Art, Architecture and Digital Society and UB Virtual Museum

The Virtual Museum of the University of Barcelona has just been inaugurated and thanks to it there are many Internet users who, starting from now, will be able to learn about the collections that constitute the vast patrimony of our university. Moreover, the fact that it is based on a last generation software makes it easy to create documents with information on every one of the works in the catalog, with their descriptions and most interesting features.

The virtual museum, apart from making the objects and works that are part of it known to the public, converts itself, thanks to its rigorous scientific character, to an indispensable tool for the researchers coming from any part of the world.

Lourdes Cirlot

Dra. Lourdes Cirlot is a professor of History of Art in the University of Barcelona since 1997. She has been teaching in the Department of History of Art of the Faculty of Geography and History of the University of Barcelona since 1974. Her teaching and her research focus on the art of the 20th and 21st century.

She's the principal researcher of  the group “Art, Arquitecture and Digital Society”. Under her direction, the research group has realized various projects financed by the Ministry of Education and Science and the Generalitat de Catalunya.

She has published numerous books and articles about various subjects of contemporary art; she has also participated in various congresses and has given numerous lectures in Spain and abroad.

She was vice-dean in the Faculty of Geography and History between 1996 and 1999. She directed the Department of History of Art from 1999 until 2005. Currently she is the vice rector of Arts, Culture and Heritage of the University of Barcelona.

Towards a media art material history? Concerning the technological in art

 
This paper seeks to analyze how and in what way the study of the most current media art practices needs not only an interdisciplinary perspective, but also can be based upon a materiality constituent of such practices. We shall start from a critical genealogy of the interrelations between art, science and technology in history in order to reach an epistemological and ontological reflection that will let us extract some applicable conclusions in our current moment of proliferation of fertile and innovatory creative intersections in the context of the so-called Internet Society. In that way we will introduce some theories and methods that will let us think and write the history of the interrelation among art, culture, technology and society, making it possible to integrate multiple perspectives capable of generating a holistic context of analysis and interpretation of the artistic practices.

Pau Alsina

Pau Alsina is a Philosophy Doctor, with a degree from the UB. He's a professor of the Studies in Arts and Humanities by the Open University of Catalunya. A director of www.artnodes.org, a magazine on art, science and technology published by the UOC and researcher on technology and aesthetics of media art and digital culture within the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute-IN3.

He's a member of the research group GRECS, which focuses on culture, technology and society, and a member of the group coordinating the Mediterranean art, science and technology network YASMIN, supported by Unesco Digiarts / the University of Athens / OLATS, Leonardo / International Society of Art, Science and Technology / UOC, and he's also a member of the platform ZZZinc, on cultural research and innovation. Along with Leonardo/ISAST he supports the LABS project for an international research ACT database.

He has served as a consultant and assistant in subjects of art, culture and digital technologies for institutions such as the Generalitat de Catalunya, Junta de Andalucía, Fundación Española de Ciencia and Tecnología, Foro de Cultura Digital del Brasil, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, Ayuntamiento de Sabadell etc. He has published a lot of writings on art, science and technology and has edited the Artnodes monographssuch as , “Arte, Cultura y Ciencias de la Complejidad” (2009).

He has recently curated with Dr. Josep Perello and the assistance of Irma Vila the exhibition “Culturas de cambio: átomos sociales y vidas electrónicas” in Arts Santa Mónica (2009-2010); the exhibition was about the social and cultural meaning of the interrelation of technologies of information and communication with the sciences of complexity. He is currently preparing the publication of his next book that stems from his recent investigations.

Biodigital and genetic architecture ('Gencity Project')

 
A new horizon has opened up for art and architecture: the application of the new biological and digital techniques. The interrelated understanding of both has created a new architecture: biodigital architecture, where genetics act as an “interface”. Since its foundation in 2000, the postgraduate and doctorate program “Genetic Architectures” of the ESARQ (Universitat International de Catalunya) is dedicated to the subject with research and lectures: it is no coincidence that in the same city, Barcelona, flourished the architecture of Antoni Gaudi and Salvador Dali made his prophecy about the “architecture of the future that will be soft and hairy”. Within this context “Gencity Project” would be a “univese and metaverse: an artistic and architectural application of the new media”.

