ID #5: While in former editions a specific theme was proposed, the methodology that IDENSITAT has been rehearsing along its 10 years of life is now synthesized in the initials ID. The project, pioneered in Calaf in the year 1999, has evolved, spreading a network of collaborations throughout different locations, while seeking out methodologies for the interaction of projects of creation with social, cultural and political contexts of differentiated shades. In this way, IDENSITAT, originally a platform for the production of projects impacting upon public space, has been transformed into an itinerant production space, roaming throughout the territory with projects that promote analysis and proposals for transformation in their environment. ID refers to this transformation.

ID is Identity | Density, Investigate | Develop - Invent | Discover - Involve | Denounce - Interrogate | Discuss - Innovation | Decrease.

ID #5 / Call for projects: ID opens an international call for projects directed to creators with proposals in the sphere of public space. The involved contexts are Calaf and Manresa. ID #5 will also stage parallel activities in Mataró (Can Xalant), Priorat (Priorat Centre d’Art), and Prat de Llobregat.

The open call for projects has two categories:

Production projects: Public spaces as well as public domain are concepts for discussion and in continuous updating. ID is an open laboratory for investigating these aspects and the projects are understood to be research works in this area. Therefore, ID calls for projects that intervene in public space and seek for interaction among different social sectors; projects that outline contemporary strategies for creation, incorporating specific aspects of the context, and/or which display actions of communication in their environment. Projects are invited based on their medium or long term working processes. Others are projects that intervene in a more specific or ephemeral way while using the infrastructures, means or existing mechanisms in the territory.

The open call for production projects concerns the cities of Calaf and Manresa.

This edition in particular incorporates a project in Prat de Llobregat. The project will intervene in a specific space that the Town Hall plans to develop (For more specific information regarding each site please refer to www.idensitat.net).

Documentation-archive projects: ID also calls for projects carried out in other contexts, in progress or considered for publication, as well as theoretical works from parties interested in participating in IDENSITAT as a mechanism for diffusion and analysis of projects. This will be done through a specialized publishing work.The specific publication will take the format of a book, articulating a set of projects and theoretical essays.

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS: The final date for submission of proposals is January 9, 2009. Information about material to be submitted along with the proposals is posted on our website. It is preferable that the proposals are in digital format and sent by electronic mail to: idensitat [at] idensitat.net.

In case the project needs to be sent by post (please notify it first to the above e-mail address), please send it to the following postal address:

IDENSITAT - Ajuntament de Calaf
Placa Gran, 2. E-08280 CALAF

Prospective participants sending proposals, by email or postal service, do so at their own risk. Proposals not selected for development may be collected from the Town Council of Calaf once the organization has made its final selections public.

The selected works and the corresponding projects will remain the property of the author or authors. Reproduction will be permitted for all publications promoted by IDENSITAT, and for display on its web page, as well as in all broadcast materials relating to IDENSITAT. Works produced for this edition of IDENSITAT must mention this when presented publicly out of the programme.

IDENSITAT, together with the town councils of Calaf and Manresa will incorporate in their public archives all the documentation generated by IDENSITAT #5.

IDENSITAT #5 is administered by the non-profit organization Idensitat, Association of Contemporary Art. It is promoted by the Town Council of Calaf, the Town Council of Manresa, Generalitat de Catalunya, Diputacio de Barcelona and includes the participation of Can Xalant, Center of Creation and Contemporary Thought of Mataró, Priorat Centre d’Art, Town Council of Prat de LLobregat and Consonni.

IDENSITAT will assume that all applicants have read thoroughly, understood and accepted the above-noted conditions.

By classifying and then analyzing the elements of a square, I slowly began to realize that there is a similarity between the city and a living organism. We can treat cities as entities with collective intelligence and, with the same analogy, we can recognize a system by which the urban space communicates with us. the square, as a city’s “heart and soul”, has the most to say, so recently I concentrated my artistic exploration on the language of urban squares.

The vocabulary of urban squares is part of a complex language of art; it is a dialect with very specific characteristics. Elements have their individual meanings, but when combined create new messages. Architectural elements, signage systems, graffiti and many other forms of urban art follow each other in a continuous stream, they surround us and direct our movements, they are given to us in a form on which we, as individuals, have very little effect. Still, we are the only ones that can attempt to interpret them and use their messages in order to understand and try to create more sustainable and habitable cities.

The level on which squares communicate transcends every day life. Careful observation and a lot of passion are necessary in order to interpret / translate their messages. Many urban experts write and lecture on the topic of cities. in my work, I try to match those thoughts with my interpretation of the urban square.

