Test_Lab: Topology :: April 17, 2008; 8:00 pm :: V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam :: This event will be streamed live.

Featuring: Tiziana Terranova (IT), Christoph Wachter (DE), Mathias Jud (CH), Yolande Harris (UK), Bureau d’etudes (FR), and Di Mainstone (UK).

Topology is often mentioned as an ultimate example of the same subject being studied in parallel within various branches of science and art, each branch approaching the subject from its own background and with its own methodologies. Today, there are numerous initiatives on the radar in which representatives of the various branches of topology explicitly state a desire to exchange ideas and methodologies related to the topic. But do all these diverse branches even share a common understanding of what topology is?

In practice, it seems that there is still a fair amount of confusion surrounding the notion of topology, and that its definition is a matter of debate rather than consensus, with a single commonly agreed-on defining characteristic: topology deals with the qualitative properties of geometrical structures. Should the confusion surrounding the notion of topology discourage topologists from trying to unify the field? Or could it perhaps serve as a commonly shared ground for collaboration and exchange?

This topology edition of Test_Lab will feature several new and exciting artistic Research and Development (aRt&D) projects within the artistic topology tradition and will investigate the common understanding of the notion of topology in the arts. Audience members are invited to actively involve themselves in the practices of topological aRt&D and, on the basis of this involvement, discuss what defines the field and whether the proposed exchange and collaboration with other topology branches is justified.

Test_Lab: Topology will reveal censored areas on Google maps and the true networks of the world s power structures, and will include a sonic navigation walk and a fashionable artist intervention. The different branches dealing with topology will be represented by international experts participating in the project A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics (ATACD).

Test_Lab is a bimonthly public event organized by V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, that provides an informal setting for the demonstration, testing, presentation, and discussion of artistic research and development (aRt&D).

Preceding this edition of Test_Lab, the Piet Zwart Institute will organize a seminar on mapping as a medium of cultural reflection and critique with presentations by artists, activists, and theorists, titled: The Map is not the Territory?! April 16, 2008, 19.30.- 21.30, Mauritsstraat 36, Rotterdam.

Presenters: Bureau d’Etudes, Theo Deutinger, Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud, with an introduction and moderation by Florian Cramer.