Alberto T. Estévez

Alberto T. Estévez (Barcelona, 1960), architect (UPC, 1983), doctor of Science (Architecture, UPC, 1990), art historian (UB, 1994), doctor of humanities (Art History, UB, 2008) with a Special Award for Degree.

Owns a professional studio of architecture and design (Barcelona, 1983-today), where he  is undertaking a lot of projects and works.  For more than 27 years now he has worked in different universities in Spain and abroad, in the areas of knowledge of architecture projects, architectural composition and art history, until he founded ESARQ (UIC, 1996), where he is a Professor and a researcher. There he founded two lines of investigation and their respective masters and doctorates where he works on practice (“Genetic Architectures / Biodigital architecture” 2000) and theory (“History, Architecture and Design”, 1998). He is a director of the officially recognized Research Group “Genetic Architectures”, which receives private and public funds.

He has also made hundreds of publications (5 books, 37 book chapters, 99 articles in specialized magazines, 15 texts in daily press), he participates in more than 30 exhibitions and organizes 11 of them, he has made 39 interventions in congresses and lectured in more than a hundred conferences, seminars and workshops in different universities in Europe, America and Asia.

Nanoart: Towards a re-modeling of contemporary art

 Thanks to the emergence of nanotechnology, the miniaturization is without doubt one of the most macroscopic and evident tendencies that characterizes the technological development of the 21st century; involving heterogeneous disciplines like medicine, engineering, chemistry, physics and revolutionizing the same industrial production.

Up until a few years ago art has been isolated from this collective career towards the re-modelation and the infinitely small. Maybe for a reason, since it was considered to be necessary to provide the public with artworks visible to the naked eye.

The Nanoart works of Alessandro Scali, realized with the collaboration of the School of Polytechnics of Turin, are one of the first to get over the limit of visibility in the realm of visual arts and to introduce new questions over the limits and the potential of artistic expression.  

Alessandro Chiolerio

Alessandro Chiolerio is a Post-Doc researcher in the Department of Physics in the Turin School of Polytechnics. He is dedicated to  nano-technology research, especially the creation of spintronic devices; he is also a Technological Director and  a representative administrator of the Politronica Inkjet Printing S.r.l.

Alessandro Scali

Alessandro Scali is an artist that since 2005 has been using technology to make art. He is a founder and a creative director of Kut communications srl, design and crossmedia and multidisciplinary communication agency, and an associate professor of the Turin School of Polytechnics.

Universes: subjects, places, spaces in the global present. Introduction

 
The purpose of this presentation is to introduce briefly the main subjects of the round table: the application of technology to the body and its implications in the concept of identity; Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality; the hyper-text and the metaphor of the journey; the socialization of geographic information and its analytical and critical uses of the technologies of digital cartography; the communicative, participative and critical potential of the Internet.
Each one of the presentations of the round table will consist of one theoretical introduction on one of these subjects and the presentation of one or more related techno-artistic projects.

Michela Rosso

She got her degree in “Conservazione dei Beni Culturali” from the Universitá degli Studi di Udine (Italia) in 2004.

She is a doctorate student of the Department of History of Art of the University of Barcelona; from 2005 until 2009 she was granted with the scholarship of research and educational scholar (FPU) by the Ministry of Education and Science, which let her develop research tasks and research stays (8 months) in Uruguay and Argentina.

She works as an associate professor in the Department of Art History of the UB, teaching the class “Art history since the artistic Avant-Garde”.

Her lines of investigation focus on the history of European and Latin American, modern and contemporary art. She has published and presented through conferences some of the results of her research. Her thesis project, supervised by Dra. Cirlot, has the title  Joaquín Torres-García and Constructive Universalism: the primordial sense of art.

Since 2005 she has participated in all the activities carried out by the Research Group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”, directed by Dra. Lourdes Cirlot, who she currently collaborates with.

She has undertaken the responsibility to coordinate the last three International Conferences realized by the Research Group, which has given her the experience to organize other research and diffusion activities, among which stand out:

Since January 2009: Coordination tasks within the research group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”, the Department of Art History and the Vice-Deanship of “Arts, Culture and Heritage” of the University of Barcelona in the project “Virtual Museum UB”.

December 2006-March 2009: Collaborating member of the Organization Committee of the 17th national conference of Art History of CEHA (September 22-26, 2008, UB) and assistant in the Scientific committee of the round table “Memory and Technoart”.

