new media center_kuda.org

In 1985 Hakim Bey wrote "the map is closed, but the autonomous zone is open", describing a temporary zone where innovative activities of all kind can happen. After more than a decade struggling with all possible set-ups for learning and technology (workshops, ateliers, demonstrations, tutorials, etc), maybe this old anarchistic idea of setting up an autonomous and most of all a temporary space, where exchange of experience can occur, isn't such a bad idea. It is at least as a starting point more inspiring not to fill out the content in advance. Simply get up and connect the computer junk we have, and build up a space that can accommodate for sensible activities. Instead of our pre-occupations with structure and stability, and most of all a priori content of importance, rather rely on the contributions of every participant, connect that into a creative set of ideas, and build up something new: bottom-up. I am more interested in the synthesis of the new. Wherever it comes from, curious to see where it leads to. Like the title of the piece by John Cage warns us: "How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)".

Scheme:
1. set up and analysis of environment, what do we have?
2. internet connection, tests for audiovisual streaming
3. capture, mix, broadcast
4. how to operate realtime and non-realtime the following days
5. how to create some expressive and artistic content together:
to put the message through better!!!

The EU expands to the East and maybe the East has expanded into the EU already a long time ago. Wasn't it Vygotsky who showed the Western world convincingly that development through collaboration is always more efficient than individual and abstract learning. And so collaborative initiatives will always yield better results in the long run if they are based on a non-hierarchical system or organisation. Applying this to the arts: we can program sonic and visual patches in our bedrooms, together with friends. But a wider cultural issue can only come about in a larger community and with the involvement of participants who are willing to escape the local plan, that is often too restrictive, conservative and counter-progressive.

Maybe let the others redraw over and over again, the obsolete map with ever more precise positioning of where new borders are: the open and closed ones in different colors. Refresh and zoom in to street level, transparant pictures of the houses in the background. Let us move about across borders, set up and do something together that appeals to people without frontiers in their mind. Wherever they are. We essentially use the same means for expression, and are not very different from one another. Don't know, I can be wrong, but let's argue with sound and images and let's get it in a stream.

Guy Van Belle (Amsterdam/Brussels) has been prominently involved in the use and development of multimedia for artistic purposes since 1990. As an independent art worker he cooperates with Waag Society Amsterdam on the development of collaborative creative tools for installations and performances. For that purpose he set up \An`a*tom"ic\ "Related to the structure of an organism", a weekly open studio for young and unconventional artists, linked to international partners by fiber optic wire: New York, Brussels, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Athens, Sofia, Prague, Bratislava, ... Since 2000 he has been working under the name of the collective digital band mxHz.org (machine cent'red humanz), creating collaborative performances, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and unexpected experimental/abstract/robotic art projects. With Akihiro Kubota he founded the "Society of Algoritm" in 2001. Recently he started to work at an hommage to Arseny Avraamov, in Baku on 7 November 2022. In a press clipping he was referred to as: "Experimental- und Medienmusiker, A/V-Jockey und Netzkuenstler; Arbeit in internationalen Experimentalstudios und unabhaengigen Audioaktivitaeten im Netz"

http://www.waag.org
http://anatomix.waag.org

time: april 29, 2003
place: kuda.org