BALTAN Laboratories and Piksel OpenCV Collaborative Research and Development Residency :: Open Call for Proposals — Deadline: August 31, 2009.

As part of BALTAN Laboratories’ Blueprint research programme investigating the roles and forms of the art and technology laboratory of the future, BALTAN and Piksel are collaborating to explore the relationship between hard and software developers working on free and open source tools for artistic production, and the artistic use and development of these tools in a laboratory setting. One artist will be selected from this open call to produce an artwork using tools developed in collaboration with local and international developers of the Piksel Community, together with BALTAN and Piksel, through workshops and a residency at BALTAN. The Piksel/BALTAN collaboration will run from September until December 2009.

Specifically, we are interested in proposals to work with the tracking and mapping technology Open Computer Vision. OpenCV is a library of programming functions mainly aimed at real time computer vision. Example applications of the OpenCV library are Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); Object Identification, Segmentation and Recognition; Face Recognition; Gesture Recognition; Motion Tracking, Ego Motion, Motion Understanding; Structure From Motion (SFM); Stereo and Multi-Camera Calibration and Depth Computation; Mobile Robotics. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCV]. There will also be opportunity for the artist and involved developers to connect to the BALTAN Tracker, a tool being developed at BALTAN for thermographic cameras.

Knowledge, experience, tools and artwork will be openly disseminated both online as well as in person through public events at BALTAN and at the Piksel 09 Festival. Reflection on open processes and sharing knowledge throughout the research, development and production phases of an artistic work, beyond archiving, is an integral part of this collaboration.

We offer:

• a residency period of up to 6 weeks at BALTAN Laboratories in Eindhoven, the Netherlands during the months of September, October and November 2009. Specific dates to be determined in collaboration with the selected artist.
• an artist fee of 2000 Euro - a production budget to be determined - travel to and from Eindhoven, NL and to Bergen, Norway for the Piksel festival, as well as accommodation in both locations - a week-long development workshop with OpenCV developers and other participants from September 21-27, 2009.
• support from the Piksel community in the further technical development of the selected project throughout the residency period.
• presentation of the project at the Piksel festival in Bergen, Norway from November 19-22, 2009
• public presentation of the results of the artist’s research at BALTAN Laboratories in Eindhoven

Requirements:

• proposals are welcome from professional artists worldwide;
• the artist must have advanced technical knowledge allowing him or her to experiment with the above-mentioned technologies;
• the artist should preferably have experience working in collaborative settings with people from different disciplines;
• the artist must be willing and able to travel to Eindhoven for a residency period of 6 weeks in the timeframe above and to the Piksel festival in Bergen from November 19-22;
• the artist must be willing to openly and thoroughly document his or her artistic process.

Proposal:

Please send the following (digitally) to both Angela Plohman, Director, BALTAN Laboratories at angela[AT]baltanlaboratories.org and Gisle Froysland, Director, Piksel at info[AT]piksel.no by August 31, 2009:

• an outline of the concept underlying the work that you wish to develop (200 words max)
• a general outline of the scope of the final work (200 words max - can include visual sketches)
• a motivation for why you would like to work in the context of this particular residency as well as an
• overview of your interest in the technologies mentioned above (250 words max
• an outline of the research and development plan for the work (250 words max)
• an up-to-date CV including links to previous work