This project is a hybrid between a scientific and an artistic approach to the subject. I am aware that this narrow path between them might be speculative and perhaps not 100% accurate, but the objective is to have more freedom in interpreting the facts, and then provoke action from interested and influential people…

The objective of Urban Squares is to explore visual and artistic aspect of public urban square as a nucleus of any neighbourhood. We are interpreting/translating language of urban squares, their urban morphology and fundamental values in the overall social integration and sustainability of the urban life. All of the squares in our collection are with a short description / comment and some with the combined structural profile and cross-section.

Over time we were inspired to start performing analysis of urban space and produce “psychogeographical portraits” as a mental reaction to the visited space. See the map of some of our psychogeographical performances.

Urbansquares project is “walking on a very narrow path” between art and science. intention is to have artistic freedom in interpreting the facts, and provoke reaction.

rediscover - renew - reuse is catchphrase we are trying to incorporate in all our research.

As a very important part of this project classification system of city squares is developed consisting of evaluation method and types of city squares.

Other even more important parts are our activities related to urban issues and psychogeography, urbansquares art projects and documentation.

Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals for individual or collective research projects for a one-year, two-year or variable research period. Extrastatecraft: Hidden Organizations, Spatial Contagions and Activism, a new project of the Design department, initiated by Keller Easterling, researches underexplored territory in the world’s infrastructural and organizational strata. The work focuses on shared protocols, managerial subroutines and financial instruments as they produce and program physical space around the world. Perhaps because these organizations operate in the background, in an active and relational rather than nominative register, their political outcomes are often at once pervasive and mysterious.

For instance, how do organizations like the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) or McKinsey determine management protocols? How do construction networks, more than the singular creations of architects and urbanists, disseminate materials and processes that determine how the world is calibrated? How do markets and financial instruments create templates that shape space?

The research also explores the political leverage latent in this renovated conception of global infrastructure. Some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Armand Mattelart argues that global infrastructure is a field that is ‘young and uncharted’ largely because it is often still considered in terms of national rather than international histories. Moreover, the political instrumentality of these increasingly familiar global spheres is still frequently theorized in terms of militarization or universal rationalization, when they might really be agents of more discrepant or obscure forms of polity. The notion that there is either a dominant logic or a proper forthright realm of political negotiation usually acts as the perfect camouflage for parallel political activity - the medium of subterfuge, hoax and hyperbole that actually rules the world.

Extrastatecraft will consider a number of tools effective in manipulating active organization, but will pay particular attention to the ways in which these organizations are really populations of repeatable components and formats, the arrangement and chemistry of which possess a political disposition. The project will research multipliers in the organization that make components contagious and powerful as shapers of polity, and will consider these as stealthy tools of activism. New objects of practice and entrepreneurialism, redefined in a relational register, reflect the network’s ability to amplify structural shifts or repeatable moves. If icons of piety, collusion or competition often escalate tensions, might alternative design ingenuities distract from them? Having customarily absented itself from official political channels, architecture, as extrastatecraft, finds itself in an unexpectedly consequential position, manipulating codes of passage and points of leverage in the thickening back channels of global infrastructure.

While researchers will find in the topic many points of entry, some anticipated research agendas address the managerial and infrastructural substrates of space related to finance, construction, trade and marketing. Travel, language skills, archival experience and fieldwork will serve the research. Textual, graphic or design documents may contribute to the final collective product.

Candidates interested in this project can apply with a research proposal. Selected candidates gain the position of researcher at the Design department of the Jan van Eyck Academie.

The project will start in 2009.

For content-based information contact: anne.vangronsveld [at] janvaneyck.nl
For practical information contact: leon.westenberg [at] janvaneyck.nl

Keller Easterling is an architect and writer from New York City. Her book, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) researches familiar spatial products that have landed in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world. A previous book Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America applies network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure and development formats. A forthcoming book, Extrastatecraft, examines global infrastructure networks as a medium of polity. Easterling has lectured and published widely in the United States and internationally. She has also published web installations including: Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Her research and design work has been most recently exhibited at the Rotterdam Biënnale, the Architectural League and Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. Easterling is associate professor at Yale University.

This two-day intensive workshop will focus on critical methodologies for studying Web 2.0. In relation to the contemporary Internet, there is an obvious need to move beyond cultural studies approaches to fandom, where active consumption is simply recast as participatory culture without any assessment of the economic and technological forces driving user-generated content. Rather than relying on the Jenkins-style models of convergence and the notion of collective intelligence, this workshop will encourage participants to consider the alternative possibilities and theoretical problems facing a materialist understanding of network culture.

For instance, to what extent can software studies move from engineering issues and technologically-focused specifications to outline a broader analytics of power? What sort of creative concepts are available for understanding the everyday practices of blogging? How can organized networks transform their dependence on free labor to reach greater economic sustainability?

