[spectre] Workshop participation: Mobile Troops - Urban Jungle

[Erich Berger]

hello andreas,

yes, in the light of war the intended irony becomes cynical.
its quite a while since i decided for the title (and stuck with it).
though back then there were wars going on as well, but maybe not new
enough to be served 24/7 like the latest conflict.

sometimes awareness slips away and painfully kicks in again.

about politics: the political aspects of the tools and media are part of 
the workshop. its simply not possible to do such a workshop without
the political context.

regards

erich



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http://randomseed.org

On Tue, 8 Aug 2006, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:

> 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.
>
>