New ways of conceiving the body and the identity: bionics and biotechnology as new tools in artistic creation

 
This paper aims to analyze the application of technologies such as bionics and biotechnology on the body through the analysis of the artistic manifestations framed within this interdisciplinary ambient. Bionics generate hybrid bodies between the biologic and the technological, rethinking about the traditional concept of the biological purity. Biotechnology resorts to the modification of the genetic code and reveals the possibility of “rewriting” the body and conceiving it as a performative entity. Putting the new body models into practice has generated interesting discourse such as Cyber-femenism, that question the concepts of purity and unity associated to the body through the arrival of the hybrid, the mixed, the impure.

Daniel López del Rincón

Daniel López del Rincón has studied Humanities at the University Pompeu Fabra (2005) and History of Art at the University of Barcelona, obtaining the Special Award for Degree (2008).

He got a Master's Degree in “Advanced studies in Art history” by the University of Barcelona and currently he is a PhD student in the Department of Art History of the University of Barcelona.

Since January 2009 has been a scholar of the investigation group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”, directed by Dra. Lourdes Cirlot, with whom he collaborates.

His lines of investigation focus on the impact of new technologies on the body, on artistic practices and theory. Focused in this subject of study he has presented the papers “Marina  Núñez: looking for the fragment” (XVII Congreso Nacional del CEHA: Arte y Memoria, Barcelona, 22-26 de septiembre de 2008), and “The impact of the new technologies in the identity body. From the united body to the multiple subject” (I Congreso Internacional de Cultura y Género: la cultura en el cuerpo, 11-13 de noviembre de 2009).

Cyberbreath: Encounters of body and technology

 
The virtual worlds that open up before us can be explored using the minimum of our bodies: they only need the collaboration of the eyes and the hands. But this is not always the case; very often, digital and immersive art call for the participation of the entire body, so that the artwork livens up.

In this paper we will see a few examples of digital art, where the bodily functions of the participant, mostly respiration, are translated into visual forms. Taking a phenomenological approach into consideration, we will explore how  virtual worlds help the spectators achieve a new perception of their bodies and reaffirm their ignored materiality.

Christina Grammatikopoulou

Christina Grammatikopoulou has a degree in Archeology and History of Art from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 2007 she presented her dissertation for the Master in Art History (Aristotle University), with the title “The Painter Sophia Laskaridou”, a study of an aspect of Modernism under the prism of Feminism and the Theory of Perception.

At the same time she was honored with the Scholarship of European History of Art by the Greek State Institute of Scholarships (IKY) in order to carry out her doctorate studies.

Currently she is doing her PhD research at the University of Barcelona, under the supervision of Dra. Anna Casanovas. In 2008 she presented her D.E.A. Dissertation about “Art and Respiration” (U.B.).

At the same time she founded “Interartive”, a platform for contemporary art and thought, which she currently coordinates.

Her lines of investigation are directed towards aspects of corporeality, immateriality and digital technology in contemporary art.

She has collaborated with the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) and the Centre of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki (CACT); recently she has formed part of the research group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”.

Augmented Reality and Artistic Practices: Transformations of the Experience of the Real

 
Augmented reality is a system of 3D visualization of virtual information that is superimposed onto physical reality in real time; it is not only a step beyond Virtual Reality, but it exceeds it.

Its recent development and expansion has brought about a new approach to some ideas concerning the relation between the real and the virtual, the role of the interface or the meaning of the Virtual Universes and has generated a new type of experience of reality linked to what is known as “Amplified Space” (Manovich) or “Informational Space” (Lemos).

The purpose of the presentation will be to analyze these transformation through artistic projects that use Augmented Reality systems as a means of creation, reflection and base of new aesthetic and perceptive experience.

M. Luisa Gómez

M. Luisa Gómez has a degree in History of Art from the University of the Santiago de Compostela. Between 2006-2008 she studied in the University of Barcelona, within the doctorate programs “History, Theory and Criticism of Arts” and the Master program “Advanced Studies in History of Art”.

In 2006 she got a research scholarship (FI), which marks the beginning of her collaboration with the Department of History of Art of the University of Barcelona and with the research group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”.
Currently she is doing her PhD thesis under the supervision of Dra. Anna Casanovas (Department of History of Art, UB) and the co-supervision of Dr. Berenzon (Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, UNAM, Mexico).

