WIKI

I find an idea about Grig to be very interesting and I think it has the potential for different types of organization, because it makes possible to be in a brain storming process at any time no matter where you are and no matter how many people is connected through this project at the moment. The ideas are presented like living creatures and that makes this web page alive.
Also I find interesting the concept of building up ideas from different people with different background's, that makes interesting mixture between creativity and practical skills.

Mia 

I was very satisfied with the workshop.It was a great way to increase my knowledge and meet new people.The tutors were very kind and always prepared to help.Because i am also using one content management system it was great to see another one.I think that their invention is really great and i hope they will continue to develop it even more.I am definitely going to visit more workshops at Kibla.

Denis 

WEB SITE ... image ... content ... strict input ... flexible output ... label ... tag ... user ... interactivity ... concept ... web space ... wiki ... mediation ... web ... WORKING THE WEB

pina

If you put up a hall of mirrors, with nothing in it, and keeping putting up more and more mirrors, will something eventually materialize in the hall?

Can a cow live from its own milk?

 Apparently so. Hehe.

Does a thing get more real the more people look at it and talk about it, or does it get less real, worn down, then flimsy, then translucent, then invisible, then finally simply not there anymore? First one, then the other, I guess.

How to make art and win friends: start with some cobwebby wisps of nothing, and set it spinning in the great hall of mirrors. It will come to life, more alive than the sorrowful billions of humans who never even had the chance to be born into the One True Reality of TV. Once it gets weathered down by millions of eyes until it finally disappears, what have you lost? Nothing!Yeah baby! Whoo-hoo!

 The dubya-dubya-dubya is a fascinating thing. What's to be found in it is as dull as ditchwater. Hang on, maybe I've got that the wrong way around!

Just enjoying the workshop, take care,

-Cameron Bobro 

 PS. "Dynamo" and "Wiki" as labels for the different views...er, hem. Well different strokes for different folks, but I do not like them. How about "Papyrus View" and "Ladder View"?

Working the web comment of daisy group:

• it enhances creativity...well done guys! (Sara)
•  provide different look on how to plan, produce and understand web pages (Simon) !us!

An outline was presented of the GRIG project process oriented site developed by InterMedia. This site has been used to gather workshop participants' views and work from WTW.

Synne, Idunn and Andrew from InterMedia presented several sites they have been involved in developing. These included

Ballectro: a project on dance, media and learning

(to show the context, chronological development and different viewpoints in and on project)

GRIG: a multiple partner artistic and research project into mixed reality arts

(to show over time various aspects of the project's life, with a static view and a dynamic view, using tags to also help sort and relate entries to one another)

WIKI-D: using wikis and Flash to portray the outcomes of a large Norwegian research programme

(to show multiple types of research outcomes developed by project members, with labels)

GROUP 3: Basy Dasy Bank

Actual banking web pages are very uniformed. To change the context we provide a new concept for creating it.

Key observations on actual web pages:

• too much text

• difficult access into private account

• no user friendly

• poor color usage

Concept building:
!log!

Web banking system Baisy - Daisy should address children.

Login process - page should be access by personal color code.

Each user should be able to choose its own plant to grow, symbolizing a personal choice of creating a bank account.

After login main part of the screen should be covered by chosen plant. In the left corner there should be possibility to see how the bank accounts of the family members are growing or decreasing by the wealth of the plant. If your account is decreasing and getting to the critical point your personal flower in a dieing shape becomes your personal adviser on how to invest and recover actual stage.

Down on the left corner in the shape of the flower you should be able to see amount of money on your account. On flower lattices banking services should be positioned.

To log out you need to water your plant.

GROUP 2: NKBM bank

GROUP 1: Bank of Yes

Stretching the notion of a netbank by eliminating money, blue color and happy faces ...

... resulting in nonmonetary relationships, red color and happy people.

Jelena, Cameron and Pina

 As we were cooking this up, we discovered that banking sites are almost universally blue-colored, blue being the color of "trust". Hmmm... cliche? We also discovered that internet bartering "banks" are actual, and big business.

