Introduction
Performing Places brings together artists, researchers and developers whose work touches on the experiential, affective and political aspects of urban and technological life, and who share an interest in inventive artistic and technical practices of the urban environment.
Performing Places addresses the current urban situation, where lived environments are undergoing major experiential and social changes, driven mainly by technical and economic pressures. Our aim is to create a forum for critical, transdisciplinary exchange by bringing to resonance a set of relevant themes:
1. Urban space, in its current versions, blends embodied and mediated forms, orchestrating everyday actions to an invisible score of signals and software. With ubiquitous computing, devices pervade our physical environments to trace and modulate behaviour, enabling new modes of service, surveillance and intervention.
2. Cities are increasingly shaped by the formation of 'creative clusters', according to innovation strategies which target an evolving experience industry and seek global competitiveness for a particular region or place. These strategies typically neglect embodied, affective or everyday aspects of the production of space -- even if they often include programmes to advance citizen participation and social inclusion.
3. Artists and media developers have the possibility of addressing urban space in ways that prioritize its experiential, social and political contexts. Strategies of site-specific, community and performance art are complemented by the activity of media artists and designers, producing interventions and applications that can capture the collective dimensions of our experience and render them palpable.
4. Recent theories in human geography and the cultural study of technology highlight the affective and relational qualities of the urban/technological environment. In their focus on the performative and collective aspects of use and production, these theories challenge dominant views of representation and innovation, proposing more event-based and mobile accounts of inventive agency.
Organizers
Performing Places is organised in the context of USED, Urban Spaces and Experience Design, an arts and research interaction project. USED is co-ordinated by m-cult and HIIT and funded by the Academy of Finland and the Arts Council of Finland in 2005-07.
The seminar co-organising partners are:
m-cult centre for new media culture
http://www.m-cult.org
HIIT Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
http://www.hiit.fi
Helsinki University of Technology, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies
http://www.tkk.fi/Units/Separate/YTK/
Theatre Academy of Finland, Performance studies
http://www.teak.fi
University of Art and Design Helsinki, Environmental Art
http://www.uiah.fi/page.asp?path=1866,1915,4118,9086,9089
University of Art and Design Helsinki, Media Lab
http://www.mlab.uiah.fi
Organising committee
Minna Tarkka (chair), director, research coordinator, m-cult centre for new media culture /, co-leader, USED project, Helsinki (FI)
Annette Arlander, theatre director, professor, Performance and Theory, Theatre Academy of Finland, Helsinki (FI)
Lily Diaz, Professor, leader, Systems of Representation group, University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH Media Lab (FI)
Giulio Jacucci, research scientist, co-leader, Ubiquitous Interaction group, HIIT Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (FI)
Panu Lehtovuori, architect, professor, Urban Studies/Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn (EE), senior researcher, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies/Helsinki University of Technology (FI)
Alan Prohm, researcher, lecturer, MA in Environmental Art, University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH (FI)
Contact
For general information, registration, email informer [at] m-cult [dot] org
Minna Tarkka, Chair minna.tarkka [at] m-cult [dot] org
Maria Candia, Conference assistant maria.candia [at] m-cult [dot] org