During the past days, Pixel and Sander have been working a lot to be ready for their first presentation of the project that will happen this Sunday in front of the Biblioteca Mário de Andrade in São Paulo.

In this photo, at the Casa da Cultura Digital, they draft how they will add routes and narratives to their AR project.

[originally posted on the labmovel blog]

On the 3rd of April, both artists contemplated for the residency gathered with Gisela Domschke and Lucas Bambozzi, organizers from São Paulo, to define their further activities with the labmovel.
Photos by Lucas Rossi Gervilla.

From left to right: Sander Veenhof, Lucas Bambozzi and Pixel

Sander and Pixel

on the left Gisela Domschke, then Andrea Armentano and Carola Gonzalez

Pixel

Pixel and Sander

Julia Bac (Amsterdam) and Gisela Domschke (São Paulo) via e-mail.

J: How did you get involved with this project?

G: Annette Wolfsberger and Annet Dekker invited me to collaborate on a project for Central de Cultura 2012 . We wanted to develop a mobile media lab. In the Netherlands, we established a partnership with NIMk and its program for Planet M, its brand new mobile infrastructure and laboratory for media art and digital culture. Here in Brazil we established a partnership with arte.mov – mobile media arts festival – and we got funding from Fundação Telefônica.

J: What is your responsibility /tasks in this project?

G: I am the facilitator of the project here in Brazil. Together with Lucas Bambozzi from arte.mov, I’m coordinating all the strands of the program – from conceptual to practical decisions.

J: How many people are working in Brazil? How are you dividing your responsibilities?

G: We are a very small team. Lucas and I share the artistic coordination of the project. We have an executive producer, Andrea Armentano, a communication assistant, Carola Gonzalez, and Lucas Gervilla, who is in charge of the making-of. From now onwards we’ll also have the collaboration of a few media artists and technologists, who will offer workshops in our mobile lab. As I mentioned before, we applied for the support of Fundação Telefônica’s Art and Technology program to be able to build the mobile lab, and this allowed the project to have a bigger scope as well. Our mobile platform will not only host artistic residencies, but will also offer practical workshops and media events. This time we are focusing on São Paulo’s outskirts, but we are also aiming to put Lamovel on the road in the future – ideas that still need to be funded though.

J: Do you talk frequently with the Brazilian artist that is now in Amsterdam?

G: Our communication is reduced to the necessary matters. I appreciate how intense is the process of a residency abroad, where our references are confronted with local ones, so we want to leave him some space to enjoy/digest this. The main thing is the exchange of experiences and knowledge sharing Pixel is having there, and I’ve been following this through the video logs he has been posting.

J: What are your expectations for the second phase of the residency? when the Dutch artist will go to Brazil.

G: Pixel and Sander have spent those last three weeks discussing conceptually how to use AR technology in order to allow new forms of exchange with people in a public space. The local context clearly strongly determines this discussion. Not only culturally speaking, but also in terms of the available technology. So it is inevitable that this second phase will entail a deep reconfiguration in the creative process.

J: How are you planning his stay?

G: Sander will stay here for 20 days only, which is a quite a short period, so we need to give a strong focus to the production of the project. The first thing is to define in which area the artists will be willing to work. We have already proposed Luz or Freguesia do O. We have also suggested the possibility of working within a more defined context, such as a public library or public hospital, but the final decision is up to the artists themselves. We have purchased a Kombi Sabari, which we are adapting to work as a mobile media lab platform. It accommodates 4 people, and will have media production and diffusion equipments in it.

J: Is there something you would like to add?

G: I believe the collaborative aspect offers a quite unique dynamics to the programme, and this practice distinguishes it from the usual artistic residencies. Also, the displacement experience creates a new relation to time and the way we perceive space. Our main aim is to explore new ways of mediating the relationship of the artist and the public in the creative process itself. This is the relevance of our program.

12/03/2012

Interview 2

Julia Bac and Pixel (Amsterdam)

Do you believe that the fact of being here for already two weeks has influenced in the way that would normally work?

The project I am doing is together with Sander. I don’t think that the environment is influencing so much in my decision making process, but Sander’s way of work is different than mine. What is nice is that I want to experiment the way he works here and he wants to try the way we work over there. Because there is a different reality here related to the culture of mobility. Not only related to connection, but here people have effectively more access to technology. I have the impression that is more simple to target people with a project for mobile here than in Brazil.

