Journal of activities

Our free and open source syncstarter software IvySync to synchronise the playback of artworks with multiple video channels has been deployed during the year to the full extent of its features.

For the artwork "7 frames" by Tim Rutten the recent functionality of network sync let us run up to 7 video channels using just 2 computers in an exhibion at the Huis voor de Kunsten in Roermond.

The historical artwork "Mill x Molen" by Bert Schutter (1982) has also made use of Ivysync in its restoration for the exhibition Imago Revisited (Instituut Collectie Nederland and NIMk).

Ad-hoc installations of IvySync have been also produced on specific machine setups, to be operated outside of our institute by other artists and laboratories: one is now in the possession of to the Sandberg Institute to be employed in video installations made by its students, while another is owned by Esther Polak (also artist in residence at NIMk in 2009) and deployed for her installation "Nomadic Milk".

Considering the growing influence that free and open source software practices have in contemporary discourses dealing with economy, philosophy and ethics, we've been invited to contribute to various theoretical discourses during this year.

In these regards we've contributed to the first writing of the Free Culture Forum charter in Barcelona and shortly after that we've been called to participate to a panel on digital creativity for the conference TOPOLOGÍA, INNOVACIÓN Y POLÍTICA CULTURAL held at the art centre Santa Monica, part of the international symposium ATACD titled "Changing Cultures, Cultures of Change".

At last, as part of the Internet of Things Council we've moderated the "Tools for Mediation" workshop in Brussels, a LIFT @ Home event hosted by IMAL (Center for Digital Culture and Technology), gathering a visible participation of various European experts, professionals and government operators.

Thanks to the kind support of Digitale Pioniers and in collaboration with dyne.org, the development of the free and open source software FreeJ has seen a lot of progress. The participation of various international experts during a period of 6 months lead to the realisation of a flexible tool for Vjing performances and on-line video streaming, that now can also be used as a library for the development of more applications or for the setup of interactive installations using the simple and well known javascript language.

FreeJ is available as a free application (GNU General Public License version 3) ready to install on Apple/OSX and GNU/Linux operating systems, its sourcecode has been reviewed for its quality and is distributed by Linux distributions as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo and Arch Linux.

Workshops for video manipulation, production and veejaying have been run in various occasions employing our free and open source software FreeJ, now also available for Apple OSX as well included in Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux distributions.

In collaboration with Kennisland we've held a short series of workshops for the Celluloid Remix festival and the International Amsterdam Film Festival, as well for the Museum Nacht at NIMk. We have also presented and performed our free software productions at the Tag Tool "Think Tank" event held in Tulln (Austria) and in the JAHtari / Rastasoft evening program at WORM Rotterdam, in collaboration with moddr.

Vilém Flusser Theory Award

In order to reflect the increasing significance of theoretical and critical practice works submitted for the transmediale Award competition, the Transmediale Berlin has introduced the Vilém Flusser Theory Award in 2008. In collaboration with the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Universität der Künste Berlin, dedicated to the complete works of the influential visionary and media philosopher, the award honors outstanding theoretical or research-based digital arts practice.

This year the international jury of the Vilém Flusser Theory Award 2009 selected Jaromil (NIMk Artlab R&D) as one of the awardwinners of this year, together with the American writer Brian Holmes.