[Spectre]Open Source Meeting

[Redazione Digicult]

Sorry for any crosspostings

Digicult presents:

OPEN SOURCE MEETING
Fondazione Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci - Perugia
October 10, 2008
10am-1pm / 4pm-7pm
Le Arti in Citta festival
http://test.leartiincitta.it/?q=node/77


Promoted by: Umane Energie and "Flussi" section of festival "Le Arti in 
Citta"
Curated by: Moreno Barboni e Marco Mancuso (Digicult)
Moderated by: Marco Mancuso (Digicult)
With: Graffiti Research Lab, Pier Luigi Capucci, Laura Colini, Umane 
Energie, Confinidigitali


On October 10, the group 'Umane Energie' and the 'Flussi' section of "Le 
Arti in Citta" festival are promoting a seminar called Open Source Meeting 
at the 'Fondazione Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci' in the city of 
Perugia. This is curated by Moreno Barboni and by Marco Mancuso, critic, 
curator and director of Digicult ((www.digicult.it), and will be 
participated by Graffiti Research Lab, Pier Luigi Capucci, Laura Colini, 
Umane Energie and Confinidigitali.

The Open Source Meeting is dedicated to the ever-expanding circulation of 
'open' computer resources and is meant to get territorial subjects, such as 
Confinidigitali and Umane Energie, to meet. Their Beduino open-source 
platform, derived from the international Arduino project, will be the base 
of a 'multimedia park' featuring national and international guests, so as to 
elaborate on and divulge the possibilities of open-source in the domain of 
digital arts and multimedia communication, both from an artistic and 
planning perspective.

Marco Mancuso and Moreno Barboni have therefore imagined a day of lectures 
and seminars, a round table of experts, researchers, curators and artists 
all with different but complementary expertises. This will offer the 
opportunity to reflect over the enormous potential, however mostly unsaid, 
of open digital technologies, their impact on the social, operational and 
political context in which we live, on their interaction with architecture 
and the social spaces in our urban areas and on comprehending their 
emotional impact on our perception of new art forms and creative languages.

Evan Roth and James Powderly are the Meeting's international guests, 
founders of Graffiti Research Lab, for the second time in Italy after their 
first public performance 'Laser Tag', curated by Marco Mancuso in December 
2007 in Rome and projected on the facades of the 'Colosseo' and the 'Cestia' 
pyramid. Graffiti Research Lab is wholly dedicated to developing 
technologies and experimental media to enhance public resources for urban 
communication. GRL have therefore been invited to explain their 
artistic/activist project, to describe their performances in cities round 
the world, to talk about the possible risks and the enormous potential for 
communication that lies behind applying open source technologies to graffiti 
and media art.

Pier Luigi Capucci, critic and professor, deals with communication systems 
and languages and, since the early Eighties, has been investigating the 
relationship between technologies, culture and society and between art 
forms, science and technologies. His task in the Meeting will be to trigger 
the debate around the collective and social impact of open-source 
technologies. The opportunities of choosing and accessing information and 
new tools have, in fact, enabled new possibilities for communicating and 
sharing knowledge extending the awareness of the cognitive, operative, 
social, and political uses of these same tools.

Marco Mancuso is the chairman of the Meeting. Critic, curator and founder of 
Digicult he deals with Digital Creative Media and the relationship between 
images, sound and space within contemporary Audiovisual Art. Focusing on how 
open-source technologies have affected the digital Audiovisual domain by 
showing an overview on the most interesting artistic and creative 
international projects, he will suggest some critical thought around how 
these tools are used, around shared creativity dynamics on the Web, free 
code, and around how ever more intertwined art, design and hyper 
architecture are.
Laura Colini, researcher at the Bauhaus University in Weimar in the 
department of Architecture, Media and Urban Sociology, will focus on 
technologies and participated city-making projects. She will describe the 
concept of participation in urban planning confronting it with the 
participation to the city entailed by ITC practices. A sort of 
shared-practices taxonomy to city-making, called ICT spatial practices, that 
allows to build up critical thinking and awareness around the urban theme of 
collective planning.

Lastly, the collaboration between Confini Digitali and Umane Energie that 
has lead to 'Beduino', an open-source electronic device meant to develop 
interactive, artistic installations. It features audio controls, sensor 
interfaces, led and motor controls. Slightly bigger than a packet of 
cigarettes Beduino, based on the more famous 'Arduino' hardware/software, 
can be used without having to write any code by those who are not 
necessarily computer geeks. It can be used as a real-time audio and video 
controller, as a MIDI control, it is useful for interactive installations, 
to control led lights, robotic controls and much more.

