[spectre] Workshop participation: Mobile Troops - Urban Jungle

[Andreas Broeckmann]

hi erich,

i fail to see the irony in your title and find it, in fact, rather 
cynical, because i cannot believe that you are that naive.

the 'artistic' tools that this workshop will deal with are the very 
communication tools that, at this very moment, armies and mercenaries 
in iraq, lebanon, chechnya, afghanistan and elsewhere, in cities, 
jungles and deserts are using in their military business. not to 
speak of all different types of organised crimes, real piracy, etc.

this is not an argument about how artists should be aware of the 
economic, military, political or whatever context from which the 
technologies they use derive. it is an argument about the 
distastefulness of calling such a workshop that pretends to be 
utterly unpolitical 'mobile troops', esp. at a time when everyone is 
watching mobile troops on NTV, CNN, Phoenix, or whatever channel you 
are following the current wars on. - personally, i also think that 
you cannot escape from these military usages in artistic 'locative' 
work, so whenever you switch on you GPS 'for fun' today, you already 
enter, let's say, southern lebanon. (there are gps applications that 
are more utilitarian, of course, but we are talking about artistic 
experimentation in the digital age, aren't we?) but then that might 
be pushing it a bit.

regards,
-a



>"Mobile troops" ironically points to the fact that we tend to
>increasingly equip us with all kinds of necessary interfaces
>for surviving the urban jungle. The electronic car key is as
>important as mobile phone and credit card. Mobile troops
>is a workshop about media art which is mobile,
>(possibly) networked, and experimenting with new ideas
>and artistic concepts.