This Thursday Night Live! presents findings from the reDesigning Affect Space public research. Affect Space is a spatial model for analysing the interplay between urban public space with mobile technology and the affective intensities that are generated by mediated and embodied exchanges.

In fact, the Affect Space model closely describes the designed practices by some techno-political actors, like IT service provides and governments at the forefront of developments. The question at stake is how Affect Space can be redesigned for a more poetic, critical, and open civic engagement, and how to include the design disciplines in shaping such alternative designs? This question also forms the starting point of the workshop reDesigning Affect Space (title to be confirmed), by JARD (architects Javier Argota and Rodrigo Delso) that will take place on 6 and 7 September at Het Nieuwe Instituut.

With an introduction by theorist Eric Kluitenberg, who coined the term Affect Space. JARD (architects Javier Argota and Rodrigo Delso) explores how bottom-up Machine Learning algorithms can be applied to urban camera observation to analyse collective movements in public space. And the premiere of the digital film Daily Life at a Crossing by artists Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum: "This video is an experiment in the experience of space. For this video we combined the virtual visual world that is offered to us by Google Earth, with a self produced audio recording. The sound you hear is recorded of a building at the crossing of the Martin-Luther Strasse and Hohenstaufen-Strasse in Berlin. We used extended binaural recording: the right channel is the south side of the building, the left the north. At the same time a slow movement around the crossing is visible, executed in the current state of Google Earth. The two sound channels and the video are related, and not related. There is a gap, and there is a connection."

Eric Kluitenberg

Eric Kluitenberg is a theorist, writer, curator, and educator working at the intersection of culture, politics, media, and technology. He is the Editor in Chief of the Tactical Media Files online documentation platform for Tactical Media. He was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, and currently teaches cultural and media theory at the Art Science Interfaculty and the Interactive / Media / Design program in The Hague.

Publications include The Book of Imaginary Media (2006), Delusive Spaces - essays (2008), the theme issues of Open, Journal for Art and the Public Domain, "Hybrid Space" (2006), and "(Im)Mobility" (2011), The legacies of Tactical Media (2011), and Techno Ecologies (2012). He currently works on the preparation of an international anthology about Tactical Media co-edited with David Garcia, to be published by MIT Press. Projects include the Next 5 Minutes 3 & 4 - Festivals of Tactical Media (1999 / 2003), net.congestion - International Festival of Streaming Media (2000), debates & credits - Media / Art /Public Domain (2002), the Economies of the Commons conference series (2008-2012), ElectroSmog - International Festival for Sustainable immobility (2010), FREE!? - A one day journey into the cultures of sharing (2013), Tactical Media Connections (2014-2017), T/A/S - Technology / Affect / Space (2016), and reDesigning Affect Space (2017 - 2019).

JARD architecture studio

JARD is an architectonic physic-digital office that works during a daily average of 13 hours 23 minutes and 54 seconds in a discontinuous space-time without adjusting to official vacation periods and on a mutant velocity depending on the context conditions of every project. Javier Argota and Rodrigo Delso are architects educated at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (2014 and 2012 respectively) currently working as researchers and professors at the same university that have complemented their training at Goldsmiths University (London, 2015), Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburg, 2016) and the Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, 2008).

Javier Argoto researches on data visualization, interactive media and new technologies applied to urban planning and architecture within Hypermedia Research Group at Polytechnic University of Madrid. Rodrigo Delso is a chronopath, specialised in critical-theoretical research on the digital dimension of cities, who is currently developing his PHD titled ChronoPolis that has been recently awarded in the national competition Arquímedes (2014) for young Spanish researchers. They are the founders of JARD, the innovation pedagogical platform 100×10 and masters program in Architectonic Communication, MAca of the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

PolakVanBekkum

Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum work together as artist-couple under the name PolakVanBekkum. Their work focusses on landscape and mobility. Rooted in the history of the Dutch realistic landscape depiction, they embrace new technologies to express personal experiences of spaces of the contemporary city and countryside. Their projects are often informed by collaborations with participants, be it humans, objects, or even the rays of the sun. They have worked and exhibited internationally, at Transmediale Berlin, Ars Electronica Linz, ZKM Karlsruhe, London, IMAL Brussels, Rento Brattinga | Gallery Amsterdam, Museo for Image and Sound Sao Paolo, Nairobi, Lagos, Marrakech, Paris, Philadelphia Percent for Art program, Los Angeles and Queensland. Projects and works include Amsterdam Realtime, MilkProject, NomadicMILK, Souvenir Zeeland, Spiral Drawing Sunrise, Fronting Motion, AbstractView, 250 Miles Crossing Philadelphia, Once We Get There, A Collision of Sorts.

Thursday Bite

Before the Thursday Night you can grab a bite to eat with the speakers and staff of Het Nieuwe Instituut. At 18:00 Het Nieuwe Café will serve a light vegetarian meal. Dinner vouchers are available for € 7.70 up to a day before the particular Thursday Night event via the Tickets link.

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