Her investigation focuses on the Contemporary Imaginary and the influence that the digital media have on it through practices like Net.Art, Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality- and other audiovisual means -like cinema.

Digital Geography. New forms of mapping the immaterial space

 
This paper seeks to establish a historic, philosophical and aesthetic connection between the real geographies and the new digital geographies. The unifying thread between the two ways of understanding spatiality, and consequently our real/virtual surroundings, could be represented through the metaphor of the journey, understood as a hyper-medium that helps man defy his own limits towards the new and the unknown. The use of the new technologies and the way that they have changed the techniques and the imaginary linked to journey, has added new aesthetic values to the current artistic production. These values are revealed in the infinite possibilities offered by navigation in virtual hyper-text, that tries to overcome the “human”.

Modesta Di Paola

Modesta Di Paola has a degree in “Humanities and Philosophy” from the “Università degli Studi di Palermo” (Italy). In 2006 she started her doctorate studies in the University of Barcelona, in “History, Theory and Criticism of the Arts”. She got her DEA title in October 2008. She also obtained her Master degree in “Advanced studies in History of Art. Collectionism, art diffusion and market” from the same university in February, 2009.

In January 2008 she got a scholarship for education of researchers (FI), which marked the beginning of her collaboration with the research group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”.

Her lines of research are focused in critical theories that use cultural translation, interpretation and re-writing in the processes of transmission and reception of contemporary artistic production.

Among other projects, she has collaborated with the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), she has attended part of the doctorate program in “Art Theory and History” in SSAV Fondazione Scuola Studi Avanzati di Venezia) and co-founded the magazine of contemporary art and thought “Interartive”, which is active since June 2008. She is currently coordinating the project ADA.20_21 (Arxiu Digital d’Art dels segles XX i XXI).

Dialogue Spaces. Criticism Zones. Flows of Knowledge

In the broad context of the “World Wide Web”, of the virtual worlds, of the Web 2.0 galaxy and all these “places” that have changed the lifestyle of millions of people, there are peculiar spaces of participation, criticism and dialogue. Online participation experiences; festivals, exhibitions and virtual galleries; research and software diffusion; platforms of social and political criticism; etc. are some of the scenes where art, creativity and new information and communication technologies converge.

Flows of ideas and knowledge are set free, thanks to new forms of relation and connection. The creative potential is immense, the critical capacity infinite.

Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio

Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio is a PhD student in “History, Theory and Criticism of Arts” and a scholar of the department of History of Art of the University of Barcelona. He has studied Humanities and Philosophy at the “Università degli Studi di Roma Tre” (Italy); and got a Master in “Advanced Studies in History of Art” from the University of Barcelona.
currently he has a research scholarship (FI) by the Generalitat de Catalunya and is thus integrated into the investigation group “Art, Architecture and Digital Society”, directed by Dra. Lourdes Cirlot.
His current lines of investigation expand onto the subjects of Interculturality in Contemporary art, intercultural dialogue and artistic practices in the Mediterranean countries and in general on Art, Communication and Contemporary Society, from an interdisciplinary perspective.

In 2009 (February/May) he was accepted in Fondazione Pistoletto / Love Difference (Italy) for a research stay; he has participated in the project AS_TIDE (Art for Social Transformation and Intercultural Dialogue In Europe) in Malta; also, he was granted with a research scholarship of the “Comissió de Recerca de la Facultat de Geografia i Història” of the UB, in order to attend the last edition of the BJCEM (Biennale des Jeunes Créateurs d'Europe et de la Méditerranée), in Skopje (FYROM). During the same year he presented his papers in National and International Conferences: Third World Culturelink Conference. "Networks – The Evolving Aspects of Culture in the 21st Century", Zagreb (Croacia); X Congreso “Cultura Europea” – Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona; and in the “III Training seminar de jóvenes investigadores en Dinámicas Interculturales” (Fundació CIDOB), Barcelona. 

He's a co-founder of the online magazine Interartive: www.interartive.org.

Cultura i cinema ciberpunk. Distopies, virtualitats i resistències

Ciberpunk és un subgènere de la ciència-ficció que va aparèixer als Estats Units els anys vuitanta en el cinema, en la literatura i en el còmic i que va arribar a constituir-se en una autèntica subcultura underground.