The workshop 'Working the Web' is a joint initiative from InterMedia and KIBLA, both partners in the GRIG project. Called Working the Web, the three day event is designed to help participants conceptualise the web as a communicative space. They will be introduced to a variety of web sites, including those on electronic art.
Workshop Programme 

Monday 12.05

Welcome + coffee
Andrew, Idunn and Synne present themselves, their background and their work.
Presentation of the workshop (Schedule, aims and objectives, as well as practicalities).
Preparing for workshop documentation (for the Tuesday session).
The Workshop Participants present themselves and some of the work they have been involved in, so as to get to know their backgrounds and competences. (10 min each)

The workshop participants present two self-selected websites each (among any): one website they think is really good, and one they find particularly bad.
Discussion

Break

Tweaking sites artistically
We start this hands on session where the workshop participants are redesigning a website (aesthetics, functionality, interaction design).
The groups may use a variety of representational means of presenting their design results. This may include actual programming, sketches on paper, Photoshop mockups etc.
Presentation and plenary discussion
The aim of this discussion is stimulate further reflection on two levels:

1)    On conventions of web design- how to go beyond them?
2)     Collaborative design processes

   
Tuesday 13.05

Wrapping up the Tuesday session. Discussion + coffee.
Thoughts on "Working the web". Andrew Morrison
Andrew, Synne and Idunn present a series of explorative and experimental web projects.
Presentation of the gRig site
Hands-on session on how to publish in the gRigsite.

Break

Documenting the Monday session in the gRig site.
Focusing on tagging/video/commenting etc

Wednesday 13.05

Wrapping up the Tuesday session. Discussion + coffee.
Emerging Web Design:
Thughts on " Websites as Mediational Sites: a Communiction Design Perspective". Synne Skjulstad
Paralells to designing for interaction in installation art. Idunn Sem.
Discussions
Tweaking gRig

Break

Stretching and expanding ways to communicate in the gRig site
Affordances and constraints in web tools
Discussion.

Preparation for documenting the Thursday gallery opening.

20.00. Gallery opening and tweaked documentation online.

Presentation session (see participants e-mail)

Like /dislike websites session (see links)

See attachments on this page for pictures from the workshop

 
A few weeks ago, I visited some friends in London. We went for a walk nearby the area where they live when we suddenly encountered this fellow. In the sharp spring sunshine, he looked quite out of this world. As I found this art work quite unsettling at daytime I can only imagine what kind of effect he would have if walking past this massive and oppressing urban cement construction. I have no idea on who have made this work, or the name of this cementary place. Perhaps some mixed reality "human" presence is better than none? Or perhaps he is on a special assignment to keep real human being off the square at night. I my office was in the building facing  this square I guess I would look out the window every now and then - just wainging for him to take the next step.  

Mixed reality arts can all too easily be centred on the newest app or the latest twist of a tool. Lars and I left the main square and its Sunday fleamarket. 'What a place, just mind boggling,' he said. And we wandered down a side street agreeing to just pop into one shop of relics and antiquities... At our GRIG gathering we'd been talking about symbols and the mixture of time and place, of materiality and mediation. Here before our eyes was an odd object (that fitted well with my rusty French). 'It is from India,' a voice announced, 'A jaguar'. 'Of course,' Lars quipped, laughing at the absurd route our morning had taken us. An almost reformed smoker, or a smoker in reform, this was a wonderful find for Lars. 'It has a place for the allumettes,' said the smiling man, now beside us. And then we laughed together with him, seeing the holder at the back for a box of matches. He showed us that smoke would pour from the  cavities, mouth now ashtray. The sabre-like teeth seemed intact, golden plate now its mouth, the once dangerous snarl of a wonderous beast suddenly roaring back at us. A strange artifact, set on a small heraldic plinth as if asking to be shown to the guild. May I take a photograph,' I asked. 'Yes of course, with pleasure,' beamed the man, as if speaking to us from a Borges story.

Lars Lomell and I decide to take a trip around a Sunday morning flea market before we return to the plasma screens and grey steel of Brussels airport. To see what has gone before us, to watch the curious crowds, to perhaps stumble across some unlikely items. Row after row of cameras, slightly chipped vases, well-worn sofas, paintings, tables with jewellry and then this. A breathing apparatus. Uncanny for the recent meeting of Griggers who've been talking about mixed worlds and being-in-between. A twisty tale it seems, like Greg Ulmer's works in my/story and the unfoldings of invention or heuretics (1994). There's a tale here, an amphibious narration in the web ....!

