“Artist & technologist partnerships from across Europe will come together to share outcomes instigated through their participation in the project and to showcase both work and ideas from their projects so far. It will offer the opportunity to meet the creators, experience some of their work and to challenge ideas and perceptions on the future connections between Art and Technology.”

• More about the programme on the FoAM site and at http://www.ict-art-connect.eu/
• overview at http://www.ict-art-connect.eu/about/resources/fet-art-final-event-ict-art-connect-far/

ICT & art connect 20140512

#ictart @IctArt

• new research avenues
• consultation & matchmaking, residencies
• building an ict & art community - legacy, transfer to a new study

chief scientific advisor for EC - Professor Anne Glover

• culture of eu tied up with creativity in science, engineering & arts
• cosmic trilogy concert - expanding m=imagination about a scientific phenomena (big bang)
• arts communicates?
• science not communicated is science not done’
• not a big gap between arts and society? bigger gap between science & society (decreasing interest in young people, movement of anti-science)
• impact for the citizen - in EU knowledge funded by the citizens, but they don’t see the impact
• common challenges for artists and scientists
• scotland strathclyde school of engineering - honors projects with glasgow school of arts
• “all you need is space” - graphic novel published by the EC to popularise space science

• working together is difficult - making compromises
• DG RTD, DG culture - prize bringing together art, education and science (for young people)
• needed to bring together different parts of the creative community - different languages to generate a new way of talking about things - opens up possibility for innovation (new ways of thinking)
• joint research center
• dg connect (digital economy), communication
• it all comes back to communicate
• young people are our hope - early education, less barriers

Maja Kuzmanovic from FoAM

• Transcript of the talk at foam at ict art connect.

Svetlana from Black Cube collective

Exhibition themes

• co-creation
• citizen engagement

Emerging themes: environment, ethics and social change

AR sign battle

• nantes hackathon (pervasive, city wild gaming)
• road sign as natural markers for an AR game - each sign has a mini game attached to different signs - stop & 50km signs
• location based game

http://www.arsign.com @ArSignBattle

Art of the deep

• RPG for education - ecosystems science, computing, art & making prototypes
• kids of 10-11 yrs old
• co-creation and writing/programming - exposing code within the game, then the build web pages
• future - using physical tech

Butterfly light (trope)

• getting out of the screen, physical animation

Comic strip

• collaborative comic strip drawing app
• drawing & writing together

Dancing with drones (CollMot)

• collective motion - study animals to see how they move together, then build flocking robots
• intrest in flocking behaviour & movement between humans & machines
• visualisation and notation of motion data
• repulsion, attraction, synchrony
• laban b-scale - used well with both physical movement and drones

Data Ethics

• data collection, consent, open data
• 'terms and conditions form' (a performative act) - pattern making & online documentation
• what is the dialogue about giving away personal data
• 'consent' - 'the rhythm of life' the photon multiplier - why do you emit photons? + looking at metadata
• http://www.dataethics.org

Hacking choreography 2.0

• dance & technology, RT video systems
• technology interfering with the choreographic process
• dance scores & computer programming languages
• generative art, live coding (clojure - fast prototyping)
• sw, visualisation, bodies

desirable dossiers - Healthcare through a data lens

• electronic health records
• quantified self - poop log, skin vision… self remedy
• translation healthcare - ICT - quite reductionist. contextual information is needed (more holistic picture)
• how society determines what is in the medical records

human sensor group

• human health & climate change
• respiratory system in the urban environments
• wearables - checking the air quality & exhaled breath in asthma patients (bioluminescent reaction - installation & performance) - eNO (nitric oxyde) sensor, hacked and created an affordable version, now you can see your breath visualised
• IOT - sensors separate from visualisation

KrowdKontrol

• improv, creating decisions in the moment
• crowds - how can you interact with the performance
• democratisation of involvement
• mobiles as input devices
• different models of performance - different ways of managing the relationship between artists and performance
• bigger team needed with different specialties

Ministry of measurement

• hack the barbican
• data exchange, data as commodity
• cloak room as a dystopian data centre of the ministry of measurement
• data and culture series
• pink sheet method (started at the future everything, going to lighthouse)

Not to be reproduced

• 3d printing - forcing the machine to do things it didn’t want to do (like hovering things)
• absorbing painting practice into 3rd printing process, using different coloured filaments

Sense shifting / Emotiorama Marco Zaccaria

• integrating technology
• device to mediate non verbal information - using biosignals and making them transparent in an interaction
• participatory performance using galvanic skin response sensors translated into sound + microphones using the sound
• co-present full immersion residencies are important
• Asimov science is on

Silicasonisphere Dave Murray-Rys & Carrie Fertig

• tactile glass
• light as medium for interactionL refractions, patterns of light translated as frequency - the sound that glass makes
• speed dating works

Death from above

• tech that military develop are taking their cues from video game environments
• is the military playing war
• a generation grown up in the pervasiveness of digital technologies
• remoteness & disconnect in communication
• interviewing people from iraq (locals & americans)
• installation - with visual & sound components

Toyhacking

• practice what you preach
• reusing toys destined for the landfill
• activity for parents and kids,
• introducing people to creative technologies
• code for kids using toyhack avatars
• combining coders and makers
• making public spaces more playful
• www.exploringsenses.co.uk

Biostrike

• Genomic Gastronomy
• workshop using open PCR machine and checking meat for what is really in there
• mystery meat tour
• citizen science collecting information about anti-biotics - dangers of anti-biotic resistance

