----------------------------------------------------------------- Title: NAN (a networked art network) start: 1 september 2007 end: 31 august 2008 duration: 12 months co-ordinator: multiplace bratislava, contact: dusan barok, http://multiplace.sk co-organisers: okno brussels, contact: guy van belle and annemie maes, http://okno.be altart cluj, contact: rarita szakats, http://altart.org kiberpipa ljubljana, contact: janez urevc, http://kiberpipa.org partners being invited (contact persons): milos vojtechovsky and marek blazicek (mlok), maja kuzmanovic (foam), dirk de wit (ibk/iak), floor van spaendonck (Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunsten), Alex Adriaensen (V2, deaf), Nat Muller (De Balie, Deaf), Aymeric Mansoux (goto10), Steve Kovats (Transmediale), Karsten Seiffarth (Tesla Berlin), Golo Foellmer (author Netzmusik, prof Halle Univ), Sergi Jorda (Director Audiovisual Institute Pompeu Fabra), Jens Brandt (Network artist, Koeln/berlin), Sendi Mango (BridA art collective Ljubljana), Michal Murin (VAF(ex) and academy of arts/banska bystrica) and Richard Fajnor (arts academy/brno) partners are invited to: * participate at workshops/events organised by NAN coorganisers at slovakia (organised by multiplace), prague (mlok), brussels (okno), cluj (altart), ljubljana (kiberpipa) * make an event anywhere which can be part of multiplace april 2008, "joint synchro forces" (multiplace provides promotion, web and online tools, networking with others - streaming, mobility, etc) * participation in mtp-theory mailing list about network culture (will turn into english slowly) post address: MULTIPLACE Zuzana Cernakova Jamnickeho 3 841 05 Bratislava Slovak Republic preview of planned events: http://multiplace.sk/nan/program.htm contact: dusan at idealnypartner dot sk guy at 13m3 dot sk ----------------------------------------------------------------- GENERAL IDEA Since more than a decade several art groups and organisations in Europe have been working with networks and networked situations for performing, exhibiting, sharing, and making art works. The initiative that we propose with several essential partners in this field, is to start a 12 month initiative that will make the current network of connected art organisations stronger. Coordinator will be the Multiplace (Bratislava) with as co-organisers OKNO (Brussels), MLOK (Praha), NextLab (Budapest), AltArt (Cluj) and Kiberpipa (Ljubljana). In the period between September 2007 and August 2008, we want to organise in each of the participating cities a series of networked art events. This will mark the start of a larger and longer term collaborative program afterwards, hopefully within the same Programme. The general purpose is to build during these 12 months on a larger and more sustainable network with more local partners from new states in the EU and involved in different relevant disciplines. This will provide a sustainable basis for art and artist mobility the coming years. For the coming 12 months we want to build up a more systematic scheme in which we realize the following goals: - work on the network setup and optimize exchange platform - meetings for discussing each other's projects and find ways to collaborate to work them out - group presentations, performances, artworks and publications on the realizations (moving people and artworks around) For that purpose we would propose a funding for each partner involved of - a local workshop where artists and the project managers are invited to work on the technical setup, the artistic concept and content for each of the partners' initiative. (September till January 2007) - an event organised by each of the partners, on which again all involved people can be invited to participate, local and over the network. This will be locally promoted but also across borders within the Multiplace Festival 2008. (January till June 2008) - an online documentation and description that allows future partners to be added to the intitative afterwards with exemplary setups and artworks. (July till August 2008) The outcome is a series of events spread across central europe, inviting country experts and officials from the cultural sectors, young artists. The target is also to attract a more general cultural minded audience to work together across nation borders within the same as the provided context. Intercultural dialogue is an essential factor and is built up and maintained during the cooperative process. This initiative is only a start and after bringing the initial partners together it will be continued afterwards with an open invitation to new partners for a larger initiative the next 2 years. This proposed initiative has a special focus on Central Europe, and will expand gradually with invitations to the new countries in EU. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW From the early 1980s till end of 20th century the remarkable proliferation of the internet fostered many experiments within all diferent sections of the arts. Next to the short lived web art, and its temporary fusion with design, the electronic and subsequent digital arts really took off during these years and used local and global networks to further elaborate on ideas, concepts and works. The diversity of the electronic/digital arts became enourmous through the fusion of information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence and other computer sciences. The in nature cross-disciplinary character can be read from possible taxonomical efforts, for instance Stephen Wilson's collection of what he calls 'information arts' and documented in http://userwww.sfsu.edu/%7Einfoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html From the artist's point of view we see many historical threads that nowadays are getting taught in academies and universities, and are of a growing importance for further innovation in the arts in general. We briefly go through several relevant approaches and disciplines, to illustrate the hidden importance. Within computer music, the pioneering computer music band The Hub was experimenting from the early 1980s already with forms of connected performances. They used several setups from a local network to for instance a modem connection for realizing special works. After a long period of inactivity as a group, 2 years ago they started to perform again, being reunited at the DEAF festival in Rotterdam, afterwards going on an European tour. Most early networked music is documented by Golo Föllmer in his PHD and last-year book publication with the same title 'Netz Musik' (Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2005). this shows also the current interest of the cultural sector to work with networks in the artistic-generative context. A second historically important contribution within the arts had been done by the Canadian-born artist Robert Adrian (Adrian X, originally setting up art projects with faxes, telephones and satellites during the 1980s), within the context of early media art in Austria. This was leading to several media art projects that included connected and networked components for the Ars Electronica Festival throughout the 1990s. Together with Heidi Grundmann it resulted directly into the making of the Viennese Kunstradio On Line , the web-site of the ORF radio art programme Kunstradio in 1995. During this period several Balkan, Eastern and Central European started to get involved in internet radio experiments, a trend which is still continuing. These radio's more performative artists were always involved in non-broadcasted internet related and connected events as well. This section is what the current initiative wants to structure and promote. In general the early networked performances, and audiovisual experiments with communication technology, started in the USA during the 1980s. But by the 1990s due to the specific situation of Central, Eastern and Balkan European countries, and the renewed contact with the Western European countries, combined with the cheap and available internet connections, a lot of progress and the more inventive implementations were found in Europe. Next to the web-related art developments - that always stayed rather conventional in their aesthetics and technical approaches - the more active and realtime applications grew tremendously. By the turn of the century, and inspired again by an open local initiative like Share (new York, http://share.dj/), some interested artists came together in De Waag Society Amsterdam and used the Gigaport connections (between the Amsterdam cultural institutions, and V2 Rotterdam) to set up a 2-year experiment. This was based on free exploration in a weekly open lab and several relevant disciplines were sollicited to join in: computer musicians, netrelated visual programmers, interactive dancers and choreographers, internet radio makers, etc... That resulted in many contacts throughout Europe and it stimulated many partnerships over the years, resulting in a vivid ad hoc scene appearing through informal concerts and festival setups, including Multiplace, NextLab and MLOK. After 2 years the support from De Waag Society was dropped. The initiative knows a current continuation from the art group Goto10 and the Society of Algorthm who resides within the OKNO organisation. It is obvious that the more interesting initiatives are to be expected in the sector of network art through smaller organisations with specific artistic needs and ideas. It is also at this level that the continuation of digital artists within smaller cooperative networks can be realized and not so much with top-down management. PARTNERS COLLABORATION In the last years the several organisations that want to support the here applied for initiative, have been working together since 2000, sometimes under different names and organisations, but with a similar focus. Multiplace worked out several networked concerts with Society of Algorithm, MxHz.org (both are residing within OKNO), Goto10 (France), and even staged the streamed theatre piece 'Doma' (Czech Rep.) from the home connection in a flat in Bratislava. In Spring 2007 Multiplace will connect a networked initiative throughout Slovakia and its neighbouring countries, including the support from OKNO, Multiplace and MLOK. In the past Multiplace has invited OKNO, Multiplace, MLOK were setup as presentations, connected concerts, streamed events, presentations, shared initiatives. Also OKNO since 2004 invited most of the mentioned partners during its so called Publix (recurrent presentations of