We're at Nadine in Brussels and Petso from KIBLA just can't keep his hands off some of the material he finds lying about. Rubber hands at play. One of the wonderful aspects of GRIG is being able to engage with a team of partners who all have their own interests and character. There's a spirit of genuine playfulness between more than a few of the participants even after a long day of work. We need to let this come through to one another along with the meeting talk and the web mediation. To find places to connect to one another so that we can also think about how to relate to each other's contributions and projects. It's strangely easy to do within this group, one in which not all the participants have met more than a few times.

Nadine has set up a GRIG lounge as part of their arts centre/collective. Here a number of participants to our days of meetings and discussions literally lounge about. Ferdinand and Trudeau are gathering materials from the various partners as part of a companion to GRIG online, a repository of what stimulates and inspires us, but also a space to retroactively review our won works and those of other GRIG partners. This is an important feature of our project with its goal to not only mediate via exhibitions but also enable the public to have access to some of the processes and perambulations involved in our work. Nadine offers a physical space for visitors to hook up to dvds, a diversity of material and to do so in a setting that has talks, workshops and an ongoing flow of visitors. Ours is the task of finding various ways to represent, mediate and enable access to a mixture of ways of working and works that are themselves diverse aesthetically and communicatively.

Synne and I are now at work in writing up a journal article with Geska and Robet, our partners in GRIG at the Interactive Institute. Their work are mediated via large plasma screens that they exhibit in public spaces: galleries and shopping malls. Here is Brussels airport showing us the way, plasma on the move. Jay's scopic views in series.

We've finally sent off our book collection Inside Multimodal Composition. Many of the chapters have Communication Design at their centre and two of them concern mixed reality arts. These are on works developed via InterMediaLab. I've chosen an image of my own mixed reality - one not seen by my co-authors! My laptop, file open to the right, print page (with doodles) to the left, some sort of editing facsimile as the 40 or so pages begin to take their toll. This is the opening page from a chapter about the conceptualising and enactment of an MR installation piece called Tapet (scroll back and you'll see some images and video). My point in using this image is to also show that GRIG has been at work on writing up developmental project related work. IN this case we've extended the notion of discourse performativity to that of multimodal performativity in the context of a generative piece.

In a way this GRIG site offers us multiple story trails. Contours of hypertext would Michael Joyce say (1996). Here's an image from an exhibition on urbanism, part of the recent Oslo Triennale held at AHO. Visualisatons of urban experience trails...

We're often asked what we mean by mixed reality arts. Synne Skjulstad and I have been working on a number of research publications on the persuasive discourses of digitaly mediated advertising. Here's one of those ubiquitous screens we now see in large cities, usually back-lit at night, this one one the side of a bus shelter just outside the Oslo School of Architecture and design (AHO) no less. Two people in the ad for Nicorette. A substitute gum for smokers keen to kick the habit. Here there's a guy at a bar, a pack of the gum in his back pocket (note the logo is showing). Reaching up his pocket is the harlequinesque figure of a desparate figure: he needs the substitute, patched as he is in white and caramel of the cigarette. Hyperrealism. The consumer's choice just within desired reach. A wholly constructed image. The text reads: 'Nicorette fruitmint. How long will you go to control the craving to smoke?' In the background two people walk down the street. In the foreground lies a pile of glass - someone has smashed the image, unpeeling one of its layers, perhaps in protest to having their desire to smoke adverted. Perhaps to answer the question we might say. Back again to Bakhtin's notion of the implied addressee... Layers of representation and communication, in a public space, now with with the icilecs of saftey glass drawing our attention to both the advert and its reception.