Va néixer com una crida d’atenció i temor als canvis produïts per Internet a l’anomenada cultura digital. Visionària i pessimista, la cultura ciberpunk dels anys vuitanta avançava el perill que els sistemes informàtics de comunicació i d’informació poguessin caure a mans de les grans corporacions multinacionals i centres de poder polític i militar, i esdevinguessin nous sistemes totalitaris.

El postciberpunk del segle xxi continua manifestant una desconfiança profunda en l’ús de les tecnologies i les seves històries s’utilitzen sovint com una denúncia rebel del control sobre les persones, de la vigilància tecnològica i de l’alienació de l’individu.

Anna Casanovas Bohigas

Llicenciada en Història Moderna i Contemporània i doctora en Història de l’Art. Ha dut a terme una tesi doctoral sobre la cinematografia soviètica postrevolucionària.

Actualment és professora titular de Cinema i Audiovisuals en el Departament d’Història de l’Art de la UB. Les seves línies de recerca es reparteixen entre la història i el llenguatge cinematogràfic i l’aportació de les noves tecnologies a la història de l’art.

Durant els anys 1996-2001 va ser membre del Consell Rector de la Universitat Catalana d’Estiu (UCE) de Prada de Conflent (França) i responsable de l’àrea de Cinema i Audiovisuals.

De 1990 a 2005 va impartir l’assignatura La Imatge de la Dona als Mitjans Audiovisuals en el màster del Centre d’Estudis de les Dones (DUODA) de la UB.

Entre els anys 1998 i 2007 va participar en el curs de doctorat del Departament d’Història de l’Art de la UB Art, Natura i Societat, en el qual va impartir l’assignatura de Videocreació: el Cos com a Espai de Creació Artística.

Actualment és professora del nou màster d’Estudis Avançats en Història de l’Art de la UB.

Des de fa deu anys forma part del Grup de Recerca Art, Arquitectura i Societat Digital, finançat pel Ministeri d’Educació i Ciència i per la Generalitat de Catalunya. El fruit de la seva recerca queda palès en diverses publicacions individuals i col·lectives en format de llibres i revistes.

Ha participat en congressos internacionals a Rússia i Mèxic i ha impartit nombroses conferències al voltant dels estudis sobre cinematografia.

METAHUMAN / METAFORMANCE / METASEX– Challenging the paradigms of simulation in the information society

The subject of this presentation will be a criticism of the paradigms of simulation in digital culture as articulatory elements in a control society with Cartesian humanist foundations that start from a systematic erasing of the particularity of corporeality in favor of a construction of a political fiction of the universal and abstract subject. Starting from the post-human criticism and the practices of the Reverso we will present possible strategies to defy this paradigm, new subversive practices of technological re-appropriation of bodies where the standard sensory anatomies are questioned -these anatomies are the substratum of the information society, in order to construct a post-anatomical, metahuman and metasexual body.

Jaime Del Val / JaiVal

Jaime Del Val / JaiVal (Madrid 1974) is a metamedia artist of visual, sonic, spatial, performative and danse technologies (visual and digital artist, composer and pianist, performer and choreographer, virtual architect and urban intervention artist); a multidisciplinary activist (post-gay/post-queer and environmental); a body and technology theorist; a producer, editor and director of the REVERSO project (www.reverso.org), where he coordinates diverse initiatives in the crossroads of the body art and technology, as the Nomad Workshop of the Technologies of the Body. In 2000 he edited in the Reverso Magazine the first academic publication of queer theory in Spanish. His performances and his interactive dance, electro acoustic, video and digital architecture shows and his research texts have been extensively presented in Europe, America and Africa.

His metafromances are about radical redefintions of corporeality, understood as a substrate of the subject and the social body. In the Metacuerpos body, that extends through media such as the Internet, urban interventions, performances at home and in closed spaces, video, photography, architecture and telematic performance, he uses closed circuit cameras over the body in order to produce an amorphous and post-anatomical body through the projection of “micro-dances”. The urban interventions of the Pangenerous Cyborg where he walks naked through the city projecting amorphous fragments on his body, captured in real time by closed circuit cameras located on the skin, from a projector placed on his chest, on emblematic buildings, whereas his voice is processed in real time in an interactive system, have caused confrontation with the police and the yellow press and the acclamation of specialized public in Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Chile.

