Esther Polak kindly asked me to put this out to the geowanking mailing list.
Am still trying to convince her to join us...
MOBILE HABITS
How do you trace a cow in West-Africa? Antropologists and media artists take
up
the challenge.
Date: 29 june 2006
Time: 9.30 - 17.30
Fee: 100 Euro, student discount fee 25 Euro
How to apply: send an email with your CV and short bio to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Both the arts and sciences have carried out extensive research into the
issues
of mobility and space. Both fields use new media such as GPS and GIS to back
up
their research. As a result the more recent research into mobility and space
has
been given a big boost. Both art and science now need each other as never
before. The ?Mobile Habits? workshop brings artists, designers and
scientists together and challenges them to exchange concepts and new working
methods in relation to space, place and mobility.
Locative media artists and designers are opening themselves up to theories
about
mobility and space from the worlds of anthropology and social and at the
same
time social scientists are discovering the different cartographic and
visualisation techniques found in the world of art and media design.
Mobile Lifestyles
Esther Polak is an artist working in the field of ?locative media?. She is
currently researching the possibilities of setting up a project in Nigeria
with
the Fulani, West African nomadic cattle farmers. Her initial research came
up
with a variety of people and researchers, including vets, anthropologists
and
social geographers, with a shared interest in mobile lifestyles. These
various
fields have come up with a number of innovative practical and theoretical
tools
that could be used to set up a project proposal with a well thought out,
interdisciplinary basis.
Talkshop
The setting will be a ?talk-shop? ? a cross between a workshop and a talk
show. The morning session will focus on concepts and methods using a series
of
project presentations/case studies. The afternoon will be more interactive,
with participants critically analysing the case studies in terms of what
kind
of insight they aim to generate ? artistic, historic or practical.
Participants
Taking part in the workshop will be an interdisciplinary mix of media
artists,
designers and social scientists (anthropologists, social geographers)
working
in the field of place, mobility, storytelling and visualisation. In order to
get a balanced interdisciplinary mix we ask to send a CV and short bio when
applying to participate. Deadline june 8th 2006.
Speakers/support team:
Esther Polak
Esther Polak is a visual artist working in the field of new media. She is
best
known for two ?locative media? projects, AmsterdamREALTIME and the
MILKproject. Both projects use GPS to ?imagine? the contemporary landscape.
In both projects the participants were given a GPS tool to carry as they
went
about their daily lives. Their movements were mapped and the participants
were
asked to reflect upon the routes they had made. The projects resulted in
large
public installations. Esther Polak in constantly in search of new ways of
researching space and can as such be seen as part of a long European
tradition
of ?imagining the landscape?.
www.milkproject.net
www.waag.org/realtime
Christian Nold
Christian Nold is an artist and cultural activist who has spent the past few
years mapping human emotions in the urban landscape. His research project is
called Biomapping. It looks at the various ways that we as individuals can
obtain information about our own body. Security technology has brought about
a
situation in which we are losing ownership over our own body and health.
This
project aims to give people access to their own biodata, to interpret and
share
it.
www.softhook.com
http://biomapping.net
Hanne Kirstine Adriansen
Hanne Kirstine Adriansen is a senior research fellow at the Danish Institute
for
International Studies.
Her training is in human geography and she has fieldwork experience from
West
Africa and the Middle East. Her research interests include pastoralists and
their use of mobility, dryland management, and community development. She
takes
special interest in understanding different people\'s perception of concepts
such as space and place.
Ab Drent
Ab Drent is a Master of Science in Rural Development and Management of
Natural
Resources in the tropics. His disciplinary specialisation is anthropology
and
ecology.
He has followed afoot over more than 500 km nomadic Fulani herders in the
Extreme North of Cameroon during ten months. Drent has written an extensive
case study about the transhumance cycle of a nomadic group and tested the
suitability of traditional social theories to describe the relation between
man
and nature. He proposes two Actor Oriented approaches and Actor Network
Theory
as better suited to describe the complexity and unpredictability of nomadic
mobility. In a related quantitative study Drent used GPS data to build a
Correlated Random Walk model to investigate the relation between mobility
and
environmental factors. Currently he is preparing a project with Esther Polak
to
visualize nomadic mobility in alternative ways combining science and art.
www.virtueelplatform.nl/mobilehabits
Virtueel Platform
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV
Amsterdam
Nederland
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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