Category Archives: Event

Thermocultures of Memory by D.A Samir Bhowmik 

W E L C O M E  E V E R Y O N E
T O  T H E  L E C T U R E   

Thermocultures of Memory by D.A Samir Bhowmik 

12.04.2019 16.00-17.30 at Aalto Learning Center // Seminar room JUHO (1st floor room 126) 

Memory institutions depend on heating-cooling infrastructures for the long-term preservation and mediation of cultural heritage. The energy-intensive thermal regulation of object and data storage environments is guided by the need to ward off decay and to safeguard computer hardware and operations. Despite the tremendous dependence of memory institutions on thermal regulation, temperature has been regarded as merely metaphorical in media studies (Sterne & Mulvin, 2014; Starosielski, 2014). Digital studies in cultural heritage (Cameron and Kenderdine, 2007) have also bypassed the topic of temperature and humidity as it affects the representation of cultural memory. In fact, there hardly exists any literature on the evolution of thermal cultures of memory institutions even though they might be considered as thermally-dependent media institutions.

This talk explores how thermal infrastructures are entangled with the preservation of cultural heritage in order to show how the latter is linked to the expanding use of energy and the embodied energy of natural resources. Understanding the energetic and material impacts of thermal infrastructures and practices in museums and archives demands us to ask ourselves: What are the origins of temperature control and humidity in memory institutions? How did the superimposition of the thermal cultures of the factory affect the practices of the museum? In addressing these questions, my goal is not only to direct attention to the materialities of thermal practices but also to provoke an ecological approach for the future of the memory institution. Could a re-evaluation of thermal infrastructures and practices shape an ecological institution?

Bio

Samir Bhowmik’s multi-disciplinary art practice deals with contemporary issues in Media, Memory and the Environment. His research at Aalto Media Lab and the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin examines the architectural, infrastructural and energetic entanglements of Cultural Memory. Samir graduated as a Doctor of Arts in New Media from Aalto University, Finland, and holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Maryland, United States. Samir’s current artistic research project “IMAGINARY NATURES: Extractive Media & the Cultural Memory of Environmental Change” is funded by the Kone Foundation (2019-22). His latest infrastructural performance art project ‘Memory Machines’ opened at the Helsinki Central Library in January 2019, as part of the Library’s Other Intelligences project organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute of New York.

 

 

OpenGLAM @Aalto

OpenGLAM @Aalto
Thursday 28.3 at 15:00-17:00 at Aalto Learning Centre, K. floor

Welcome to a meetup about creative reuse of open heritage materials. Get to know the people behind the OpenGLAM community and Open Knowledge Finland and learn about current projects concerning creative use of archives.

The aim of this meetup is to gather Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs) and connect them with heritage lovers, students, professionals and creative people, both in and outside Aalto University and the GLAM community.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/301780357178637/

Preliminary program:

15:00 Presentation of Open Knowledge Finland and OpenGLAM.
Teemu Ropponen, Executive Director, Open Knowledge Finland and Tuomas Nolvi, Planner, Yle Archives

15:20 The making of a massive open online course about Open Digital Cultural Heritage.
Maija Paavolainen, Information Specialist, Helsinki University

15:40 On Returning. The making of a workshop for Post-Digital Archives.
Ksenia Kaverina, Curator for Global Outreach, Aalto University

16:00 Visual Resources Centre as a guide on how to find and how to use visual material.
Marika Sarvilahti, Information Specialist, VRC + Aalto Archives

16:15 News from the field (Open stage)
– Aalto Archives and mass digitization, 5 million pages and 150 000 images in one year.
Tove Ørsted, Photo Archivist, Aalto Archives
– OpenGLAM, next steps. Discussions and networking.

Robert’s Coffee on the first floor serves coffee and refreshments during the event.

The event is open for all! No registration needed.

New Media Doctoral Seminar, February 28

Welcome everyone to the first Media Lab Doctoral Seminar of the year!
On the 28.02.19, at 16.30-19.30, led by Professor Lily Díaz in Learning Centre, JUHO
the doctoral student Heidi Tikka will present her on-going research titled:
Interactions, Materializations – Notes on Doing Artistic Research

In the contemporary landscape of digital, networked media in which new alliances of power, capital and surveillance continuously invent new platforms for their operations, the modes of commodification that they advance increasingly intervene in the most intimate aspects of our lives. My artistic practice has over the years probed these techno-social shifts by questioning how do these forces operate on and reconfigure what we consider our own: the embodied selves and the domains of experience we inhabit.