Since 2005 he coordinates some of the most emblematic groups for the fight against urban speculation in Spain. In 2008 he was chosen by the newspaper El Pais as one of the most influencing Latin Americans of the year.  (Madrid 1974) is a metamedia artist of visual, sonic, spatial, performative and danse technologies (visual and digital artist, composer and pianist, performer and choreographer, virtual architect and urban intervention artist); a multidisciplinary activist (post-gay/post-queer and environmental); a body and technology theorist; a producer, editor and director of the REVERSO project (www.reverso.org), where he coordinates diverse initiatives in the crossroads of the body art and technology, as the Nomad Workshop of the Technologies of the Body. In 2000 he edited in the Reverso Magazine the first academic publication of queer theory in Spanish. His performances and his interactive dance, electro acoustic, video and digital architecture shows and his research texts have been extensively presented in Europe, America and Africa.

His metafromances are about radical redefintions of corporeality, understood as a substrate of the subject and the social body. In the Metacuerpos body, that extends through media such as the Internet, urban interventions, performances at home and in closed spaces, video, photography, architecture and telematic performance, he uses closed circuit cameras over the body in order to produce an amorphous and post-anatomical body through the projection of “micro-dances”. The urban interventions of the Pangenerous Cyborg where he walks naked through the city projecting amorphous fragments on his body, captured in real time by closed circuit cameras located on the skin, from a projector placed on his chest, on emblematic buildings, whereas his voice is processed in real time in an interactive system, have caused confrontation with the police and the yellow press and the acclamation of specialized public in Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Chile.

Since 2005 he coordinates some of the most emblematic groups for the fight against urban speculation in Spain. In 2008 he was chosen by the newspaper El Pais as one of the most influencing Latin Americans of the year.

Tecnologies emergents, singularitat tecnològica i la visió transhumanista

Discussió de diverses tecnologies emergents (realitat virtual, neurociències, biotecnologies i nanotecnologies, intel·ligència artificial) en el marc ètic i filosòfic de la visió transhumanista i de com la convergència tecnològica NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) pot conduir a una singularitat tecnològica en aquest segle.

Giulio Prisco

Consultor expert de ciència i tecnologia amb més de vint anys d’experiència en recerca aplicada i tecnologies emergents i un dels experts principals a escala internacional en el camp de la realitat virtual i del web 3D.

Ha treballat en diversos centres i agències de recerca a Europa en els quals ha assolit nivells de gestió alts, fins al novembre de 2005.

Col·labora amb diverses companyies i organitzacions en diferents sectors de tecnologia i informàtica, des del desembre de 2005.

És membre de la junta directiva de l’Institut per a l’Ètica i les Tecnologies Emergents i va ser director executiu, sotspresident i membre de la Junta Directiva de l’Associació Transhumanista Mundial.

És conegut com a futurista i expert en tecnologies emergents.
Més informació: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Prisco

After the Information Bomb: The Subject in the Era of the Big Data

 
The production of data in grand scale is one of the phenomena that define our times. In the era of the “Big Data”, where the volume of information is measured in Petabytes, producing data is not a consequence of the scientific and economic process: it is an unconscious or active social act, a consequence of the way in which our social activity gets more and more tied to technological architectures. This presentation covers the work of digital and technology artists that explore new information subjectivities.

José Luis de Vicente

José Luis de Vicente is a cultural researcher, curator and journalist. He works on digital creativity, new media art and design and culture innovation.

His most recent projects include the exhibition Arcadia: Games from a Culture of Innovation in the Work Centre for Industrial Art and Creation. He's a director of the program “Visualize” about information representation in Medialab Prado, Madrid.

He has previously served as an artistic director of the OFFF Festival of Software Aesthetics (2005-2007) and an associate curator of Sonar, the famous Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art (2005-2007). Up until recently he has been a member of the directory board of the Foment de las Arts y el Disseny (FAD) and residence curator in Arquiset, the architecture week of Barcelona.

Among his previous projects stand out the Electromagnetic Space Atlas (www.spectrumaltas.org), an interarctive visualization that explores the history of the spectrum regulation, and the exhibition Machines and Souls in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Others include COPYFIGHT, (2005-2006), a circle of activities in multiple formats about the free culture emergency and the exhibition Reclaim the Spectrum (2006), in the Zemos98 festival in Sevilla.