From 14-18 November Giggers gathered at fo.am in Brussels to finalise our first annual report for the project. As part of this process, we met with our Project Officer from the Culture 2000 Programme. Each project partner made a rapid, intense and intensive presentation following the 20 secs per slide format developed in the Pecha Kucha nights. This proved to be a quick way of presenting our work to one another. But it was also as a composite mode of covering diverse yet related material rapidly. Keeping to the minimum (clock ticking here) helps focus the presentation. Strong images certainly help convey an important part of the character of research mediation and digital rhetoric in mixed reality arts creation and reflection. Here's a save-to-web PPT from InterMedia.

see attached video: As usually happens with Tapet, the user Aslaug is not very interested in exploring the interactive "recorded performance" parts of the installation after she has experienced the generative parts where she is herself part of the performance.

Nadine in Brussels has now set up a 'guild hall' at their centre.

The mixed reality art installation 'Tapet', (which means wallpaper) by Idunn Sem et al, was tested and documented yesterday, at Galley Sverdrup in Oslo. 'Tapet' is exhibited as the main work in the exhibition 'Grenseflater' (Interfaces) hosted by the research group ITU (ICTs in Eductaion) at the University of Oslo. The exhibition is part of their annual international conference. Our installation 'testers', Lasse Ormel and Marka Lüders made a real effort to be part of the mixed reality space - a forest inhabited by the dancer and choreographer Inger Reidunn Olsen, who is part of the 'Tapet' team.
'Tapet' is discussed in detail in a research publication. This book chapter is written by Andrew Morrison, Idunn Sem and Martin Havnør for the anthology Inside Multimodal Composition edited by Andrew Morrison. The book is being published by Hampton Press.
Images and videos soon to follow!  (Right now the bluetooth on my phone is not very cooperative)

On Tags as a term for information technology term - Wikipedia writes the following:
'A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information. Tags are usually chosen informally and personally by item author/creator or by its consumer/viewers/community. Tags are typically used for resources such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks (both in social bookmarking services, and in the current generation of web browsers - see Flock). For this reason, "tagging" has become associated with the Web 2.0 buzz. Many people associate "tagging" with the idea of the semantic web, however some believe that tagging may not be having a positive effect on the overall drive towards the semantic web.
Typically, an item will have one or more tags associated with it'.
Tags are also referred to as metadata, that is data about data, or as in the wiki-application Confluence that feeds this site, referred to as labels.

Surprise GRIGGERS! The Web already helps us help ourselves.

Dejan P at KIBLA sent me a link to a recent event there called Digital Commune. Although not one of the works being developed under GRIG as our three main pieces, this one helps us understand KIBLA's wider work and the inclusion of a mixed reality performance. Here's a video. We talked at KIBLA for hours about how to work the web to support the aims and actions of GRIG. When to use which media, how often to generate a new page such as this one on 'news', and how to integrate our entries (labels!)

One of the riches of having a project such as GRIG is to be able to visit project partners and be better acquainted with their work. From InterMedia in Olso, I was recently at KIBLA in Maribor for the first time. There I met a stream of people - Aleksandra, Dejan P and Dejan S, Stefan, Orus, Peter, Tadeja - busy with funding proposals, event planning and workshops. A lively time it was. KIBLA's cafe was great for meetings and discussions. We took time especially to discuss this website and how to link KIBLA's expertise and experience in event planning, marketing and mediating events. Hundred of postcards, fliers, print programmes, books, dvds. A bag full of their vibrant history from the past 10 years - now home in Oslo.

We'll be linking to some of those items soon here. What's good is that they are in digital form too along with many photos of openings at their gallery, workshops and happenings of all sorts. For the many layers of possible documentation in GRIG, we find here ideas about how to present ourselves and to find one another online too - now, and as we were prior to joining the guild.

Looking back gives us a sense of what we already have achieved and what might integrate and generate. Dejan P explained how KIBLA works to quickly update its site and to reach a wider public. This is important for GRIG but as our events are spread over a wider space and time, we'll surely need to use our site to flag what's coming and to fasten down what's been done.

The dynamic interface for mediation of the gRig project, now on its' way, has partly been inspired by another mediational site developed at InterMedia -The BallectroWeb. This site was developed as a means to mediate a project that explored connections between dance, choreography and digital media. We have referred to this as a 'dynamic interface'. Interfaces might be conceived of as more than a means for interaction between people and machines, but might also bee seen as dynamic sites for mediation and communication. The Ballectro website is discussed in detail in the research article, published in Computers and Composition.  