PROGRAM

10:00 Moreno Barboni: introduction and greetings
10:15 Marco Mancuso: opening and lecture
10:45 Pier Luigi Capucci: lecture

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11:30 Umane Energie: lecture
12:00 discussion
13:00 closing

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16:00 Marco Mancuso: introduction
16:15 Laura Colini: lecture
16:45 Confini Digitali: lecture

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17:30 Graffiti Research Lab: lecture
18:00 discussion
19:00 closing

ABSTRACTS

:::Graffiti Research Lab:::
:::The L.A.S.E.R. Tag payload:::

The New York artists and media activists GRL, will introduce their tool for 
digital urban graffiti: the L.A.S.E.R. Tag. The Mobile Broadcast Unit (MBU) 
with L.A.S.E.R. Tag payload is an open-source Weapon of Mass Defacement 
(WMD) designed to enable graffiti writers, artists, activists and citizens 
to communicate in the urban environment on the same scale as advertisers, 
corporations and governments. MBUs provide 1200 watts of audio and 5000 
lumens of video projection capability mounted on an industrial work 
tricycle. The L.A.S.E.R. Tag payload allows individuals to write their own 
personal communications and expressions with a 60 milliwatt green laser on 
industrial facilities, monuments, towers, bridges, city skylines and other 
hard and soft targets of interest. The design and custom software for the 
MBU and L.A.S.E.R. Tag payload has been released open source, without 
copyright or patent, into the public domain. Hobbyists, hackers and other 
private citizens are encouraged to freely use, modify and release their own 
MBU/L.A.S.E.R. Tag designs. Units currently exist in NYC, Mexico City, 
Barcelona, Austria and Taipei. In NYC the MBU can be "checked-out" for free 
from the G.R.L. resource library and arsenal for use by interested parties. 
Advertisers need not apply.

:::Marco Mancuso:::
:::Audiovideodrome: on the open source contemporary audiovisual art, design 
& hyper architecture:::

Audiovisual Art, the ability to create works of art - may they be narrative 
or abstract - by using sounds and images, has undergone a strong innovative 
phase in the last years. Within the larger context of 'new media art' it has 
found for itself an all-purpose role which is certainly more complex and 
multi-faceted, going beyond performances and installations. Progress in 
technology, open-source hardware and software, have eased the management of 
real-time audiovisual flows. Thus, contemporary Audiovisual Art seems to be 
today some sort of borderline area which includes pure creative and artistic 
expression, but also experimentation and design. A critical attitude towards 
this phenomenon in analyzing online shared creativity, free code and an ever 
more intertwined relationship between art, design and hyper architecture 
allows to observe how the concept of space reflects the existence of a fluid 
place/non-place to be explored, an element for design, a material and 
immaterial universe to be confronted with as it redefines the relationship 
of modern man and the new multimedia scapes surrounding him.

:::Pier Luigi Capucci:::
:::Open Cultures:::

The Opens Source diffusion opened up new options and chances to access the 
information and new devices. It activated new opportunities in knowledge's 
communication and sharing and it expanded the awareness of the cognitive, 
operative, social and politic use of these instruments. Open Source also 
imposed a reflection on the software in general as a tool which, although 
immaterial, has a real, economic value which can't be ignored in the 
information age. In the arts, in several realms and disciplines, many 
artists embraced the Open Source philosophy and practice, creating artworks 
which expand their power both at the poetics level and increasing the 
artworks' flexibility and sharing, hence enlarging the extent of the 
artistic discourse

:::Laura Colini:::
:::Reflecting on ICT participated spatial practices and city making:::

Given the breakdown of defences against information glut, an awareness of 
how we use, act and interact through modern digital technology is becoming 
critical. Global trends and symbolic economy shape the production and 
distribution of a large variety of modern tools that use similar ways to 
communicate via text, audio, video. As a result, the creative digital 
communicative syndrome tends to sedate the question of "how and why" we act 
together and represent and shape our cities and lived space through digital 
media. Beyond the many definition of cities, I assume that cities are site 
of collective spatial practices and discursive processes, procedures and 
codified protocols leading to social, economic, material and cultural 
transformations. The purpose of this intervention, is to engage in 
reflecting on the processes of city-making analysing the benefits, pitfalls, 
and trade-offs of the combination of spatial practices with ICT. In 
particular, the parameters adopted to discern and categorize such practices 
is their capacity to empower local communities and to engender citizens 
participatory. I argue that the variety of social media, PPGIS, 
participatory video making and the latest resource on the web, -which have a 
strong emphasis on spatial related practices- could be analyzed according to 
their capacity to stimulate directly or indirectly socially and politically 
transformative approaches to city making. In order to validate the 
importance of studying the interdependency of ICT, social interaction and 
urban planning, I will refer to the selected research and case studies 
looking at their capacity of engendering truly participative processes, 
trying to unveil their limits, rhetoric, and visible/invisible power 
interests.

:::Umane Energie e Confinidigitali:::
:::Beduino presentation:::

Confini Digitali e Umane Energie present Beduino, an open source instrument, 
designed to simplify the process of creating electronic based art projects. 
It can be used for music controllers, VJ controllers, MIDI instruments, 
dance triggers and body suits, interactive installations, driving LEDs, 
motor and robotic controls and much more... It is based on the well-known 
Arduino platform, and 100% compatible with it, but intended to be used even 
without writing a single line of code. Beduino comes with a MaxMsp patch, 
possible and free to use with all major operating systems