My research, which is transdisciplinary, practice based artistic research in conversation with a multiplicity of discourses ranging from cinema studies to science studies and new materialism, focuses on human-machine interface as the conceptual-practical site for inquiring into these new forms of embodied and technological intimacy. The central questions I am working on concern the concept of embodiment: how to conceptualize the human body in and through the experimental, heterogenous labours of media art production on one hand and on the other, how to explore and theorize those different convergent sensorial domains that my installations evoke, particularly the entanglements of the aural and the visual with the different forms of tactility.

Pursuing these questions, I will understand my installations as sites of ongoing human and nonhuman labours, and as events that are performed into being in amalgams of interactions and material transformations. I will address these events as materializations, and will inquire into them by producing extensive accounts of the processes in which my installations were developed, produced and exhibited. These narratives also engage in a series of readings of texts that have shaped the becoming of the installations and which continue to be relevant for this retrospective work. However, when writing, I constantly find my work haunted by the question, what does it mean to frame this work as artistic research. How should I make these installations accountable while acknowledging their agency in this process of knowledge production?

Bio

Installation Mother, Child (2000/2011) at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum 2014

Heidi Tikka is an artist-researcher, whose artistic production ranges from experimental cinema and media archaeology to participatory projects and interactive installations. Most recently she has inquired into different configurations of touch, for instance in “Herbarium”(2016), a media art work for a large touch screen interface, commissioned by Espoo Library and situated at the Iso Omena Service Center. Her films and installations have been shown in ISEA and Transmediale, as well as in Finnish Museum of Photography, Kiasma and Wäinö Aaltonen Museum.  She is the recipient of the first national AVEK Media Art Award (2004). Her other activities include writing and curating. In the past she has worked as a production consultant for AVEK (2008-2012) and in different teaching positions in Media Lab (former Department of Media, 2001-2007).

For the documentation of Heidi Tikka’s recent work please see http://heiditikka.com/
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Guest speaker: Annette Arlander (Doctor of Arts, Artist, Researcher, Pedagogue)

The Diversity of Artistic Research

Although the area of artistic research is still contested and many prefer to use other related terms in order to avoid the somehow controversial or paradoxical tone of the term in English, the debates around artistic research have continued long enough for us to acknowledge that something like that can be said to exist, if not as a proper discipline, at least as something resembling it. Instead of asking what artistic research is or means, many prefer to ask, what can it do? What can be done with or within artistic research? Today when interdisciplinarity is increasingly sought for to complement the ever-narrowing disciplinary expertise, the possibility of a meeting ground or a (relatively) free space for various disciplines to interact offered by artistic research is needed more than ever. Moreover, the aspect of experimentation and play with alternatives, artistic research as a speculative practice is more and more valued within Academia as well as in society at large. What seems to be the most obvious result of the debates and demonstrations so far is the diversity of the field today.

In this presentation I will discuss some aspects of artistic research through examples of my own practice, in the project Performing with Plants.

An example of a recent publication “Resting with Pines in Nida – attempts at performing with plants”.

http://www.performancephilosophy.org/journal/article/view/232

Bio

Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and pedagogue. Previously professor of performance art and theory at Theatre Academy Helsinki (2001-2013), professor of artistic research at University of the Arts Helsinki (2015-2016), postdoctoral fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2017), she is presently professor of performance, art and theory at Stockholm University of the Arts (2018-2019), visiting researcher at Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, PI of the Academy of Finland funded research project How to do things with performance? and the Swedish Research Council funded artistic research project Performing with Plants.

Still image from a video work From the series: “Year of the Dog in Lill-Jans’Wood’ Filmed during 2018 in Stockholm

For artworks and publications, see https://annettearlander.com

 

CfAR: Post Doc Art event 4.12.2018: Artists, Institutions and Social Responsibility

https://sites.uniarts.fi/en/web/cfar/artists-institutions-and-social-responsibility-4.12.2018

CfAR – Centre for Artistic research, Uniarts Helsinki
Post Doc Art event 4.12.2018

Artists, Institutions and Social Responsibility

Tuesday 4.12.2018 at 15:00–19, Theatre Academy, Room 525, Staircase C (Haapaniemenkatu 6, Helsinki)

The group ‘Socially Responsible Arts Institutions and Artists’ is a collective of artists and researchers. They are part of Cupore and ArtsEqual, specializing in promoting the potential in art to create equal encounters between people from different backgrounds. The group’s art and research take place in and with communities, on their own terms or for them. The forms of activity are prison theatre, community museum, community art, audience involvement courses and guided walks in the city. This is the first opportunity to share their work with CfAR. The session is led by Mari Martin and Pekka Kantonen.