While the theme is framed in part by Geert Lovink’s ongoing theoretical work, this workshop also allows for the opportunity to discuss some of the more general difficulties facing Internet research, including questions of scale, speed and temporality, theories of technology, debates around networked politics and modes of collaboration.

Some key topics:

- organized networks
- theories of blogging
- recent web 2.0 literature (Bruns, Zittrain, Shirky)
- software studies and protocol (Fuller, Galloway)
- distributed aesthetics
- free labor and collaboration

How to Apply: Applications are due by November 21, 2008. Applications must include a 250-word summary of your research topic, highlighting links to the theme and a one-page curriculum vitae.

Applications and further information should be sent to Michael Dieter at mdieter [at] unimelb.edu.au

Geert Lovink, founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC), is a Dutch-Australian media theorist and critic. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and in 2003 was based at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland. In 2004, Lovink was appointed as Research Professor at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and Associate Professor at University of Amsterdam. He is the founder of Internet projects such as nettime and fibreculture. His recent book titles are Dark Fiber (2002), Uncanny Networks (2002) and My First Recession (2003). In 2005-06 he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin Institute for Advanced Study where he finished his third volume on critical Internet culture, Zero Comments (2007).

Luke Jerram’s The Dream Director is a unique art event, installation and exploration investigating the hidden realm of dreaming. Where do people go when they dream? What do they see? What do they experience? And can the shape of dreams be influenced as the dreamer is sleeping? These are the questions posed and explored by artist Luke Jerram in his participatory work, The Dream Director.

Jerram was commissioned in 2007 by Watershed to investigate the complexities of sleep and dreaming. He built upon original research carried out with sleep psychologist Chris Alford at The University of West of England, to create a new installation that merges art, science and digital media.

The Dream Director invites people to sleep overnight in a gallery. Specially designed “pods” house the dreamers who don eye-masks that detect rapid eye movement, indicating the dreaming stage of sleep. Each pod is allocated a different bank of sounds, shaping participants dreams in different ways. When the dreamers reach their dream state, their eye masks trigger ambient sounds via a computer, which are played into small speakers mounted into the pod, in an attempt to affect the nature and content of their dreams. Prior to the sleepover, participants are asked to record what sort of dreams they normally experience. After the sleepover they are asked to record their dreaming experience for that night.

The Dream Director explores the boundaries of participants’ conscious and subconscious minds, prompting questions about the ethics of and possibilities for, creating art in dream space. It is also a new tool for sleep science and clinical applications that raises questions about the rules of interaction and boundaries of science and art.

Alongside the tour will be the launch of Luke Jerram’s book, Art In Mind. Tracing the artist’s research and practice during the last ten years, the book focuses on his investigations and experiments into the creation of artwork for the unconscious. Rather than a concise chronological history of his work, Art In Mind is an accessible discourse that, through anecdote, observation and journal, provides a fresh and intimate insight of the artist and his process.

Luke Jerram designs artworks that deliver an experience to unusual perceptual territories. Retinal Memory Volume makes sculpture work using retinal after images, whilst Sky Orchestra involves lifting people into the creative space on the edge of sleep using surround sound played from hot air balloons flown over a city at dawn. Sky Orchestra launched the Sydney Festival in January 2007, and was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company over Stratford-upon-Avon to mark its Complete Works Festival in June 2006. As well as the Clark Bursary, he has previously been awarded a NESTA fellowship and completed an AHRC Arts and Science Fellowship at UWE.

Watershed is delighted to announce that The Dream Director is to embark on a national tour, visiting ICA (London), FACT (Liverpool) and De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill-on-Sea) where a wider audience will be able to participate in future sleepovers.

Aside from the actual participation in the event as a dreamer, day-time visitors are able to visit a newly designed installation based on the sleepover of the previous night and access documentation about the Dream Director’s development including written information, images, film and audio.

• Tour details:

ICA, London | Wed 19 – Sun 23 November 2008
The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
020 7930 0493
Press Contact: Yung Kha
yung.kha [at] ica.org.uk

FACT, Liverpool | Fri 16 – Sun 18 January 2009
88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L14DQ
0151 707 4444
Press Contact: Louise Merrin
louise.merrin [at] fact.co.uk

De La Warr Pavillion | Fri 3 – Sun 5 April 2009
Marina, Bexhill on Sea
East Sussex TN40 1DP
01424 229 111
Press Contact: Sally Ann Lycett
sally.ann.lycett [at] dlwp.com

Compton Verney | End of May 2009 (dates to be announced)
Warwickshire, CV35 9HZ
01926 645540
Press Contact: Ina Cole
ina.cole [at] comptonverney.org.uk

• For further information on the tour and/or artist please contact Cat John at Watershed on 0117 927 6444 or cat [at] watershed.co.uk

• Watershed started life in 1982 as Britain’s first dedicated media centre, with an arts cinema at its heart, Watershed promotes creativity, collaboration, innovation and participation from cultural, commercial and community sectors. It regards itself as a facilitator, a hub and a catalyst for the creative industries. It is committed to developing new skills and content by working in collaboration with artists, filmmakers, media companies, media groups and schools.

