Contents

  1. Outline Report
  2. report
  3. policy recommendation
  4. input
    1. Petko
    2. Tapio
    3. dyne.org hackers
    4. Fatima Lasay/Korakora.org
    5. WG 4: Media education, civil society, media
    6. '''BAUDRILLARD'S WARNING '''
    7. Annette

Outline Report

/!\ Deadline: by mid-october /!\

The publication would hold the following information:

* 1. Introduction / background (1p)

Authors: Rob/Katelijn/Sarah (tbc)

Length: 500 words / 1 page

/!\ Deadline: 15 Sept 08

* 2. Policy Recommendation (2-3 p)

Authors: Tapio/Dipu/Rob with input from wider editorial team

Purpose: to be sent out separately to policy makers / referring to previous agendas

Length: tbc (conzise)

/!\ Deadline: until end of Sept 08

* 3. Detailed WG reports

Authors:

WG1: Liesbeth Huybrechts / Noora Zul

WG2: Bronac Ferran / Annette Wolfsberger

WG3: Rob van Kranenburg & Jaromil / Emma Ota

WG4: Fatima Lasay / Jerneja Rebernak

with input & feedback from the respective working group members

Purpose: description of process (working method) & highlight action points brought forward in the groups

Length: 800-1000 words / 2 pages each (total 8 pages)

/!\ Deadline: 1 Sept 08

* 4. 4 Case Studies (or: innovative models of good practice)

Purpose: highlight the case studies that were presented during the summit in box-style

Format: Box inserts

Authors: - Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino: Tinker.it - Anne Nigten: The Patching Zone - Atteqa Malik: Mapping the Change - Fatima Lasay: The Arts in Civil Society - A philosophy of the functioning society

Length: 300 words

/!\ Deadline: 1 Sept 08

* 5. Participants background + photo+ 3 questions

Names, contact info & organisations

/!\(PLEASE, let us know if all of you agree to publish the 3 questions, anyway they are already on the blog. Or add input from Feedback answers. Or some sort of summary, alas difficult.)

Authors: ASEF/participants

/!\ Deadline: 1 Sept 08

* 6. Result d'Art questionnaire

(however, Sarah, only 5 governments responded to that...so, hard to take' conclusions'.

Author: Rob

Length: 4 pages (?)

Action: right format needs to be decided upon (Annette & Rob meet 26 Aug to discuss)

/!\ Deadline: 15 Sept 08

* 7. Illustrations

Feasible to use screenshots of the presentations?

Action: Annette to check with Adam (1) if possible & participants (2) if they agree for material to be used.

/!\ Deadline: 1 Sept 08

report

/!\ 1 page 'report' - Time: 8 august 

We are working on a one page small 'report' on the fact that the meeting was held. Rob is adding some additional sentences. Should be finished this week. This will be sent out by ASEF and IFFACA.

policy recommendation

/!\ 2-3 pages maximum - Time: before end September 

Rob would write the first draft, pulling together the 4 WG results (adam, can you send them to all of us, the link? Thanks!) and then get comments. It would be great to have an  asia-europe core group working on it, so we know who wants to be active and steering it. Would you want to drive it, Tapio and Sharan, as a continuum  after Dehli and Helsinki

input

Petko

As a follow up of the event I want to initiate a discussion about an Europe-Asian residence exchange program with focus on new media art that could be a great output of our event.

This idea come to my mind when I was introducing the call for 2009 of the residence exchange program EMARE in which InterSpace is taking part. It is aimed at new media artists but unfortunately only for those based in Europe.

Deadline is October 20th (post date) and the application form can be downloaded from here: http://www.werkleitz.de/projekte/emare/applicationform_emare09.pdf

I reminded that we haven't discussed on the Mini-Summit (at least in the open networks and new media labs workshop) the residence exchange networks that are probably one of the best opportunities for both artists and host organizations to exchange practices.

As a starting point I will give you one argument that will help for finding political and financial support for such exchange program. The exchange programs between West and East Europe were and still are one of the main factors of developing common artistic ground since the political changes started almost 20 years ago in Eastern Europe.

It is for sure that even the most intensive events like conferences and festivals are not enough for the practical experience that few-month-long residences can provide.

I really hope that some of you would find this idea interesting and we can start thinking how to implement it in practice.

Tapio

To second Petko, also in the Leonardo Educational Forum, support for media artistic research in residence funding was emphasized. It might indeed be important to start with Asia-Europe media art residency programme before suggesting one that in particular is focussed on media arts research.

I would like to suggest three layers on which to discuss the outcomes of the mini-summit:

1. A document or a collage of them on a Wiki, which reflects the discussions and backgrounds of the participants. As wide as needed.

2. List of goals and ideas that emerged from the event that we might want to develop further. More focus, refers to the wider context.

3. Policy recommendation document, which does not necessarily contain much from the two other documents, but which supports the practices and projects that we do want to do. VERY focussed, a separate document. Some quotes from 1+2.