Refreshments will be provided – Welcome!

Program 4.12.2018

Anu Koskinen: Participatory observing in prison theatre – An attempt to a thick description in the contexts of artistic action research
Demonstration

Pekka Kantonen: Aesthetical and ethical reflections of the invited outsider cameraman
Reflection with a video

Katja Thomson: Katja and a viola

Ajauksia artist group: Sensory exercise
The group’s work is based on equal decision-making and anonymity. Collective working method is based on bodily and sensory exercises. You can participate in the exercise, in your way, or you can follow it from the outside.

Ehvivaija group: A collective song on artistic research (in Finnish)
The audience can participate in repeating the phrases.

Sari Karttunen: What motivates this group of artist-researchers and how does it relate to the ArtsEqual research initiative

Joint discussion with the audience

Design or Die – Creative Value Creation and Competitiveness

Quite often people in the creative sector are not very familiar with selling their doings nor they are aware of their IPR. The seminar will also discus how companies and public sector could make use of design in multi disciplinary product and service development, innovation processes and strategic planning. 

You are welcome to discuss with us on Tuesday 4 December 2018 at 10-13 at Harald Herlin Learning Centre. 

https://studios.aalto.fi/design-or-die-event

Register for participation RSVP 3rd Dec at 9 the latest

Program:

Welcome to Aalto
JUHANI TENHUNEN (Aalto)
Design or Die – project in short
ANU RAAPPANA (LAMK)
Creative Industry as Primary Industry – not Just a Supporter
PETRA TARJANNE (TEM)
Crossing Borders between Design Education and Work Life through Collaborative Experimentation
TARJA SALMELA-LEPPÄNEN (ULapland)
 
Three Perspectives for Creative Work and Selling
”Selling Design”,
”Designers as Sellers”,
”Designing B2B Selling”
MIKKO ILLI (Aalto), MARIA KUUSISTO (Sherpa)
IPR Toolkit for Designers
JUSSI ILVONEN (Ornamo)
Panel discussion and questions 10-20 minutes.

Getting by: Negotiating Future Livelihoods in the Arts

A Symposium organised by Kiasma, University of the Arts Helsinki, University of Helsinki and Aalto University.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018
at 10:00 – 14:00
Kiasma Theatre
Free entrance

This symposium addresses the future of the artists’ livelihood. Hosted by Kiasma, and co-organised by Uniarts Helsinki, Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, the event focuses on the rapid changes in contemporary society and new affordances that those changes introduce for the professionals working in the arts field. The precarious work market suggests new roles for arts professionals and their education, but also opens up new opportunities for art researchers to probe into the complexities of the late modern society, culture and working life. These and other questions around artists’ future livelihood, along with questions of societal responsibility, are discussed during the symposium.

The symposium invites artists, art-related researchers, art educators, art students, and other stakeholders interested in the artist’s livelihood on Tuesday November 13, 2018, 10 am – 2 pm, at the Kiasma Theatre. Participation is free of charge.

The symposium language is English.

From: Uniarts.fi website

Visiting lecture: HORST HÖRTNER, Ars Electronica Futurelab

Welcome to an open visiting lecture:

Department of Media is pleased to host

HORST HÖRTNER

Senior Director, Ars Electronica Futurelab

Wednesday 24 October 2018
from 17:00–18:30
Väre, room F101 (by the main entrance)

Topic: Art Thinking and Artificial Intelligence

Horst Hörtner will introduce the Ars Electronica Futurelab and by referring to “Art Thinking“ focus on the power and importance of Visions to our future. The necessity of Visions become more important at times of fundamental changes, as we currently experience under the influence of the so called “digitalization” in its appearance as Artificial Intelligence.

Horst Hörtner is a media artist and researcher. He is expert in design of Human Computer Interaction and holds several patents in this field. He started to work in the field of media art in the 1980ies and co-founded the media art group x-space in Graz/Austria in 1990. Hörtner is founding member of the Ars Electronica Futurelab in 1996 and since then directing this atelier/laboratory.