productions in Brussels). Also MLOK set up several internet related concerts from teh NOD space in Prague including representatives and affiliated artists from the other partner-organisations. Finally NextLab invited OKNO-members and some Slovak artists for workshops and presentations over the last 2 years. MLOK is the logical continuation of several media art and network initiatives around Milos Vojtechovsky, and is currently connecting NOD space, Skolska 28 galery and Famu art student projects. MLOK has weekly online broadcasts but is very active since years in the realtime connected performance sector. NextLab Budapest maybe the youngest of the group as an organisation but drives on the earlier contacts as being part of the kultiplex collective, including the renowned Radio Tilos. In the current initiative, the organisations want to formalize their common goals adn work together on a variety of shared projects. The plan is to widen up the network after this initial startup period with other groups like GoTo10 (Poitiers and London), T-u-b-e (München), and promote its practice with new partners from the new European context. GROUPS AND CONSTELLATIONS Each of the partners proposes to work collaboratively on a different aspect of connected or networked art. The chosen themes are: - networking a distributed festival (Multiplace Bratislava) - internet realtime performances event (OKNO Brussels) - an interactive installation with remote network control (NextLab Budapest) - internet experimental radio project (MLOK Prague) - technological workshops and online art galery (Kiberpipa) - sociocultural and critical approaches towards networked art (AltArt) More information on the specific activities within this initiative can be found in the co-organisers and partners description sheets below. These actions within the proposed initiative are realized in 3 stages: 1. Introduction of the initiative and open meeting among the partners with invited and interested other organizers and possible future partners. The goals and timings are fine tuned. The participating artists are introduced to one another and their specific ideas and concepts are related to the initiative. Per location/partner 2 artists are chosen and one artistic-technological manager. An additional administrative general manager is provided by the coordinator. 2. workshops in the several locations and over 6 months time several workshops are organized, in which the involved artists and interested audiences are introduced to: - the several relevant network tools and audiovisual technologies, - the concepts and intended outcomes (concerts, installations, radiopieces - the background and short history of the media works (netradio, sound art, interactive installation, netart, network streaming and interactivity, ...) Since this is rather shared and overlapping considering knowledge and technology, the above description is repeated and expanded within the first halve of the workshop. In the second half each of the locations realizes a special section relevant to the intended outcome: an installation, a broadcast, the performances and concerts. Note: we target a series of real meetings with the involved artists, the organisers and partners' representatives, and expanded with local artists and audience. Also special attention will be given to the online presence so that a maximum of interested artists can be reached. 3. events the by the partners chosen themes and media are put into the extended Multiplace festival during the second part of the initiative's timeline. In the first meeting it is taken care of that each of the partners can choose a for the local community relevant time for bringing the works to the public. Though the intention is to concentrate everything around the Multiplace festival 2008. The artists are expected to travel - if possible we tend to avoid overlapping the events - to each location and help out with the setup and realisation of each work, encouraging collaboration and intercultural dialogue. The events are kept as registrations online for further documentation and viewing, and will be used as an introduction to invite future partners to develop this network further the coming 3 years. Within this proposal the term network is understood in 2 senses: - as a basis for creating a variety of collaborative technological artforms and styles - as a generator for bringing people together with the purpose of creating together within innovating cultural concepts An essential factor is the collaborative building up of shared resources through the several workshops. Both Okno and Multiplace are having an independent art server, which is in nature open to the art communities. These are important nodes for providing essential services to the less equiped partners. Also it is intended as generators for participation and collaboration within the development of various networked artwork. It provides security and a permanent locus for display and commentaries. An important factor is the selection of the artists involved throughout the initiative. On the first meeting a common evaluation and selection strategy will be discussed between co-organisers and partners. Local managers - (Multiplace) - (OKNO) - (NextLab) - (MLOK) - (Kiberpipa) - (AltArt)