In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? Presentations by John Hopkins (Remote Presence: Streaming Life Workshop) and Eléonore Hellio (ESP - Extra-Sensorial Perception art collective)

* John Hopkins (Iceland/US)
www.neoscenes.net
Presentation + workshop by John Hopkins, an active network-builder in the media art scene (and beyond), especially in the Nordic/Baltic region. ‘As an active networker-builder with a background in engineering, hard science, and the arts, Hopkins practices a nomadic form of performative art and teaching that spans many countries and situations.’

’This workshop starts from concepts of the formation and creative sources of grassroots networks to the actualities of a sustainable creative practice involving remote presence mediated by networks. Online collaborative visual/sonic events succeed when facilitators understand the dynamics of human network-building as well as the possible technologies involved. The politics of collaboration underlie much of the potential of technologically-mediated social interaction. In all my workshops, I address the complex social politics of technology, providing a powerful model for the critical engagement of media.’

* Eléonore Hellio (FR)
www.eternalnetwork.org
ESP is the acronyme for Extra-Sensorial Perception. It is a fluctuating art collective associating students, teachers and artists. Since 1999, we have developped a continual activity in the sphere of media art based in the Network Art Laboratory of the school of visual arts of Strasbourg (ESAD). ESP explores online cooperative systems and performative virtual shared spaces as a possibility of establishing dialogue between different social contexts, cultures and countries through local and distant interplay. ESP also extend its activity outside academic world for special projects. Network art is not only using modern technology but a way of rethinking art through a critical study of digital globalisation in regards to its rapid emergence, transformation and complexity. Furthermore, ESP attemps to investigate news interzones between past, present and future in the midst of tensions between tradition and modernity. In 007, ESP explores the impact of technology in places where media and/or infrastructures are highly unstable by developping new projects in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Karosta (post-sovietic ghetto in Latvia).