Dr Camille Baker Brunel University Summary of the project

• different matchmaking events, with different audiences and approaches

Themes that emerged from the project:

• need for infrastructure to support ICT&Art collaborations (collaborative centres, sustainable platforms, hubs, matchmaking events
• funding - more diversified and flexible
• open ended projects (as opposed to working towards a particular outcome)
• need for access - funding, domain specific information, networking…
• sustainability and dissemination
• training
• communication & support
• transparency
• collaboration, collaboration, collaboration

Lucas Evers Waag Society Process, challenges and recommendations

• process from open calls to pilot projects
• diversity of projects
• challenges: time, developing confidence, learning the methodologies and language, financial restrictions, personalities, managing expectations
• recommendations: more time, but ultra-short term models work as well, more financial support (on different levels, better economies of art-science collaboration!, mentoring, documentation & dissemination, more diverse modes of involving artists as experts, bring different stakeholders together based on crucial challenges (like privacy, biodiversity…), rather than creating large platforms for collaboration that no one can find.

Marta Arniani (Sigma Orionis), Svetlana Kondakova (Black Cube Collective), Michela Magas (Stromatolite)

Recommendations and legacy of the project

• engage artists in the whole process: art interrogating research questions
• frameworks to involve a large number of different stakeholders
• education
• identifying relevant meeting spots
• regional diversity…
• mentoring with mentors external to the project
• matchmaking worked very well, should continue. perhaps more targeted and have other disciplines except art & ICT
• languages: it is necessary to keep specialist languages (scientists must have a way to talk about deep details, artists look more at horizontal scanning, both need to find a way to talk to citizens)
• large mission - easy to get lost in, scientists can help with methodological rigour. the artists provide a large, long term vision that scientists might not dare to propose - a way not to stick to the brief. there should be an artist in every scientific project

Roger Torrenti (moderating a discussion)

• FP7: Creativity unit in DG CONNECT
• bringing engineers (and engineering) into art schools (ref. Strathclyde)
• how to bring the kind of thinking developed in art&science projects and bring it to other domains?

Luis Girao

ICT Art Connect study

• artists as researchers: how can artistic practices contribute to innovative ict developments
• people combining art & ict in one person
• quotes by Roger and Frank Malina - art & science collaborations to increase well-being of human beings in all their complexity
• ICT & Art - instrumental for “post crisis” situations, a critical approach, unforeseen results (which raising the competitive approach), new methods to access and generate knowledge
• what methods, processes and instruments are needed?
• enaction distinguishes artistic from scientific practices - learning by doing, making as a thinking process; artists manipulate ict tools - this could become reproducible in technology
• artists are sensory beings - conscious and unconscious dialogues with society.
• artistic processes - methods for integration of subjectivity in the generation of knowledge
• art in the 20th century more critical, now more focused on 'making', 'hacking…'
• Examples from Myron Krueger, Michael Naimark, Jeffrey Shaw, Golan Levin - artists are about 20 years ahead of the industry
• how can artists become more independent from funding?
• dangers of appropriation of techno-artistic work by corporations (e.g. arduino, pulsu(m) plantae by Leslie Garcia)
• EU has a vision where arts are much broader understood than elsewhere (e.g. Ars Electronica distinguishing the Linux founder with an artistic Prix)
• Event in September in BOZAR with iMinds & Artshare
• developing a website as an online platform for connections between ICT and art (http://staging.ictartconnect.eu, currently in beta testing mode, for comments write to feedback@ictartconnect.eu)

Ralph Dum, project officer ICT&Art Connect

• The initial question was: why art?
• difficult question - instrumentalisation etc.
  • to create innovative products? not tech but creativity driven
  • how can artists contribute to innovation in EU? Human dimension, multiple worlds…
• science, arts and technology connected through physical artefacts (functionality, aesthetics, social use…)
• links art & science - common: curiosity & serendipity
• (social) change, communicate, create (artefacts that change our society)
• artistic works in ICT&Art showed why is art important in the context of technology - e.g. big data, augmented reality, crowd (collective awareness, participation), serious games… - arts as a catalyst for new technologies
• EC: inclusion of artists in residence in different objectives: projects in IOT (internet of things), and other projects in Horizon 2020 - should become a standard practice in EC projects; dedicated call to ICT & Art (but for the time being it isn’t an evident choice… now still trying to find a rationale and see what is possible)
• important to have residencies on both sides - discussions with EACEA needed to see how scientists could work in arts organisations
• next step: artists a more central role in scientific practices

Yulia Matskevich (Brunel Univeristy)

• results went beyond wildest expectations
• where are we now and look towards the future
• started at the EU cultural forum, Robert Madelin and Ralph Dum from DG Connect supported the initial ideas
• 12 months: 11 events, 19 residencies + 15 external events
• bringing together communities
• learning a lot about existing issues
• testimonials…
• what art brings to ict: critical engagement and reflection & testing of tech, co-creation, catalysts, disruptors, citizen engagement
• what’s needed: more coordination & support, funding, infrastructure, opportunities for showcases and exhibitions, more opportunities for consultation, more transparency & dissemination

later → @_foam Toyhacking workshop and exhibition.

• The Two Cultures and The Third Culture
• http://malina.diatrope.com/2013/05/19/a-history-of-the-leonardo-journal-on-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-its-founder-frank-j-malina/