Since 2013, Horst Hörtner also holds a position as conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle/Australia. He is working in the nexus of art & science and giving lectures and talks at numerous international conferences and universities.

 

Get to know Ars Electronica Futurelab:
https://ars.electronica.art/futurelab/en/ 

Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria:
https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/

This lecture is open to all!

Welcome!

New Programme “Fluid Rhythms” — Summer School, LAB & Seminar

Amsterdam, Netherlands
Application deadline: July 1, 2018

Open Set is pleased to announce the Call for Applications for our new seven-month programme Fluid Rhythms: Urban Networks and Living Patterns. It’s a fresh round of Open Set, dedicated to exploring the potential of rhythm in the context of the Bijlmer, — one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in Amsterdam, once envisioned as an urban utopia and (in)famous for being called the “city of the future”. We are looking forward to a new collaboration with the scientific consortium Designing Rhythm for Social Resilience (IS Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions). Together we investigate rhythm-led practices as common ground for research and artistic practice.

The programme o ers three different modules to join: a Summer School (15 – 25 Aug 2018), a practice-based LAB trajectory (Oct 2018–Feb 2019), with the parallel track Seminar ‘Rhythmanalysis in Context’. The applications are open for individual modules, or for the combination for all three.

Fluid Rhythms

“The crowd is a body, the body is a crowd” — Henri Lefebvre

Life in the city both repeats itself, and is constantly changing. Situated in the Bijlmer, one of Amsterdam’s most vibrant neighborhoods, Open Set launches a new programme, dedicated to exploring the potential of rhythm in the city. The movement of bodies in space; financial transactions; the circulation of sounds, cells, and smells; changing social constructs that divide and connect people; the flow of microscopic substances—such looping patterns generate dynamic complex structures, or ‘rhythms’, that shift over time. In the words of Caroline Nevejan: “where there is rhythm, there is life”. Understanding and working with such dynamic complexities requires careful attunement to the interactions between social, imagined, and physical realms.

We are looking for artists, designers and scholars to join this international and interdisciplinary programme that investigates the potential of rhythm-led practices as common ground for research and artistic work. This means both providing tools to perceive rhythms, as well as tools to tap into their generative potential. Rhythms occur on multiple levels at the same time, in the macro-level structures of the city, within the cells of bodies, and in the interconnections between mind, emotion, brain and heartbeats. By investigating the intertwined patterns of change, a world of subtle complexity starts to reveal itself to us in how humans, machines, animals and microbes interact and coexist.

Artistic interventions can take on any form, whether they are sound, food or image-based formats, performances or digital applications—offering the opportunity to discover new, invisible or forgotten rhythms, to find the points of friction and blind spots and to transform and harness the power for social and ecological change. Eventually, working with rhythms is a way of synchronizing our efforts in acting and living together in a network society.

Line-up of experts

Nadia Al Issa / Christidi—artist & writer Heather Barnett—artist, researcher & educator
Cascoland—network of designers & artists Dash N’ Dem — design action group
Anton Kats — artist
Uta Eisenreich —artist
Satinder P. Gill—researcher
Pei-Ying Lin—designer & artist
Caroline Nevejan—researcher
Thought Collider—design & research duo Noam Toran—artist
Angelo Vermeulen—artist & researcher
more to be announced soon

Open applications 2018

— Summer School: Aug 15–25, 2018

Application deadline: July 1
Intensive programme of workshops and lectures.

— Open Set LAB: Practicing Rhythm: Oct 19, 2018–Feb 23, 2019

Application deadline: Aug 20
Five-month programme with practice-based sessions held every two weeks in the Bijlmer, aiming at developing individual projects. The parallel trajectories will end in sync, with a shared public presentation and conference.

— Seminar: Rhythmanalysis in Context: Aug 13, 2018–Feb 9, 2019

Application deadline: July 1
Series of presentations, discussions and theoretical texts readings from different disciplines, aiming at exploring the key concepts and multidisciplinary practices related to rhythmanalysis.

See more: https://mailchi.mp/db560ab26b97/fluid-rhythms-new-programme-open-set?e=58ed74cb5d

Fluid Rhythms Flyer PDF.