FUTURESONIC 2008
1-4 May, Manchester, UK

A GBP 5000 commission plus many other opportunities are available:
Art and Conference deadlines -- 5pm 18th December 2007
Music and EVNTS deadlines -- 5pm 7th February 2008

Futuresonic now invites artists, thinkers and makers to submit
proposals and join us for one of the biggest Social's of the year.

THE SOCIAL - SOCIAL NETWORKING UNPLUGGED

The Futuresonic 2008 theme is The Social - Social Networking Unplugged.
Digital culture burns bright with a vision of being not in isolation but in
groups, placing the relations between people first. Beyond the hype
lies ever greater isolation and conformity. Join us as we go in
search of the social.

http://www.futuresonic.com/getinvolved

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

FUTURESONIC ART - SUBMIT NOW

Transforming the city into a space of experimentation, making it come alive

A commission valued at GBP 5000 is available to create a new artwork, plus Futuresonic can support a limited number of other projects, addressing the Social Networking Unplugged theme. Futuresonic's art strand focuses on social and participatory artworks which re-imagine the city.

Art Submissions deadline -- 5pm, 18th December 2007

http://www.futuresonic.com/getinvolved

I recently came across a research article about Late-Medieval Craft Guilds in England, by Gary Richardson. The gRig project - a guild for Reality integrators and generators, might learn some tricks from an old trade for successful mixed reality arts endeavours.
Richardson points to how an economic focus in much research on guilds obscures the fact that '... all craft guilds pursued pious goals'. His article focuses on how bundling of professional and religious matters served as an organizational strategy for successful guilds, and for tackling free-riders. According to Richardson, 'The principal pious objective was the salvation of the soul'. All guild members, for example, were expected to pray for the souls of deceased members, and to light candles in churches and chapels. These candles were made of wax.

The guilds took collective responsibility for shortening deceased guild members' stay in Purgatory, an incentive for paying ones share of the collective expenses. However, the guilds also punished those not willing to take their share. Richardson writes: 'In Norwich, the Pelters charged three pounds of wax to members missing ceremonies held on the morning after the guild feast'. However, not only professional lives were regulated by guild rules: 'In 1448 in Shrewsbury, the Weavers ordained that if any of the guild should have two wives and live in adultery, then they would be shunned by all members of the guild, on pain of 10 shillings'. The tailors charged two pounds of wax if they missed the day of prayers for the souls of the brothers and sisters in the guild. However, the ultimate threat was expulsion from the guild, as the guild did not assume a right for the life and limbs of their members.

working on transactions, the idea of alternative view-modes of "timeline"/individual project "timelines" has reappeared... to be further developed possably as part of the gRig web-site design.

20th to 21th July 2007
Data Ecologies + gRig interim meeting

Click the last picture to see attached video of Bruno Marchal(Brussels) on Data Ecologies issues.
See also pictures taken by Hans Diebner

27th April to 5th May 2007
From the Luminous Green site; "Luminous Green' is a series of gatherings about the world. About the world that supports life today and about the possible worlds that can support more luminous life in the future. With these events, the interdisciplinary laboratory FoAM calls upon the creative sector to enrich the public debate around environmental sustainability, ethical living and eco-technology"

From the Luminous Green wiki; "Even though it's clearly impossible and intellectually fraudulent in some strict sense, somebody ought to "predict the future." I mean, not just do demographic models and some dry corporate trend forecasting, but actually wrap the future up in a big-picture package and sprinkle some Tinker Bell dust. That job really needs doing". -Bruce Sterling.

A family who travels a lot is usually closely knitted together by shared memories.
A travelling family, on the other hand, does not look back in the same nostalgic manner.
The exhibition Familjen shows video installations, photo prints and other visual notes.
"Familjen is in itself a travelling family album. All abundance has been fallen off, the
only thing that remains is the mechanic repetition."

The exhibition is open May 25-June 10 2007.
Location: ID:I galleri, Tjärhovsgatan 19, Stockholm.
Opening hours: Thursday-Friday 16-20, Saturday-Sunday 12-16

For more information visit:

ID:I Galleri

Performing Pictures site

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