Networked Derive :: March 17, 2010; 12:30 - 1:30 pm :: University at Buffalo | Bauhaus–Universität, Weimar | Online.

Networked Derive is a collaborative performance that takes place simultaneously between two geographically-separate locations. Using mobile phones, twitter feeds and a simple mapping system, performers in both locations engage in a series of geographical occupations that coincide with the movements through the other city.

Participants follow a shared map that has one city per side. While the maps will be printed on the same scale, they will be placed slightly askew. The derive starts when one team reports its location to the other. Continue reading

Since the 1950s, guerrilla sign ontologists, situationists and psychogeographers have delighted in using the power of the map to decode the urban landscape. They have explored Manchester using a map of Milan, wandered Newcastle guided by a map of the Berlin U-Bahn, and explored Hackney with a map of the moon. This re-use of maps may at first sight seem to be a simple economy measure, but these were in fact experiments aimed at creating spatial détournements, subverting the commodified image of the city. By the intentional misreading of city space, the city would “be experienced not as a thing at all, but as possibilities”. Our ritual walks are in contrast to the concept of the dérive meaning an aimless walk that follows the whim of the moment, sometimes translated as a drift. Continue reading

These e-mails between Lev Manovich, San Diego and Jenny Marketou, New York were from January 25 to February 4, 2002 (originally published in Breeder #5 (Athens) 2002):

Lev Manovich wrote: Lets begin by talking about mapping. I see mapping one data set into another, or one media into another, as one of the most common operations in computer culture. For instance, it forms the basis of a whole field of visualization — taking the results of an experiment and visualizing them as a van animation; or taking statistical data and presenting it as a 3-D shape; and so on. These kinds of mappings are also common in new media. For instance, I have come across a few projects where network traffic was translated into music. Continue reading

“Abstract: Executable code existed centuries before the invention of the computer in magic, Kabbalah, musical composition and experimental poetry. These practices are often neglected as a historical pretext of contemporary software culture and electronic arts. Above all, they link computations to a vast speculative imagination that encompasses art, language, technology, philosophy and religion. These speculations in turn inscribe themselves into the technology. Since even the most simple formalism requires symbols with which it can be expressed, and symbols have cultural connotations, any code is loaded with meaning. This booklet writes a small cultural history of imaginative computation, reconstructing both the obsessive persistence and contradictory mutations of the phantasm that symbols turn physical, and words are made flesh.” From Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination by Florian Cramer

Urban Organics: Figuratively describing the country of Matrizenzubehoerleute… :: May 3, 2009; 12:00 - 4:30 pm :: DIY Art Centre, 114-116 Amersham Vale, New Cross :: Call for Participants: Places are limited, please wrote to events [at] cultura3.net with the heading “Urban Organics Workshop.”

The city presents an unmapped, sparsely inhabited place, extravagantly rich in unexplored resources, waiting as it were for the arrival of someone to give form to the latent possibilities which lay beyond regular spatial comprehension. The poet, wandering describes reflections on street life, overlaid by the desire to develop typographies and document of human life. The civilian traveler as they traverse the urban terrain, passing amongst concrete corridors of the imagination remakes the city through forming their own reflective typographies. Continue reading

Psychogeographical Research - Raedle & Jeremić :: Opening: April 25, 2009; 7:00 pm :: Centre culturel de Serbie, 123, rue Saint Martin 75004 Paris, M°Châtelet / Rambuteau.

Raedle & Jeremić call their artistic practice OUT-Praxa or Psychogeographical Research, with the latter being a clear reference to the situationist neologism of psychogeography. It suits perfectly that their exhibition in Paris takes place at the very place where Guy Debord and his friends strolled around, before part of the quarter was torn down and the area gentrificated in the late 50ies. In the Belgrade of today the cleansing of the so-called ‘unhygienic’ settlements of thousands of Roma families is the declared strategy for urban development. Continue reading

Emotional Cartography - Technologies of the Self, edited by Christian Nold, 2009 — Emotional Cartography is a collection of essays from artists, designers, psychogeographers, cultural researchers, futurologists and neuroscientists, brought together by Christian Nold, to explore the political, social and cultural implications of visualising intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology.

Essays by Raqs Media Collective, Marcel van de Drift, Dr Stephen Boyd Davis, Rob van Kranenburg, Sophie Hope and Dr Tom Stafford.

A5 Offset Litho - 96 pages - Full Colour ISBN 978-0-9557623-1-4 — Download the complete book: Full Quality PDF (44 meg); Screen Quality PDF (2 meg). Published under a Creative Commons, Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike Licence. Continue reading

Playing the City with Artists Anonymous, A Wall Is A Screen, Ulf Aminde, Cezary Bodzianowski, Robert Ladislas Derr, Dara Friedman, Dora García, Wiebke Grösch and Frank Metzger, Yolande Harris, Sharon Hayes, Tony Hunt and Christian Pantzer, Allan Kaprow, Leopold Kessler, Mads Lynnerup, MOMUS, Roman Ondák, Raumlabor, Bernhard Schreiner, Tino Sehgal, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nasan Tur, Silke Wagner, Elizabeth Wurst :: April 20 - May 6, 2009 :: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Römerberg, 60311 Frankfurt, Germany.

How does the public participate in political dialogue? What constitutes public opinion? What do people understand “public space” to mean? The significance of the social plays a central role in the discourse on art. Concepts such as participation, collaboration, the social turn, and community-based art have clearly influenced both the production and the reception of art. Playing the City reveals public space to be a collective, free, and designable space. Continue reading

Robert Ladislas Derr will take Chance to Frankfurt, Germany for the Schirn Kunsthalle’s Playing the City exhibition curated by Matthias Ulrich. On April 23, 2009, Derr will accept thirty die rolls from viewers that determine his cartography from the Schirn Kunsthalle through the streets of Frankfurt.

You will be able to spot Derr on his cartographic walk - he will be the pedestrian dressed in a mirrored suit, wearing four video cameras that capture the scenes from his front, back and sides. In the mirrored suit, his presence on the street has a dichotomous relationship between being real and illusionary. Continue reading

Constraint City at ARCO Madrid by Gordan Savicic:

Oscar Abril Ascaso invited me to participate in his project Techformance which will take place around Murcia/ Cartagena and will eventually be shown at ARCO Madrid, one of the biggest art fairs in Europe.

I’ve been invited to do a public performance with some citizens from Cartagena interested in trying out the Constraint City jacket in January. It was an interesting experience watching other people than me wearing the corset. Continue reading