The Swamp School

public program at the
16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
May – November 2018

Swamp Radio (on transmitting), May 23-27
Futurity Island (on symbio-poetics), June 26-30
Commonism (on cohabiting), September 24-29

Throughout the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Swamp School will function as a changing, flexible, open-ended structure that supports experiments in design, pedagogy and artistic intelligence. Invited designers and scholars will conduct performative lectures and lead workshops for visitors to the Biennale, all of whom are invited to participate. In exploring the imaginary of a swamp—a living organism in which borders defined by social, political and cultural factors are porous and permeable—we will investigate an open artistic/architectural form and effective workshop and publication methodologies. The Swamp School will act as a pilot for future learning environments, informed by and informing the architecture and installations of its own space. Research questions will focus on creating public interfaces and manuals that support adaptation and learning to meet the demands of a changing environment.

See more PDF.

HLS2018: Hybrid Labs Symposium at Aalto

Hybrid Labs Symposium

The Third Renewable Futures Conference

May 30 – June 1, 2018,
Aalto University, Otaniemi Campus, Espoo City
Venues: Otakaari 1X (30–31 May), Otakaari 7 (1 June)

Rooms in Otakaari 1X: A1 (1st floor) and A2 (2nd floor)
Rooms in Otakaari 7: Studio Kipsari and Meeting Room 283 (1st floor)

Hybrid Labs is the third edition of Renewable Futures conference that aims to challenge the future of knowledge creation through art and science. The HYBRID LABS will take place from May 30 to June 1, 2018 at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, in the context of Aalto Festival. Celebrating 50 years of Leonardo journal and community, the HYBRID LABS conference will look back into the history of art and science collaboration, with an intent to reconsider and envision the future of hybrid laboratories – where scientific research and artistic practice meet and interact.

Our three-day media event medley includes:

May 30, 2018 – Exhibition Opening 

Opening Programme features Oslofjord Ecologies Extended exhibition opening. The exhibition is based on results of artistic research processes following common workshops, field trips and earlier exhibitions and performances linked to the Creative Europe project Renewable Futures and the Nordic collaboration Hybrid Labs. Curated by Kristin Bergaust on behalf of Art in Society research group at HiOA, this cross-disciplinary exhibition includes contributions from visual arts, art and science,  theatre, performance, design, visual culture, art didactics and urban research. See more.

May 31, 2018 – Renewable Futures Conference

Renewable Futures conference will begin with keynotes addressing HYBRID LABS topic from different broader perspectives. Parallel tracks of presentations will discuss the future of HYBRID LABS, art and science collaboration, focusing on five main topics: hybrid practices (in art and science), hybrid storytelling, hybrid fabrication, hybrid reality, and hybrid economies.

June 1, 2018 – Collaboratory Day, Celebrating Leonardo’s 50th Anniversary  

Collaboratory day and Leonardo birthday celebration includes guided tours of several of the Otaniemi campus laboratories and a workshop on collaboratory methods during the morning followed by afternoon keynote, sauna, and dinner. The topic of the keynote will be about Arts and Science collaboration and planetary healing. Also throughout the Lab tours, we want to stress the heritage aspects of the spaces, the campus and innovative aspects of art and science collaboration.

See programme Hybrid Labs Symposium 2018.

Keynote Speakers:

  • Roger MALINA / Physicist, Astronomer / Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications at M.I.T Press / Professor, the University of Texas at Dallas, USA
  • Gediminas URBONAS / Professor, the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT-MIT) / Associate Professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture, Cambridge, USA
  • Nina CZEGLEDY / Artist, Curator and Educator on Art, Science and Technology / Leonardo Community, Toronto, Canada
  • Judith VAN DER ELST / Anthropologist, Independent Researcher, Netherlands
  • Vladimir IVANOV / Professor, St. Petersburg Technical University, Collaboratory methods/heritage workshop
  • Toni KONITK / Professor of Design of Structures, Aalto University, Department of Architecture, Finland
  • Saara HACKLIN / Curator, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland
  • Pia FRICKER /Adjunct Professor, Department of Architecture, Aalto University, Finland

Click for more information on Keynote speakers and their presentations.

On-the-door tickets available at the registration desk (Otakaari 1X, 1st floor):

30 May: 12:00–14:00, and 16:00–18:00
31 May: 8:00–9:00

Price: 48 € / 25€ students
Payments only with card.

The fee allows for participation in the whole programme excluding Friday 1 June Dinner and coffees and snacks.