a long story, made short, about how art led to teaching led to research led to prototyping led to...
TRANSCRIPT
A long story, made short, about how art led to teaching led to research led to prototyping led to software innovations led to research led to social work led to art.
by Carol-Ann Braun & www.concert-urbain.org,
with special thanks to all our indispensable partners.
1. Research and innovation : university affiliations.
2. A social context : the needs of a city, of a neighborhood.
3. Innovative pedagogy : learning to communicate with digital means.
4. Public and private subsidies : new uses for new technologies.
1. Research and innovation
• Knowing who looks at what, with whom.
• How does the collective “gaze” influence the shape content can take?
• The inter-medial gesture.
• Dialog as search engine.
Open and collective art on Internet.
Applied research on Interface Design initiated by Dr Annie Gentès, Telecom Paris-Tech (1999).
Our first project involved students from :
• L’Ecole Multimédia, Paris, France. (continuing education design students)
• L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (top-tier engineering school now known as Paris-Tech)
• Also involved: a private company called Timsoft, Levallois, that provided the chat software.
• Funding came from La Fondation Louis Leprince Ringuet.
Open and collective art on Internet.
Months of sketches…
…and sketches…
…and sketches…
…and sketches…
… followed by manymeetings…
…led to a plan of action. Students thentook over the process andcreated….
2000 : City Paradigms http://www.cityparadigms.timsoft.com
Step 1 : Identify yourself with a tailor-made “calling card”.
2000 : City Paradigms http://www.cityparadigms.timsoft.com
Step 2 :Join the virtual city by “tuning in” to your favorite sound track (unfolds like an accordion).
Step 3 :Spot who else is on the “site”(their names float above thesound track).
Wread a topic together…
2000 : City Paradigms http://www.cityparadigms.timsoft.com
Step 4 :… and join themin a chat that provides hyper-links to subjects being talked about.
2000 : City Paradigms http://www.cityparadigms.timsoft.com
The project wasfeatured atISEA 2000, Paris.
2000 : City Paradigms http://www.cityparadigms.timsoft.com
…and won a «Young Talent » award at theMILIA, Cannes, 2001.
(we all had a greattime there!)
A special thought forManu Lechat.
2. A social context.
• A real city, with citizens: the structure of exchange.
• Testimonial as narrative: memory, shared imaginary worlds, daily life.
• A fictional story-line:…necessary or superfluous?
• A web-site : a way to extend social work and training programs in the field.
What about real people?
Imagining ways toinvolve the public at large…
...with simple, solid, technology...(thank-you Timsoft!)
…that transforms dialog into a multi-media search engine.
2001 : La Preuve par Troyes
• A city : Troyes, in champagne country, but also suffering from severe unemployment due to the gradual decline and then collapse of the textile industry.
• A new government program : « Espaces Culture Multimédia », spearheaded by Jean-Christophe Théobalte of the Ministry of Culture.
• A new Regional library and archive, run by Thierry Delcourt (BMVR, Troyes), eager to federate his community around innovative projects.
• Funding by la Région Champagne-Ardennes, the City of Troyes and the Art Center (residency Carol-Ann Braun)
• Software designed by Antoine Sartoretti, Timsoft.
2001 : La Preuve par Troyeshttp://www.ecm-troyes.timsoft.com
Industrial partnership
• An easy to use back-office• To set up augmented chat-spaces• And centralize art-work created by different communities
Timsoft, Levallois.
3. Innovative pedagogy
2001-3 Sandscript
• get engineering students to think in greater depth about how people use technology.
• round-out a very technical curriculum with an artistic project that involves creating images, writing stories and dialog, composing musical sequences.
• apply research conducted in the department.
Created in the framework of CANTIC, an applied art and research programme,
initiated by Dr Annie Gentès, Telecom Paris-Tech.
www.sandscript.timsoft.com (IE 5, PC, activate popups, no firewalls !)
• Creating avatars with sounds, so as to create a truly collective presence.
• Experimenting with dialogic forms (Morse Code, CB radio, smileys)
• Weaving full-blown images into the chat space.
• Creating dialogs among “bots” mixed in with real-time chat.
• Using dialog as a search engine.
• Researching the link between intermedial forms of the 1960s (Fluxus) and emerging Internet practices. (Sandscript was shown at the 40th anniversary of the Fluxus group, celebrated in Paris.)
2001-2 Sandscript
4. Public and private subsidies.
• Worked with local partners (Equipe de Développement Locale, Espace Public Numérique, Centre Social 13 Pour Tous, Antenne Jeunes)…
• …to launch a neighborhood project called Tour-à-Tour
• Subsidized by the City of Paris and the Région Ile de France.
• Enlisted a new group of engineering students to develop open-source augmented chat back-office.
• New industrial partner : Dragonfly.com, for video management.
We Created our own non-profit citizen’s association: www.concert-urbain.org.
• Plunging students in social issues
• Around intensive team-based projects.
• Six ESIEA students worked on Tour-A-Tour.
• They got involved in issues concerning the neighborhood and created an open-source back office for augmented chat spaces called…
Applied research initiated by Dr Claire Leroux, Director of ARNUM,
Ecole Supérieure d’Informatique, Electronique et Automatique,
Ivry-sur- Seine.
(back to…) An Educational Context
2006 : www.chatanoo.org
The back office and associated site were immediately put to use in an experimental urban game conducted in Paris’ Chinatown by the group Polimorph ….
2006 : « Tabula Rosa »Association PolimorphPetra Marguc et Laurence Hartenstein
For 2007-2009…
Another project mixinguniversity research, social concerns, art, technological innovations, a pedagogical
context and both public and private funding :
2007-9 : M.E.R.C.I.Mutualisation d’une expression riche, citoyenne, innovante.
• With university students in training at the CFA’Com/Paris13,• And young citizens of the City of Bagnolet, • In workshops organized by La Médiathèque de Bagnolet,• With funding from La Région Ile de France.
…wish us all luck….…wish us all luck….