From 08-05-2009 until 10-05-2009
Contest, Award 'Think Ahead! Open platform' is a contest organised by the Netherlands Media Art Institute on the ocassion of its '30th anniversary'. It aims at fostering cooperation between cultural agents and artists with regard to an unrealized art project/concept/idea exploring new territories and ideas in the field of media art and digital culture.
'Think Ahead! Open platform' invites artists, researchers and hackers active in the digital culture and based in the Netherlands, to present ideas that are currently under construction. After selection, up to 16 projects will be presented on the 'Think Ahead! Open Platform' during the open house weekend. Each participant will have 10 minutes to present the plan to the public and the jury, be it for instance a research projects culminating in publications, artworks, events, installations, performances, software/hardware tool for cultural purposes, online/offline publication or platform, etc. The key criteria for selection are innovation, authenticity, and sustainability. The project must fall within the digital art practices and be based on creative commons or libre software/hardware.
A jury of experts and representatives of some of the key media organization in the Netherlands will grant the most compelling projects with 2000 Euro enabling, and will also provide expert advise and technical assistance for the further development or actual realisation of the concept. The members of the jury might also consider to support with their expertise other concepts presented in this initiative if they find them interesting.
Members of Jury:
Susanne Jaschko, chief curator at NIMk www.nimk.nl
Floor van Spaendonck, director of Virtueel Platform www.virtueelplatform.nl
Alex Schaub, director of FabLab De Waag www.waag.org/project/fablab
Christine van den Horn, responsible of the programme at Media Guild
www.mediaguild.com
09-05-2009, from 12:00 to 18:00
On this afternoon the pre-selected projects will be presented to the public and the jury. The participants get 10 minutes each to explain their projects and answer questions from the audience and the jury.
The winner of this competition will receive € 2.000,- , expert advice and technical assistance for the further development or actual realisation of the project.
You can find the schedule of the presentations here
Finalists
The Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) is pleased to announce the finalists of ‘Think Ahead! Open Platform’. This award competition was conceived in the context of NIMk’s 30th anniversary with the aim of supporting the production of media art and other relevant contributions to digital culture. 'Open Innovation, Authentity and Sustainability' were the motto for this call for projects avid for realisation and expert advise.
On May 9, 2009, sixteen projects that fall within the territories of art, technology and FLOSS software were presented at NIMk during a very exciting, challenging and inspiring six-hours session. The jury of the competition formed by Susanne Jaschko (former chief curator at NIMk), Floor van Spaendonck (director of Virtueel Platform) and Alex Schaub (director of Fablab De Waag) gave out the following awards:
FIRST PRIZE (€ 2.000)
'ZXZW' by Joost Heijthuijsen, Erik Luyten & Barry Spooren
http://www.zxzw.nl/2009
ZXZW is a community on independent culture. It encourages cutting edge encounters, explorations and engagements from artists, audiences and partners. Established by a group of young artists based in Tilburg, it started as a music festival, but soon broadened its horizon to other disciplines like visual arts, contemporary dance and experimental film. ZXZW is driven by artistic development. It’s a place where artists, who practice questions or try to find the limits within the established methods of production, distribution and consumption, meet and engage with each other and the local environment. With 275 performances during one week and a mash-up of artistic visions, venues, media-partners and crowds the festival questions the concept of the peculiar and the familiar, and manoeuvres between kicks and contemplation.
To further stimulate the policy development of ZXZW, the organisation has made its whole business model transparent through Internet. Everybody who thinks they can contribute something to the festival can have a say in the organisation. It’s an open source business model that works the same way as Wikipedia (<a href="http://www.wikipedia.org" target="_blank" name="www.wikipedia.org" class="bold">www.wikipedia.org</a>). ZXZW is the first festival organisation that applies this manner of open source policymaking, and therefore takes on a pioneering role. With this development we ask input of everyone who feels committed to the festival, with the policy development and with new digital interactivity. Because of this open source mentality, all the subsidy applications, annual reports and marketing plans are made public and adjustable for fresh perspectives. At this moment, the Social Festival Model is up and running at <a href="http://zxzw.wetpaint.com/" target="_blank" name="zxzw.wetpaint.com/" class="bold">zxzw.wetpaint.com</a>. In our own opinion, the Social Festival Model has to be further developed to acquire actual reason for existence.
FIRST HONORARY MENTION
'Treasuremapper ' by Tijmen Schep
www.netniet.org/treasuremapper/
Treasuremapper proposes a locative media platform that spams mobile phones and the Internet. At its core, the project consists of an open source mobile phone application that uses GPS to trigger the playing of different media depending on your physical location.
Treasuremapper will play media depending on your location. It compares your current GPS location to a pre-made map that tells the mobile application in which placed to trigger which media. Now, this is nothing new. Projects like Trading Mercator Stories and so many more do exactly the same. So then why build Treasuremapper? There are three reasons.
First of all, existing software is not open, Treasuremapper would be an open source application that all art projects can use and easily customise.
Secondly, these applications are often limited to relatively exotic platforms, often requiring exotic iPaq / Windows Mobile computers (in the case of the otherwise great mScapers platform) or certain Garmin GPS receivers (which focus on creating audiotours). Treasuremapper will work on a broad range of phones (including pretty much all Nokia smartphones, such as the N and E series), and will allow the triggering of sounds, text, images and video.
Thirdly, and most important, Treasuremapper will make it really easy to create these maps by integrating an online platform. Users will be able to define zones on a (Google) map, and then link those areas to media they upload to the Treasuremapper website. The treasuremapper mobile application then seamlessly downloads the content to the phone when necessary.
SECOND HONORARY MENTION
'Live Buoy' by Christina della Giustina and Patrick de Koning
www.dg-c.org/
'Live Buoy' marks the trajectory (current, velocity, digital hight etc.) of a drifting buoy that gathers live data from the water it floats upon for to render its trajectory, as well as its mean – the water itself - closely perceivable from an unusual, and itself moving point of view.
Since each fisherman has a particular color scheme for their buoys, the 'live buoy' envisioned is:
- transparent, so that view is provided for the network camera inside the 'live buoy'.
- equipped with a water-wind instrument that registers the buoy’s trajectory through its contact with the water and wind by its sound.
- solar-powered in order to register and communicate the data independently.
The exact location of the 'live buoy', as well as its motion behavior, are calculated by satellite (GPS) and used to trace their trajectories. The real-time data gathered by satellite communication - together with the images and sounds the 'live buoys' generate from within their environment - communicate the 'live buoys' presence, position and motion, and by doing so, naturally, the water itself in immediate present tense. The real-time data, images, and sounds the 'live buoy' collects are streamed to w0lf’s server, and can be followed live on the projects' website. The project will work on a full screen version that might also be accessed by mobile devices (such as a mobile phone with internet connection), so people at shores or riverbanks can access the 'live buoy' directly on-site.
