summ( )n

Last Friday, November 28, I’ve been to the conference called eSphere: Living in the Cloud, a part of the larger program of the STRP festival here in Eindhoven. The conference was extremely interesting content-wise, but it was also held at the very place of the festival, among all those beautiful and mind-boggling installations, which of course created a very special atmosphere, of tangible magic, so to speak.

Aaron Koblin, the first speaker of the conference, talked about a new level of data visualization that we can gain via social web (and the Internet-of-Things type of tools in general). He presented a few of his own projects, and despite I knew most of the before (except the Arcade Fire one), it was a pleasure to see them all again, and to listen to his lively stories.

Kevin Warwick was the second speaker, of very different background and with a different story. He became a world-famous science celebrity after he voluntarily implanted a chip that connected his brain (and nervous system in general) with a machine, thus becoming the first official cyborg. Since this time, Professor Warwick has been eagerly expecting the moment when brain-to-brain communication between humans will become possible (I was surprised he didn’t show the images from the Avatar movie, where this brain-to-brain connections had been depicted in a number of interesting ways). But he did show many other projects, including the one with the robots growing their own brains – made of human neurons! Aren’t they cyborgs too?

In the afternoon the conference split into two tracks (which meant that anyone could see only a half of all the presentations, always a pity to realize in such events). I was actually moderating the second track, called The World is the Web, that presented four excellent speakers: Lorna Goulden from Philips Design (above), Christian van ‘t Hof from the Rathenau Institute, an artist Gordan Savicic, and Geert Lovink, a new media theorist and critic and a founder of the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam.

I may actually write separate postings about their individual presentations later on; they are too nice to cramp them all into one piece. In fact, there may be only one regretful fact about this sidetrack (ok, two, if to add my generally incomprehensible moderation): there was too little time available to all these speakers (only about 15-20 min) and each brought a very rich story worth of an hour or two of careful listening and discussing. Oh, well, a typical messy vortex of all conferences.

Speaking about vortexes – this is actually me inside one of them, created in (or by) the installation Nemo Observatorium, by lawrence Malstaf.

In my previous posting about the Ideefiks seminar I wrote that ‘design does not exist’ (as if it is a common knowledge), and only then realized that I used this phrase in the presentation that I didn’t describe here – yet. In my own mind the sentence is almost a cliche by now, yet it’s not even present in this ‘blogging space’; a typical case of the ‘futures not evenly distributed’. Time to catch up with the mind’s futurescapes.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to speak at a mini-conference titled Blow Up the Cover Up, which itself was a ‘back cover’ of a week-long program Tricksters Tricked in the Vanabbe Museum in Eindhoven. Speaking broadly, the program was about different strategies of identity (de)construction, and included a range of art installations, performances and interventions.

For the last event of the program Hadas Zemer and Freek Lomme, its co-curators, invited Michel de Boer, identity designers from Rotterdam and Jonas Staal, a Dutch artist-activist (who also participated in the art program with his new project Art/Property of Politics). In some sense, they couldn’t select two more polar presenters: Michel represented a classical design approach to identity creation (he created a large number of designs for both businesses and governmental organizations alike; every person in the Netherlands knows at least one of his creations, identity design of the country’s police cars). Lately he’s been also involved in numerous design projects abroad, for example, he helps to design ‘identity’ for an entire country of South Korea.

Jonas makes his art to mix, re-mix, confuse and eventually blow up existing identity structures. In his presentation he told about his most recent project, Post Propaganda (pdf 1, pdf 2), where he explores art potential of political posters, and political power of art provocation.

The conference’s program also announced a third participant, described as a ‘mystery speaker’. Well, as I have suddenly discovered just a few days before the conference, it was me. I was supposed to present something that would “elevate the discussion to another dimension” (phew!) /me is always ready to elevate something to another dimension, as a matter of fact.

But the guys invited me (perhaps deliberately) so shortly before the talk that I hardly had any time to prepare anything thoughtful. Plus, I was actually very busy with preparing our own game about Cities of Happiness), so I was almost forced to be spontaneous and improvise full-steam. The slides were inevitably prepared in a rush, and the story is very raw, so I treat it as a stub, and plan to work it out further later.

I decided not to tell a grand story, with a predefined meaning and ‘morale’, but instead play a mini-game, to show a few (visual) pieces, out of which the audience could assemble their own ‘puzzle’. Since the theme of the conference was about identity and its (mis)(re)presentations, I also decided to make my story a bit auto-biographical and self-referential. In case of my readers’ interest, the slides can be now seen on SlideShare (click the picture below); I added a few notes to otherwise entirely pictorial presentation.

NB: I was later told that my story is way too complex to tell in 20 or so min I was given, and that it should be split into 6-7 different stories, each of 20-30 slides. But I tend to think that it was not so bad, especially for the stub executed in a mystery speech genre. Next time better (or rather more mysterious).

