Digital Cultures Lab

1. The conditions: Digital Cultures Lab, Performances, Symposium

The Digital Cultures Lab, and the performances/installations and public events (Symposium, Digital Lounge & Meeting Place) connected to it, is neither a structured research workshop, nor a festival or academic conference, nor a residency.

But it combines elements from all of these formats, and as a "lab residency" it invites all guests to enjoy an intensive period of shared exploration: collaborations, exchange of information and practices, hands on workshops, prototypes and brief exhibitions, critical reflections, platforms for discussion.

DC Lab as host becomes collective presence; there is an element of self-organization involved since many guests are experienced practitioners, and know each other of have heard of each other¹s work. The Lab provides the conditions whereby artists interested in dance and technology, and generally, in performance and digital creativity, could evolve their own structure for exchanging skills and ideas, while also allowing the different activities to be scrutinized and debated from cross-cultural critical perspectives.

The concept of "digital cultures" is a question, not a matter of fact.

2. The Conjunctions (the artists, practitioners and researchers from different contexts and cultural - technical locales report from the field .

- artistic work in progress

- research projects

- new conceptual models, methods

Some members of the collective will offer workshops or were asked to facilitate focus groups. A workshop itinerary has evolved allowing the whole ensemble (50 practitioners) to choose whether to work in the sessions upstairs (Powerhouse) or downstairs (Basement). We have suggested a joint (plenary) meeting at each end of the day (17:oo-19:oo) during which we compare notes from the day¹s work and debate the results or emerging critical issues.

On Wednesday, November 30, at 20:oo there is a dinner arranged to which everyone is invited.

On Thursday, December 1, at 20:30, there is the opening night celebration to start up the Symposium and Public Performances.

Friday and Saturday night (20:oo) there are six dance concerts and two film screenings staged at Sandfield Center.

3. A team of postgraduate volunteers will document the Lab residency, and we will all take notes to formulate questions, aesthetic and critical issues and keywords evolving from the lab and the lab presentations.

4. Some these questions and issues can be pursued further during the weekend symposium. Invited speakers will bring further perspectives and research reports to the colloquium.

5. We propose to investigate (during Symposium) how performance and digital culture practices reflect on themselves, and how evolving dance and technology practices and theories constitute conceptual gestures that can be judged in relation to conceptual practices in other media, and within a wider system (of art, culture).

6. How do the two sides of the Symposium (dance technologies, and locative media/technology arts) complement each other, what shared or distinct manifestations arise. How do the live performances, installations and screenings comment upon the Lab, and vice versa?

coordinated by Johannes Birringer (Nottingham). assistant coordinator: Isabel Valverde (Lisbon)

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