• The Dream Director at FACT is part of the DING D0NG Festival (12 December – 22 February).

• The Dream Director is a Watershed tour funded by Arts Council England.

• The Dream Director was developed as part of the Clark Bursary supported by Watershed, J A Clark Charitable Trust and Arts Council England in association with Situations at the University of the West of England.

The technology is called “4K” after the number of horizontal pixels in the image, 4096×2160 per frame; four times that of High Definition Television and equivalent to 35 MM film. A one-and-a-half-hour recording before compression contains roughly 3.5 Terabytes of data – the amount of data that fits on about 1.200 DVD’s. Sound will also be in very high quality, with 24 channels uncompressed audio for much richer sound than normal audio CD recordings.

Hollywood studios are starting to distribute their latest global hit movies digitally, and cinema’s worldwide are making the transition to digital projection: mostly in 2K but there are also some pioneering 4K cinemas operating in Japan and the United States already. However there is currently only a limited amount of 4K material available for CineGrid experiments, mostly from scanned 35 mm and 65 mm film, scientific visualization and recordings of a few live events and student performances.

One of the goals of CineGrid is to encourage the creation of more 4K content and audio recordings that can be used by CineGrid members around the world for experiments in production, post-production, network transmission and archiving. This will demonstrate the potential, both artistic and scientific, of very high quality digital media running over high speed networks.

Switchboard is an open-source conceptual level interface to a library of data mining tools and web services, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and many more. It is written in Java and packaged for the Processing environment. It was created as part of Jeff Crouse’s masters thesis, as was Interactive Frank. With Interactive Frank, the user starts off by typing in a sentence, and then the generator takes over, scouring the web for sentences to hopefully construct a cohesive narrative. In addition, the program finds and plays a streaming audio station that fits the narrative.

The Map: Navigating the Present is a multi-faceted project of global contemporary culture. It takes a broad approach to maps and cartography of today; allowing for artistic, cultural, political and scientific practices to combine, meet and collide. Altogether 36 projects address a wide variety of topics with a cartographic practice or an idea of mapping as the common denominator.

The public will encounter both maps and the work of making maps as sophisticated tools for knowing the world, of accessing the real, but also maps as producers / generators of alternative realities.

The Map: Navigating the Present is produced by Bildmuseet. The exhibition is a collaboration with Bucharest Biennale 3 and appeared in its first version in Bucharest, Romania in summer 2008. Other partners are the Romanian Cultural Institute and Umeå Capital of Culture 2014 campaign. The project is made possible through a special grant from the Foundation of for the Culture of the Future.

The primary aim of SHAREDSCAPES is to provide a discussion forum for points of view inspired by the concept of landscape. Through the medium of the technological translation of material published online, its secondary aim is to create a 3D space/sculpture in real time. This will crystalise that material, seeking to bring together computer-generated images, chaotic/generative modelling and a “virtual reality” space. Little by little, a virtual landscape will develop. Its composition will not be subject to the physical constraints of a site (in concrete geographical terms) but to the technological exchanges of human beings virtually connected to each other. It is in the ambiguous relationship between landscape and information that the essence of this project exists.

Following urban computing and locative media and their accompanying visions from labs, conferences and classrooms to journal publications and popular media accounts, this dissertation presents four case histories in corporate, academic and artistic design practice. An analysis of the Mobile Bristol, Passing Glances, Sonic City and Urban Tapestries research and design projects draws out the idea that everyday life in the future city is expected to become more expressive, engaging and meaningful. The increased extensibility and transmissibility of the city itself, along with an increased ability to be socially embedded within it, is seen to be a fundamental promise inherent in these projects. The dissertation argues that such spatial and cultural potentialities can be productively understood as involving temporary, selective and mobile publics, where creative and playful interactions emerge as primary means of social innovation.

The dissertation builds on available sociological approaches to understanding everyday life in the networked city to show that emergent technologies reshape our experiences of spatiality, temporality and embodiment. It contributes to methodological innovation through the use of data bricolage and research blogging 1, which are presented through experimental and recombinant textual strategies; and it contributes to the field of science and technology studies by bringing together actor-network theory with the sociology of expectations in order to empirically evaluate an area of cutting-edge design.” From A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media by Anne Galloway.