He's one of the editors of the digital culture blog elastico.net and recently one of the founders of zzzinc, a space and a group dedicated into the research of the cultural innovation process, located in Poblenou, Barcelona.

He gives classes of theory and history of interaction in the Elisava School of Design in Barcelona and he writes regularly about culture and technology in media such as El Mundo and Publico. He has participated in numerous international festivals, symposiums and conferences.

His interests include: visualization of data, sustainable design, net society infrastructure, urban informatics and media architecture, recreational games, archeology and digital culture stories.

Expansions artístiques: aplicacions de la tecnologia al joc

Els darrers anys, ha crescut l’interès dels artistes per explorar mitjans nous relacionats amb la cultura popular, amb l’oci i amb l’entreteniment. De la mateixa manera, queda palès l’interès de la institució artística per analitzar la transfiguració d’aquests fenòmens en projectes artístics. La reorientació de les tecnologies del joc per aconseguir una finalitat artística fa que l’espectador es plantegi qüestions com la integritat artística de l’art contemporani, la importància d’una anàlisi crítica sobre els usos tecnològics, l’ètica o les ètiques del joc, el caràcter anticorporativista d’aquestes propostes, la rellevància de portar el videojoc a nous espais de significat o, fins i tot, d’apropar la pràctica tecnològica a grups socials que desconeixen aquestes eines. La pràctica de la no-diversió, la contemplació, la reflexió o la crítica són les activitats que ens plantegen aquests nous projectes, en contra del caràcter lúdic que caracteritza el joc, de manera que provoca un desconcert en l’espectador. Sens dubte, la indústria del joc es troba avui en un dels moments de més desenvolupament, per això no és estrany que l’artista, immers en la cultura popular, pretengui instal·lar un discurs crític en l’interior de la seva estructura predeterminada.

Virginia Ruisánchez

Llicenciada en Història de l’Art per la UB el 2004 i col·laboradora del Grup de Recerca Art, Arquitectura i Societat Digital.

Ha participat en diverses jornades universitàries des de l’any 2004, en les quals ha tractat aspectes sobre el cinema i l’audiovisual.

Té publicats diferents articles com «La configuració de la ciutat en el cinema contemporani: una observació», «Símbols dalinians en la cultura de masses: alguns exemples en diversos films de Bigas Luna» o «Introducció a les experiències gameworld en diverses institucions».

Actualment, és doctoranda del Departament d’Història de l’Art de la UB i redacta la tesi doctoral.

Me, myself and I – theoretical presentation and contextualization of the performance and video art project in Second Life

 
Through MeMyself and I, video and performance project constructed between Second Life and the first world I make reflections on corporeity, the creation of the other “I” as a condition of net communication, on questions of identity and narcissism and on the the prolongation of social and moral values in this metaverse.

The final objective of Me Myself and I is a video-performance where the aim is to contrast my personality and my real body, with an idealized avatar, created in a virtual world, like in Second Life. Images of actions and parts of my real body will complement -or contrast- each other with images of my avatar, captured by a performance that takes place in this second world.

Clara Games

Phd student at the department of Painting of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona and the Department of Comunicação da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Master in Communication, Leicester University, UK, (2000)

Artist, vídeo-art, performance (Transformation, Hunger, Size 36, Vox Solitas in national and international galleries.)

Researcher, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (since 2008)

Teaching Assistant, Comunicación Social y Audiovisual, Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra (since 2008)

Curator, Kabuki gallery, Lisboa

Collaborator, art magazine Umbigo

Member of the editing board of the electronic magazine www.artciencia.com

Collaborator of Vipulamati Ample Inteligente – asociación para el uso creativo de los nuevos media

Press and Public Relations Associate (personal service of Portugal and Ministry of Culture and Education of Timor-Leste, 2000-2008)

Cinema Director (Paranoia, Pistas,Valintum, Amigos de Peniche) and actress

Teaching Assistant, Communication Department, Universidad de Macau (1996-1999)

Journalist and correspondent in Portugal and Macau (Visão, Asia Week, Inter Press Service, since 1989)

