Futurefarmers wants you!!

Deadline for Submissions: June 25th, 2010
When: Aug. 18, 2010 Noon – 5pm; Aug. 19, 2010 3 pm – 8pm
Where: Walker Art Center, Flatpak House
What: A two-day workshop with a core group of
art and design students building “Voice Boxes”.
Who: An amazing group of artists working with Futurefarmers on A People without a Voice Cannot Be Heard

Within the context of the Walker’s summer program, Open Field, which encompasses issues around “the commons,” Futurefarmers will be programming several events around theme of “voice” as a commons. We are looking for Minneapolis-based artists/builders to lead this workshop. We are leaving “voice box” open to interpretation. The first day will be a more intensive building workshop with a core group of design students (max 15) and the second day will be open to the public. This is a free Thursday at the Walker, so there is heavy foot traffic with many kids and people who would love to build or contribute something, so preparing some simple aspect of participation for this day is key.

More information: www.futurefarmers.com/buildingavoicebox; www.walker.org/openfield
Commission: $500

Please send

• Name
• Address
• website
• email
• 250 word description of workshop
• rough schedule of the two days: noon-5pm
• link(s) to any previous work or 5 jpgs 72 dpi of related work

To: info@futurefarmers.com

Medialab-Prado's digital facade in Madrid (Spain)

Open Up

Medialab-Prado
Plaza de las Letras (Alameda, 15)
28014 Madrid, Spain
Phone: +34 914 202 754
Contact: Nerea Garcia
difusion@medialab-prado.es
http://www.medialab-prado.es/article/open_up

Call for projects

Open Up is a workshop for the development of projects for the digital facade in Medialab-Prado’s building. This call is addressed to the presentation of proposals to be developed during the workshop-seminar taking place in Madrid from February 9 through 23, 2010.

• Guidelines and project submission form
• General information about Media(nera)Lab plataform
• Technical Information on the Digital Facade of Medialab-Prado

Deadline for projects

December 10, 2009

Dates of the workshop

February 9 through 23, 2010

Worskhop tutors

Jordi Claramonte, Chandler McWilliams, Casey Reas, and Víctor Viña. Directed and coordinated by Nerea Calvillo.

Description

Until now, urban screens and digital facades have been greatly developed technically, but its contents, which are usually produced by advertisement agencies and occasionally artists, have been created, in many cases, during closed processes.

Open Up suggests opening the processes of content production and explores collaborative systems of interaction and creation related to the digital facade (and therefore, public space). This production can move among its different levels of intensity and development and can vary between two working environments: the platform for collective creation and its collective activation.

Aiming to create a platform of expression through the screen, the first is oriented towards involving collectives in the elaboration of contents by creating working groups or other participation strategies. The second is centred in producing tools for the collective reception and activation of the contents that appear in the screen. We need to consider that in both cases the participation can be stable, but also instant, invisible, multiple or disperse.

Depending on the cases, chosen projects should include the creation of strategies for participation, the development of the platform, the format for its visualization in the screen and the protocols for its activation. Also, the projects will need to define the context: the Plaza de las Letras, the neighbourhood”s local environment or the city of Madrid. The physical and/or virtual participation will be identified considering all these factors.

Projects presented in this call will have to explore one of the following aspects:

• Proposals referring to the development of strategies for public participation, during any of the project”s phases.
• Proposals that encourage ways to activate urban space through the screen.
• Proposals that favour a stronger public visibility of agents that normally have none.
• Prosals that visualize public collectives.
• Proposals that develop new ways to activate and interact with the screen among users and portable devices such as cell phones, videogames, lasers, etc.
• Proposals that include emerging systems and processes that allows this project to evolve and change through time.

Workshop, HelloWorld!: Contemporary stage creation and new technologies

Yesterday, I had to the opportunity to drop in on Medialab-Prado, the innovative organization in Madrid behind Interactivos?, among many other outstanding programs, which the 01SJ Biennial will collaborate with in September.

The Medialab was in the midst of a two-weekend workshop program, HelloWorld!: Contemporary stage creation and new technologies, and the energy in the room when I walked in was contagious. This kind of open lab program is a hallmark of Medialab-Prado’s programming, and the 60 or so people packed in for a series of evening performances and talks only highlighted their community-based strength.

One thing I was suprised to see was a new 40,000 pixel LED screen at Medialab-Prado.

New urban screen, Medialab-Prado

The screen is not yet functional, and you can see that it is in a very close-quarters situation. It will be interesting to see how Medialab-Prado uses this new “venue” with its commitment to open platforms and process.

Medialab-Prado is on a quiet street between the Prado and Reina Sofia museums, around the corner from a new and quite beautiful Caixa Forum center, which includes a different kind of urban screen, what zelen.bg, the “portal site for gardening in Bulgaria,” calls the “last vertical garden of Patrick Blanc.” It’s stunning and forms a fascinating bookend with the new Medialab-Prado screen.

Vertical garden by Patrick Blanc outside Caixa Forum Madrid.

Led by Ann Hamilton and Michael Mercil
June 14-30, 2009
http://www.arch.wustl.edu/Summer_Programs

Saint Louis Art! Revolution is a three-week experimental field lab and collaborative workshop at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Participants will examine issues of place and site, history and memory, materiality and construction, sound and motion, through parallel, in-depth investigations into three historically significant sites in St. Louis: the Cahokia Mounds, the Gateway Arch and Archgrounds, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Our investigations will form the basis for collaborative interpretive project exploring varied media and forms—emphasizing the archaeology, history, culture, ecology, and fictional aspects of the metropolitan St. Louis landscape.

The workshop is open to students and professionals with backgrounds across the fields of art, architecture, design, landscape architecture, urban design, and the humanities and natural sciences. Rising seniors, post-BFA or B.Arch, MFA, M.Arch, M.L.A. students, as well as practitioners in these fields are welcome to apply.

“SAINT LOUIS ART! REVOLUTION, wherever we are it will be.”

http://www.arch.wustl.edu/Summer_Programs