The fact that I am visiting museums, visiting other spaces and the cultural activities that I am doing inspires me for new ideas. The experience of getting to know the city, having free time and thinking about the project in different environments, also influences the project. But, this will only be noticed ahead when we’ll have the software and when we start to add content to the software.

What is the current status of the project?

In general terms, what we want to do is already established. The basic lines of the project are ready. Now starts the phase of experimenting the project. Experimenting the possibilities of interaction, the development of a prototype.

We will see what it works and this would be kept in the first prototype of the project. I would say that this is the “prototyping experimental” phase of the project

You will develop two projects. What leaded you to do these two projects and not choose only one?

I wanted to experiment this online environment established here, develop something that would be good for this context and Sander wanted to develop something that would be good for Brazil. The first project is the “Powerpoint Walks” that is part of the proposal that Sander and me sent for the residency in Augmented Reality. The second is related to mobile technology, but is not an Augmented Reality. The second project will be developed if everything works well with the first one.

We want to present information that modifies the way people relate to the space, the information can be or not stories. We have been researching on open data, public data that we could use. But, so far we haven’t found anything that could be effectively relevant. Therefore, there is a challenge there… is something that we would like to try. But… well, Annet (one of the organizers) had already mentioned this back then, that it would be difficult to find data that would be interesting to trigger people to react with the system. We are just facing this aspect now.

Last Friday we have chosen the priorities of development. What should be done first and what comes afterwards. What are the initial priorities and what is accessory, than we continue following phase by phase.

And which are these phases?

The first phase would be to create a demo of the project. So, create a structure with the idea of the project. This demo would have the basics, the presentation of the content for the user, which in a way is an interaction. The first content would be still textual. From that point on we want to think about other types of content: graphic and with two or three dimensions, and also research more about open data. This is still experimentation. See what works and what doesn’t works. After this phase, we choose what should be kept in the project. And from that on we’ll build the content system management to enable people to collaborate in the project. After, think about how people will interact with each other using the system, create dialogs or making what is inside the system to dialogue. From stage of the development of the CSM, is already the implementation. After this we start doing the workshops.

The idea of gathering the public would be through these workshops?

Yes, in the beginning. In the workshops we would present the project and create content on the streets, we would walk around with the people on the streets. We wish to encourage people to continue to create content and spread the word about the project. From the moment of implementation of the CSM we already start to circulate and use content created by us, but this is parallel.

In Brazil you work with a team. How are you experiencing working with people from here? That you didn’t know before and also didn’t choose.

For the Jandig Project we did an open call. So, the experience of working with “strangers” happened already there, because I met people during the project. But Jandig was also an open process in which the participants were changing all the time. Some people would join and some would leave the project. In this project Sander and me have a commitment with the project. The idea of working together was a suggestion from the organizers, but me and Sander agreed to work together and share experiences, and I think both of us enjoyed this experience.

I like to work from home, and I have the impression that with Sander is the same. If we were working in different projects would be more difficult to have this exchange in the residency.

In the first interview you mentioned that you would like to disconnect a bit from Brazil, did you manage to do that?

Less than I would like to. I managed to disconnect a bit. Living in a different place is a way of disconnecting from Brazil and connecting in things here.

Do you think that you could plan and think on the proposal as much as you are doing if you were not here?

No. From there I wouldn’t have this residency experience. Also if I would have started the other way around would be much more difficult for me, having appointments and people trying to reach me. Is harder when you have an agenda. I planned this month to dedicate to the project and Sander planned for the next month, when he is going to Brazil.

In one of your videologs you mention about your process of creation…

I think that in the end I am working the way I am used to. Sander mentioned that he starts with the concept. But, the ideas are changing a lot, there is new ideas coming all the time. Some ideas we discover not to be so good and we look for what to prioritize. The work is changing, changing a lot, actually.

What would be a “not good” idea?

The idea of working with open data initially sounded a great idea and now we are facing the fact that might be not so good.

You mentioned that a few data you found were not so interesting. What would be the type of data that are not so interesting?

