storytelling the future
 
Author: <span>robb</span>

Soil as live entity

Despite the differences in their interest and area of competence, the three presentations by a soil scientists, Jeffrey Howard, a community gardener, Steven Green and a bioartist, Nicole Clouston, revolved around the idea that soil is essentially a live entity which grows, changes and interacts with the surrounding environment (this […]

A Bed of Soil

It’s been roughly one week since Life in the Soil has come to an end, leaving a long lasting impression and, as it is the case for such complex and multifarious events, an inexhaustible number of questions. As Amanda White and Alana Bartol, two artists collaborating at the intersection of […]

Playing Magnetic Fields

In his performance Fields,  Martin Messier asserts to play with magnetic fields. What he did, in reality, was much more complex. Using a –probably pre-programmed sound base– he coordinated his performance by manipulating two “connections patches that offer many possibilities to connect many outputs to many inputs”. The two artifacts you […]

Affect and gaming

I was looking forward to listening to Kara Stone’s presentation. While she locates her work in the realm of gaming, she refuses to follow the usual and trite narratives imposed by the gaming industry. Her goal is to inject games with affect, a term that she uses loosely to identify […]

World’s Greatest Looist – a one of a kind performance

This was by far the most Canadian performance I have ever seen in my life. Dressed as a ranger at times sitting on (and playing) a toilet and playing a Caribou antler, Dave Gould did a mesmerizing performance that incorporated electronic music and other hybrid/unusual sounds that could be synthetic but they […]

Function Keys – a new-ish conference on new technology and digital culture

Among the growing series of festivals, events, conferences dedicated to (and often over-celebrating) new and not-so-new technologies, I thought I would introduce you to this new-ish (in its third year) conference with the great title of “Function Keys“. There are several reasons why I decided to attend the conference and to write […]

Looking for directions in Participatory Practices and beyond

Recently  I have observed – with mixed feeling and a bit of disorientation– the rise of  maker culture. Among them, agitators, activists and artists are finding ways to use the latest developments in 3D printing, DIY and citizen science to produce innovative tools and ingenious artifacts for the benefit of the common […]

working with Communities: inclusion and co-production, not education

I am usually very critical when it comes with working with communities, especially when these communities are what the West or the Intelligentsia considered “disadvantaged” or resourceless. I have seen countless examples of interventions where a well equipped, educated and clearly hegemonic individual or group literally descended upon a group of kids […]

Open medicine, or becoming a Patient Expert

Open Medicine is not just about publishing or sharing information about experts, but also about empowering. Billiam James’ powerful and passionate intervention, peppered with evocative images, addressed the power relations inherent in medicine and advocated the necessity for the patient to become an expert, in order to be able to ask […]

Day 1, a look at Open Access publishing

When we think of open culture, open science, DIY and making are probably the first things that come to mind. However, It is often thanks to the availability of information available through open access publishing that knowledge is made increasingly shareable, as open access journals (OA) continue to emerge out of academia […]

John Dupuis Open Science presentation at the Subtle Technologies Festival

In addition to more traditional journals with Open access structures, John Dupuis in a later talk on Open Science, pointed out to a diverse number of tools that not only scientists, but also other researchers and artists use to share their work. from Academia.edu, to bibliography databases such as Mandelay, […]