I wrote about Caviar Rouge Forum, one of the projects by the Caravan Culture agency I was involved (albeit in a minor way, I was just a member of a panel discussing the concept of ‘design-mindedness’). This time it was a much bigger project, a game we designed specially for the project, and played in the premises of Vanabbe Museum in Eindhoven. Instead of just talking about the impact of (national) culture on design, and design – as a discipline and a mindset – on cultures, we suggested to play (with) these ideas and to act them out in a tangible format.

We suggested for the participants (who were both from the Caviar Rouge’s team and the general public; the event was openbaar, public in Dutch) to imagine that they represent different national design team, and from this role to construct a City of Happiness for a imaginary client. We proposed to play with four teams, quite archetypical but also appropriate for the given context: the Chinese, Dutch, Russian, and US ones (we made an effort to not include real Russians in the ‘Russian Team, and likewise, there were no Dutchmen in the “Dutch Team”).

Each team was tasked to design and construct their concept of ‘Happy City” on the given plot of land (we used a beautiful film from the book by Petra Kempf (You Are the City) as a representation of such land). Each team has a set of construction materials (although different for every team, both in quality and quantity), and also some ‘game currency’ to purchase more in due course. Every team has started with heated debates on the meaning of ‘Happiness’ according to the ‘national identity’ which quickly followed with the first sketching/sculpting exercises.

Perhaps, we were to generous game masters, and provided more materials than necessary to the teams, since they didn’t show much interest in the additional supplies and auctions; but there were sporadic exchanges between the teams, including open barters and more hidden appropriations of the poorly overseen resources (e.g., paper cuts).

At the end all the teams presented their ideas, and pretty impressive ones given very limited amount of time they all had (the game lasted just a bit longer than an hour). The ‘Dutch team” (played mostly by Russians) presented their concept of the Soul City, arguing that the key components of happiness is High Spirituality, Natural Beauty, Friendship and Openness (symbolized by various circles, bridges, and flowers).

The “Russian team” (played mostly by Dutch guys) emphasized an importance of History and Roots, and Openness to the Others (you can find a lot of gates and windows in their design).

The ‘Chinese team’ was all about Harmony and Feng-Shui (yet they also accumulated the largest resources of gold in their vault, guarded by the Golden Dragon).

(not so) Surprisingly enough, the winner who took it all was the ‘US team’; not only their concept was seen as the most ‘authentically American’, but they also presented it with wit and self-irony.

The game was concluded with an interesting discussion, and at the end was the best combo of fun and useful learning (as supposed for a ‘serious game’). I plan to make a more detailed presentation, a mini-report of some sort about the game, and will place it later to SlideShare. I also have a few video-clips, to be also incorporated into this report.

This image is from the exhibition called Liberation of Light, currently held in the Design House of Eindhoven (and also a part of the Dutch Design Week); but I came to the place not so much to see the exhibition, but mainly to participate in the Caviar Rouge Forum, titled Design Minded. The forum, one of the pivotal moments of the week-long Caviar Rouge Project, was aimed at exploring the issues of cultural dependencies of design (and in turn, its its impact on cultures of societies).

The forum was greeted by the current head of the Design House who pointed to the rapidly changing technologies behind many of the lighting solutions, moving from the incandescent light bulbs to LEDs, OLEDs, and many more novel exciting technologies, that force design (and societies at large) to rethink the way we create and use light in our lives.

Gus Rodriguez, former vice-president of Philips Design, presented a wide historical panorama of design evolution, and its links with societal and cultural developments, and suggested to think about new role of design, capable to both address and solve deep and urgent issues of the present moment.

The second speaker, Alexander Leenetsky from Russia, vice-president of the Design Union and the chief editor of the design-union.ru portal, talked about various cases of the use (and abuse) of design in Russia when dealing with specific cultural issues (ranging from more traditional product design to communication and up to conceptual design thinking).

Two speeches had been followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Joris van Gelder (Dutch designers and a head of Ministerie of Nieuwe Dingen agency) and Ivan Paschenko from the Storytelling Company. Among the panelists were Aigul Baigozhaeva, head designer of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, Wouter van Nieuwland, from the newly established Eindhoven Design agency, and Artemy Lebedev from Art.Lebedev studio in Russia.

A short, but a very interesting performance by Olimdjon Beknazarov opened the Caviar Rouge Project, part of the Dutch Design Week. The artist has combined seemingly uncombinable cultural traditions, blending the Japanese costumes, Christian music and Arabic body language in one impressive dance performance. And, as if it was not diverse enough a cultural cocktail, the performance was happening around a beautiful lighting installation by Chinese (!) artist Li Hui in the Dutch (!!) Museum of Artificial Light in Art (Centrum voor Kunstlicht in de Kunst) in Eindhoven. It surely symbolizes.