Show people how much the government spent building each public property, for example. How much was spent on building a bridge? This could even be part of the project, but doesn’t trigger people to interact with the project…there’s something missing. Actually, we are facing a difficulty on finding data. We talked to people working with open data in Brazil, we asked for information about which would be interesting data. But they didn’t reply. And if they didn’t reply probably is because they have difficulty in finding it. Because to make any sense, within the technological limitations existing, these data should be very specific. Related to specific areas of a city. This specificity is not easy to find and there is also a difficulty of dealing with these information.

Would you choose the same data in The Netherlands and in Brazil?

One of the things that, at least from my perspective is interesting, is a project that connects both countries. But, we still didn’t find something that would create this connection. One of the things we are considering to do is to show different perspectives of the city: I would show my perspective of Amsterdam and Sander would do the same in São Paulo. But this is our connection with the city and not of one city with the other, or one country to the other.

You presented the project to some people. What was the most interesting feedback that you had so far?

No one gave a feedback that changed completely the project. No one said: “why don’t you do it this way…”. I think they still need to see what will actually be, just explaining is not so simple. That is why we should work on the demo.

What is your goal for the last two weeks?

Develop the prototype. I think that at least have the prototype working the way we wanted. I would like to have this ready here, so we can modify the prototype there. So, the goal is to achieve a prototype in which I can have a walk through the city and put my experience in the system, but depending of the difficulties we will find during the process of work and what we will find out, we could finalize or not the prototype. Or maybe a great change would happen and we could decide to do something very different.

How this prototype would be like?

Would be to get the system to work, but fed only by Sander and me, without other people participating yet.

30/01/2012

The documentation of this project will be shared through this blog.

It is interesting to point it out that an artistic residency doesn’t start when the artists travel, but the whole process and time spent before the residency actually happens since the idealization of the project and the basic structure of it.

At this point, the artists that will participate were already chosen: Sander Veenhof, from The Netherlands and VJ Pixel, from Brazil. As a typical way of dealing with the distance between two far away countries, the first meeting we had was through Skype. It was the first time that both artists actually “met” each other to talk about their individual projects in augmented reality, and the possibility of combining both projects.

Of course the meeting was a bit confusing with different people talking at the same time, breaking the call from time to time. But after this, a date for the residency was set and we all could continue with our individual tasks.

Pixel will come to the Netherlands in March. Then, both of them will continue to work apart and after a period, Sander will go to Brazil.

At this moment, the tickets are being bought and their living and working spaces are being defined.

06/02/2012

After Skyping with Sanders, asking a few questions about his project and his expectations I felt the need of researching more about augmented reality. The perspective of the artist is so inspiring when explaining that there is a reality that continues to exist even when we are not actually seeing it.

The significance of this residency is shown when he stated that after talking with pixel he had to rethink his first project proposal. This is a great achievement for an artistic residency since he had a previous perspective that was changed when sharing experience with the other artist. Pixel explained him the specificity of the context in Brazil when it comes to accessibility to internet on smart phones.

09/02/2012

Today I tried to reach Pixel through Skype to know more about his expectations on the residency project, but the Skype connection wasn’t good, so we have to re-schedule the meeting.

14/02/2012

At this point the artists are reading the contracts and many e-mails were exchanged until all organizers approved the final version of the text.

The tickets were already bought for Pixel to come to The Netherlands in the end of this month.

I am waiting to contact Pixel for our first interview and see what are his expectations and plans for coming to Amsterdam. Annet already found an apartment for his stay and the ticket is already set: 28/02/2012.

17/02/2012

The interview with Pixel was done 3 days ago. I lost the recording material. It was important for me to talk to him, because I had understood the Jandig project proposal wrongly. Was also important to understand their different perspectives. Both of them are very concerned with the participation of the public, but in different ways. Sander seams to be concern how the public can use the device and Pixel seams to be concerned with the participation of the public in all the stages of the process. Pixel also seamed very anxious to come to the Netherlands, and in the end of the interview we spent some time talking about his travel, the weather here and what he should bring in the suitcase.

23/02/2012

We are still facing some difficulties to create the blog.

I am preparing texts that should be published soon… I hope!

I also worked on the interviews for the artists and sent the text for their approval.

Annet had a meeting with the staff from the Nimk to see where the artists can work and some practical matters. Pixel will arrive next week already.

27/02/2012

We have a blog!

Pixel will arrive in Amsterdam tomorrow. It seams not so far away when we all first met through skype. Now is important also to have the artists documentation of the process and I am anxious to know their developments through their own perspectives.