Webfolio:http://claragomes.planetaclix.pt

Bordergames: Everything else will look like a game

 
Bordergames is a collaborative art project based in a network based on a series of workshops, an editor and motor of free open source video games, that allow youngsters construct a video game collectively starting from their own experience of the environment where they live in. Bordergames is a work tool that gives young immigrants, workers in risk of social exclusion and other groups the opportunity to learn and control new technologies and use them for their self organization and with this regain control over their lives, their surroundings and their current representations. The videogame deals with the subject of the intensification and negotiation of the borders, physical or symbolic, cultural, genre, social class, borders in the everyday life of the cities and our surroundings through a work tool as familiar and attractive to young people as video games. The work of Bordergames implies a transdisciplinary work among

• The critical pedagogy from dialogue learning and collaborative work that encourages an educational process from the culture and the position of each group in digital alphabetization processes

• ITC education by working with open source software, music, weblogs, image editors and 3D design in a creative form

• The research and participative action work in order to work with different collectives, with similar subjects, their own knowledge and constructing a platform of collective work for the presentation and transformation of the reality surrounding the group: the social borders in this case.

David Rodríguez

He has actively worked in the creation and participation of social networks, in independent spaces of artistic creation, from realms of reflection, as the social uses of the new technologies, immigration, anticapitalism, squatting or money. Projects as la Fiambrera Obrera, Las Agencias, Red de Lavapiés, Yomango, SCCPP.org, among others.

Currently he is developing the projects www.bordergames.org, pornolab.org and is actively involved in the alternative theatre creation in Madrid and Barcelona through the Platform of scene productions HelloWorld!

La Fiambrera Obrera (España): La Fiambrera has been and still is part of the neighborhood political networks like la Red de Lavapiés in Madrid or la Asamblea vecinal de La Alameda in Seville. He has collaborated with organizations such as Amnesty International, Molotov or Ninguna Persona es Ilegal, being responsible for campaigns and materials. He's co-editor of books on critical art and direct action as Manual de la Ciberguerrilla, Ed. Virus, Barcelona, 2004; Modos de Hacer: Arte político, esfera pública y acción directa, Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, 2001; Manual de la Guerrilla de la comunicación, Ed. Virus, Barcelona, 2000. Members of La Fiambrera have been invited by some academical institutions in order to explain and discuss their work, among them Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Klartext Konferenze Berlín) in January 2005; NYU (New Yok University Performing Arts - Instituto Juan Carlos I) in 2004; and MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology – Visual Arts Dpt.), 2001. La Fiambrera has curated some projects, like the Proyecto Las Agencias, MACBA, Barcelona, 2001; or the exhibition Ninguna Persona es Ilegal, Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2002.

The spaceship Mare Nostrum

The spaceship “Mare Nostrum” is an artistic and futuristic manifestation on the possibility to realize an interstellar journey. Its technology is based above all on the advances of medicine that will allow in the following decades to go beyond our biological limits and the space-time barrier of the universe, after having converted ourselves in a self-designed species. We will think over the social-cultural consequences of this vision through the creations and research by the Astronauts' Club, that expand among science, art, philosophy and ethics and that are divided in the following projects: the technological development of the spaceship Mare Nostrum, interviews with experts and thinkers, cultural multidisciplinary events, video-art, electronic music and the collaboration with related projects and people.

David Apfel

David Apfel is an artist and researcher. He creates within the collaborative and multidisciplinary spirit of our times that will bring us to a new dimension of the human conscience. Apfel has studied Informatics at the Paris London University of Salzburg (Austria) and was working as a freelance web designer and programmer and as an actor and creator in art and multimedia production companies, as Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca's company (Co-Fundador Fura dels Baus), Florida 135 S.L. and Terra.es. In 2005 he founded the artistic collective El Club de los Astronautas, an artistic project that supports the exploration of the interstellar space. Apfel has presented his work in the University of Barcelona, the University of Almeria, CosmoCaixa (Barcelona Science Museum), Caixa Forum Madrid, Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona (CCCB), Sonar Festival, Transmediale Berlin, Horitzo TV, BTV, la Sexta etc. and has organized various events, shows and exhibitions. He has collaborated with Catalunya Amnesty International, with Giulio Prisco in the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, with Dra. Rita Vassena in the Centre of Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona (CMRB) and participates as a “scientific adviser” in the shows of Fatima Institut (a group of art and digital music) who will present as show in Prado Media Lab, Madrid, in 2010.
For more information: www.elclubdelosastronautas.com