Festival Programme Thu, 3.2.2011 - 01:00

Kicking off the Herbert Marshall McLuhan Centennial year, this discussion will separate the aphorism from the cliché in one of McLuhan's most radical yet relatively under-explored works, COUNTERBLAST, which the panelists will use to discuss McLuhans transition from English professor to timeless media guru.
The event will launch a special hardcover 'limited edition' facsimile of the original COUNTERBLAST 1954, published by the Gingko Press exclusively for transmediale on the event of the McLuhan anniversary!

With this interface keynote between CTM (club transmediale) and transmediale festival we want to bridge our two festival topics based on evolved qualities of liveness and presence. The internationally known researchers and collaborative practicioners explore the new social and performative qualities of internet-based realtime media and networks and how they re-define our understanding of presence, encounter and sociability.

This programme addresses the perpetual simultaneity of war and peace. The two selected works, the short film Is This a Good Way to Start a War and the feature Where Is Where? both approach the topic by mixing documentary and fictional narrative techniques.

Situated on the borders of Arab-ness, this programme highlights the diversity of expression and experimental filmmaking in the Arab world. The programme proposes a realignment of the elements of inherited history as well as displacement, in an attempt to contemplate the shape of the Arab terrain, and the role given to this terrain in each of these films.
Curated by Ala' Younis for Arab Shorts, a project of the Goethe-Institut Cairo.

In this Focus Discussion (Track 1), with Salvatore Iaconesi, Derrick de Kerckhove, Ursula Endlicher, Heath Bunting and Alessandro Ludovico, discuss artworks and artistic forms of practice that explore newer, fluid identity configurations characterised by physical and intangible aspects and the spaces between them.

Mz Baltazar's Laboratory wants to demystify technology. In a two-day workshop we hack hardware, make noise, build angst-robots and programme Open Source software. We ask a lot of 'stupid' tech questions and develop art projects together. No one is an expert, no one is only student, we share our equipment and knowledge in order to articulate ourselves through high-tech in novel ways. Mz Baltazar's Laboratory offers women space to make their own electronics and realise interactive art projects.

 

For 15 participants

With pre-registration only

In her detailed study Hybridkultur, Yvonne Spielmann suggests a critical concept of hybridity that, in an interdisciplinary view, interrelates media study with cultural study debates. The study argues that hybridity constitutes a contemporary strategy to aesthetically intervene into internationally operating media industries. In the book, this hybridity is amongst others highlighted in the non-western and highly technological context of media and culture of Japan.

Eosin believes in ANALOG+DIGITAL, rather than ANALOG vs. DIGITAL. Self-Reproduction Loops is a tribute to the grooves of the vinyl record, to its crackles and clicks, skips and pops. Eosin employs pre-recorded vinyl noises and loops to create time sequences for use in live improv situations which she blends with a real-time layer of analog DJing. Combined, both layers weave unforeseeable compositions where each sound surpasses its own state of noise, loop or representation to become part of the overall sonority.

Cat Suzette plays with her audience, adapting her music to the prevailing mood and then, ultimately, transforming the atmosphere of the room. In this way, her sets can start off with trancey sounds that segue into narrative dub techno and end with ‘robust’ hardness and bouncy 4/4.

Moving towards a democratisation of digital radio, cheaper digital transmission technologies allow individuals to access an otherwise rather exclusive communication system. Mathias Coinchon of the European Broadcasting Union shows workshop participants techniques and tools for alternative and independent radiomaking.

 

Produced by Sourcefabric.

Somali pirate fashion is the new trend for a new generation of rurbans (rural urbane). Take part in the process of production of the WOPPOW by WOPPOW fashion line - preproduced garments and accessories directly brought to you from the nairobi district of Kibera and Eastleigh as well as fashion items from Puntland, Somalia are waiting to be brought to a climax of style by fine European hands. Plus: video material needs editing and shall be transformed into WOPPOW's new advertising line.
> APPLY HERE FOR THIS WORKSHOP!

live performance by Ei Wada
Braun Tube Jazz Band

In this audiovisual performance the Angel of History reflects on the PAL signal and its supposed end. Although PAL is now obsolete and outdated, it still lives on indirectly in newer technologies like the DVB signal. The Collapse of PAL is an hommage to the typical artefacts of the analogue signal, which Rosa Menkman captured using feedback, image bending techniques, a broken digital camera, digital compression, video bending devices and a game console. The soundtrack is crafted using the sounds of a Cracklebox, an old Casio keyboard, European telephone signals, Morse code etc.