hi erich,
i fail to see the irony in your title and find it, in fact, rather
cynical, because i cannot believe that you are that naive.
the 'artistic' tools that this workshop will deal with are the very
communication tools that, at this very moment, armies and mercenaries
in iraq, lebanon, chechnya, afghanistan and elsewhere, in cities,
jungles and deserts are using in their military business. not to
speak of all different types of organised crimes, real piracy, etc.
this is not an argument about how artists should be aware of the
economic, military, political or whatever context from which the
technologies they use derive. it is an argument about the
distastefulness of calling such a workshop that pretends to be
utterly unpolitical 'mobile troops', esp. at a time when everyone is
watching mobile troops on NTV, CNN, Phoenix, or whatever channel you
are following the current wars on. - personally, i also think that
you cannot escape from these military usages in artistic 'locative'
work, so whenever you switch on you GPS 'for fun' today, you already
enter, let's say, southern lebanon. (there are gps applications that
are more utilitarian, of course, but we are talking about artistic
experimentation in the digital age, aren't we?) but then that might
be pushing it a bit.
regards,
-a
"Mobile troops" ironically points to the fact that we tend to
increasingly equip us with all kinds of necessary interfaces
for surviving the urban jungle. The electronic car key is as
important as mobile phone and credit card. Mobile troops
is a workshop about media art which is mobile,
(possibly) networked, and experimenting with new ideas
and artistic concepts.
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