The atmosphere of the event was very creative, and very rouge too, because of the mesmerizing beams of red light of the Li Hui’s masterpiece installation called Reincarnation:

The red hue also made very difficult to take good pictures, and I failed to produce anything remotely publishable at the end But I feel I need to post at least two pictures, of Yelena Kharitonova, the founder, organizer, and key driver of the project, and of Peter Nagelkerke, a newly appointed Ambassador of Caviar Rouge in the Netherlands. Kudos to Yelena, and best luck for the coming week!

Yay, there is a chance we will be playing /acting out our Internet of Dragons game again, this time in Paris, during the conference on de l’internet des objects. Need to rehearse my French, un peu

At the end of November Eindhoven will host STRP, a large festival of art and technology. The program of the event is rich and full of demonstrations, performances, concerts and shows. But it also have its’s own ‘scientific’ part, a conference called “e-Sphere: Living in a Cloud“. I am invited to moderate one of the workshop of this event, on the Internet of Things and its social and cultural impact (beyond its mere technological features). I expect both interesting talks (the list of speaker is very impressive) and hot debates (also because some of the speakers hold quite opposing views on the matter).

If anyone will have a chance to come to the festival, do joint the conference too, it will be on Friday, November 26.

Tomorrow I am giving a lecture in the local branch of the Fontys University, for their minor on Strategic Innovation. The content will be similar to the talks I gave earlier this year in Moscow and St. Petersburg, although I added a new chapter, on the recent methods of ‘future studies’. I expect a more difficult talk, since I have twice less time, and even more stuff to talk; we’ll see how I will manage.

Yay! I have received a press-accreditation to this year’s edition of Picnic, an international festival of new media, art and design in Amsterdam! I will be there on Sep 22 and 23, and will write for Demotix (but of course will post a lot of images & stories here too). There will be a lot of old friends/peers/ex-colleagues there, and I am sure plenty of new people to meet and talk too.

NB: The title of the posting is a reference to a famous sci-fi novel by the Russian brothers-writers Strugatsky, called Пикник на обочине (or Roadside Picnic). Written in 1972, this short novel made a huge impact on the sci-fi industry in general, and brought an international fame to the authors (as well as additional problems for them in their own country, then the USSR). The story was further immortalized by Andrey Tarkovsky in his 1979 movie Stalker, and later served as a background for the same-name video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R (and all its sequels, prequels etc.) To my knowledge, there is another full-blown movie in production, but very little is known about its release date.

I always wondered if the founders of Picnic were aware of the novel when creating the name for their new festival; I am sure that by now somebody mentioned that novel to them, and made a parallel between a surreal and full of (not always safe) surprises zone of the Picnic-as-in-novel, and Picnic-as-a-festival. I could try to figure out it, in case I will manage to talk them next week. Stay tuned!

Logos galore! Summ()n has developed a game (code name ’Happy Street: Better City, Better Life’) for a Caviar Rouge design forum, organized by CaravanCultura , to be held in Van Abbemuseum, during the Dutch Design Week! Pheew!

Ok, an attempt to decipher of this logo thicket: CaravanCultura is an agency that promotes cultural innovation and conducts a range of cross-cultural projects and initiatives. Summ()n is very happy to partner with CC and already participated in its annual CreArt forum in Brussels.

Caviar Rouge is another branded annual project of Caravan Cultura and Yelena Kharitonova, its passionate leader. A week-long event is aligned with the Dutch Design Week, a nation-wide festival of design and creativity traditionally held in Eindhoven in October. This year’s edition of Caviar Rouge is already a third in a raw and as before will provide an excellent opportunity for designers and other creative professionals to see and learn from the DDW, and to share their own ideas with the peers. From what I know, the Caviar Rouge program is completely filled with formal meetings and informal discussions, debates, workshops, and lectures; if you need a total cultural immersion, this is it.

This year we will add another format to the already very interesting program of the forum: following Summ()n’s philosophy, we will play a game, to challenge people’s ideas about the future of creative spaces and co-create the prototypes of ‘Better Life’ (yes, we always aim at modest goals). A very interesting dimension is that the game will be played in Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, one of the most original and creative institutions, not only in the Netherlands, but also worldwide, I believe. The museum itself is currently progressing to the third, and the final stage of the ‘Play”, its own program of cultural research and art provocation, and it seems only logical to play our game in its premises.

We look forward to the game, it should be an exiting event! It is announced as an ‘openbaar’ (=public), so hurry up to register and secure your place among the players, and not only the observers.

PS: When writing this post, I’ve discovered another game, to be also played in Van Abbemuseum during the DDW. A Tricksters Tricked workshop by Chris Lee will explore “alternative currencies as a starting point to think about economic networks”. Sounds fascinating too, and I will try to attend this event as well. I wonder how close it will be to the Kashklash game/initiative (I’ve been to one of their sessions in Geneva, during Lift’09).