented her studies with two international stays at the University of Bath and at TU Delft. The development of projects carried out are positioned within a framework that operates from multidisciplinary exploration through design, research and criticism in the encounter between architecture, contemporary culture production and media studies. Some of her projects have been part of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 in the virtual Spanish Pavilion.

Ig.: @danarch | @danabaraleburdman

Richard Vijgen Richard Vijgen (1982) is an artist and designer whose work focuses on artistic data visualization.

He creates multi-sensorial data experiences that visualize the invisible technological dimensions of reality. His work provides poetical interpretations of data and proposes a dialog between the human perspective and the disembodied world of digital networks, algorithms and wireless communication.

Founded in 2009, Studio Richard Vijgen has been evolving into an experimental practice that explores new technologies, interactions and esthetics to visualize the invisible. Richard Vijgen’s work has been exhibited in and collected by museums and art institutions across the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Barbican Gallery, ZKM, Ars Electronica, Vitra Design Museum and Manifesta 12.

Through his work, Richard Vijgen has collaborated with filmmakers, artists, scientists, academic and commercial organizations to visualize and explore datasets on many topics.

Richard Vijgen is a lecturer at the department of Art Design and Technology at ArtEZ school of Art and Design and frequently serves as a guest lecturer at art schools and universities across Europe and North America. He has received a number of awards and prizes including the Dutch Design Awards, Prix Ars Electronica, European Design Award. Richard Vijgen writes about data visualization and digital culture and has published articles in the Yale Architectural Journal, Volume Magazine, New Challenges for Data Design and the Parsons Journal for Information Mapping.

Studio Richard Vijgen is based in the Netherlands

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João Manuel Miranda Graduated in Architecture from the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra and NTNU (Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet) – Trondheim, Norway; in 2017.

Collaborated between 2016 and 2019 with João Mendes Ribeiro and Luísa Bebiano – Coimbra, Portugal; and with the ateliers: Sanden + Hodnekvam Arkiteker and OAT (Office Andreas Tingulstad) – Oslo, Norway.

Collaborated in 2019 at Anozero – Bienal de Arte Contemporânea de Coimbra, in the organization, production and as an assistant in the workshop / exhibition Finite Existence – Pantheon for Ashes.

Founder, together with Bruno Gil and Martinho Aráujo, and member of the organization team, since 2017, of the CASA (Coimbra Architecture Summer Atelier) workshop.

Professionally aspires to disseminate, represent and contaminate space, experience and matter – through the (multidisciplinary) practice of architecture, curatorial and artistic.

Marinos Koutsomichalis Marinos Koutsomichalis is a media artist, scholar, and creative technologist. His is broadly interested in the materiality of self-generative systems, (post-)digital objecthood, sound, image, data, electronic circuitry, perception, selfhood, and the media/technologies we rely upon to mediate, probe, interact, or otherwise engage with the former. His research and artistic activities reciprocally inform one another by virtue of a mixed method that combines situated creative practice, bespoke software/hardware development, landscape exploration, ethnographic field-work, critical theory, live performance, production residencies, experimental making, and DIWO (Do It With Others) workshopping. In this way, they draw on, and concern, various subareas in arts, humanities, science, technology, philosophy, and design. His artistic corpus is prolific, yet persistently revolving around the same few themes: material inquiry/exploration; self-erasure (in/through performance and production tactics); the quest for post-selfhood (through social, hybrid, and networked practices involving both human and nonhuman actors). He has hitherto publicly presented his work, pursued projects, led workshops, and held talks worldwide more than 250 times and in all sorts of milieux: from leading museums, acclaimed biennales, and concert halls, to industrial sites, churches, project spaces, academia, research institutions, underground venues, and squats. He has a PhD in Electronic Music and New Media (De Montfort University, GB) and a MA in Composition with Digital Media (University of York, GB), has held research positions at the Department of Computer Science in the Norwegian University for Science and Technology (Trondheim, NO) and at the Interdepartmental Centre for Research on Multimedia and Audiovideo in the University of Turin (IT), and has taught at the University of Wolverhampton (Birmingham, UK), the Center of Contemporary Music Research (Athens, GR), and the Technical University of Crete (Rethymnon, GR). He is responsible for more than 25 academic publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings, for more than 15 music albums, and for a book. He is a Lecturer in Multimedia Design for Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology (Limassol, CY) where he co-directs the Media Arts and Design Research Lab.

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