Trying to realize all of the above in one document, as a mirror of what happened during the 2,5 days would be rather difficult. Also we do have the great opportunity to reach policy makers via IFFACA and ASEF, so we should really think about a few items that could in fact be pushed forward as a result of our meeting, in the form of policy recommendations.

To begin such a document, we should emphasize a few points on why media arts practices are important, and perhaps there is some urgency for funding or other policy actions right now. We need to impact particularly those who are not interested, not willing, to act. Secondly, those who are interested already in what we are saying, will read further anyhow.

If indeed our document is to be titled Singapore Agenda, I would suggest that the local arts council should be challenged to participate in funding media arts initiatives that exist locally, and collaborations that follow ISEA2008. Also it seems that the "media development" aspect was quite evident via keynote content for example, and perhaps to some degree also the exhibitions, if less so (their interest in funding ISEA should be recognized perhaps).

As most IFACCA policy makers deal with ARTS policy, we could emphasize the need to firstly include media arts in arts funding, to gurantee its artistic freedom. We could also recognize that media arts are an area of social, cultural as well as technological innovation, but the latter can only emerge from artistic practices and can be developed further with industry style funding, but not generated with such policy tools. And perhaps first and foremost, in the context of our event location, is to underline the urgency of freedom of expression of artists to produce, exhibit and screen publicly their work, and to participate in local and international networks.

Alas, should there be a separate deadline for a policy recommendation document, and to see a Wiki environment as an open collaborative platform? For any of this, we do need time as it is still holiday season, and the most effective time I would think to send any policy doc around would not be until mid September? What do you think Sarah?

Personally, It was great to get to know many of you - I wish there could have been more time to xchange on the level of collaboration from here onwards. Luckily had a chance to keep talking during later parts of ISEA with some. It was a pleasure! I said to someone that on the one hand these practice and policy meets are alwyas "restarts" as they involve new voices and new angles, but also contain a lot of repetition for those who have participated in such before. Refresh could be a better term... that said, it is important in my mind not to see this event as wanting to represent all types of practice and regions to third parties (impossible task as such), but to come up with few points that push policy makers to take some of our shared concerns on board.

Ship ahoy!

dyne.org hackers

PDF on http://dyne.org/first_dharma_dyne.pdf

Fatima Lasay/Korakora.org

Working Group 4: Some personal observations on the dynamics of the sessions on http://korakora.org/proyekto/asef-ifacca-mini-summit-new-media-art-policy

WG 4: Media education, civil society, media

The deliberations of WG4 must be placed in the context of certain comments made in the introductory session where it was mentioned that the objective was to move from policy and discourse to policy as action. It was also reflected that education lags behind practice; more specifically new media education lags behind the practice of new media arts (Tapio Makela). Some direction for the future lay in the hope that contemporary new media arts can bridge the gap between the transnational/trans-local (Rob van Kranenburg). So the meta question before WG4 was how contemporary media education could bridge two types of divides – the transnational/trans-local and the gap between contemporary new media arts practices and media education.

At the outset itself, the dynamics of the working group saw critical questioning of the very process of the creation of policy documents at international conferences. The Moderator Fatima Lasay emphasized that the setting does not necessarily require the concretization of a policy document nor place pressure on the participants individually or collectively to reach such an outcome. This brought about a sharp response from some participants who asserted that being in the workshop itself was concomitant with bringing out a policy document. This led to another critical question as to whether or not such workshops are actually negotiating tables between conflicting cultures.

In other words, there was a certain underlying, palpable tension which must be seen in the light of Rob van Kranenburg’s apprehension that if such conferences do not “script solidarity into the systems, we will end up with very little space for social relationships and lots of messy things”. Such “messy things” are obviously a problem for the Occident that seeks a “stable environment” for new media arts practice/education in a situation where the “tables are turning towards the East which has an ability to deal with insecurity, messy circumstances, un-safety …in short, an ability to deal with life.”

To enter a space of ease, the participants began with a storytelling disclosure of the implications of the political, social and cultural dynamics embedded in the sole act of greeting in their respective cultures followed by an exercise in which each participant wrote out their central thoughts about media education, civil society and media on meta-cards. This helped map the commonalities, divergences and directions in relation to their individual and cultural positioning as well as broader concerns in media education.

The group agreed to address (new) media education (as different from mass media education - Thasnai) as looking at new directions, new perspectives, and the process of critical discourse. There was a felt need to define (new) media as a concept that includes digital and analog (temples are also media – Peter) and manifold distribution channels like the Internet (also convergence). Contemporary media education must take into account user-generated media as differing from media under the ambit of institutional regulations (government/corporate) and therefore incorporates do-it-yourself attitudes of open access with consequent disregard for intellectual property.

The discussion highlighted the following extant, dominant and dormant realities in contemporary media education:

• A preponderance of deep-rooted hierarchies of power in cultural policy-making and practices disseminated through the stakeholder theory (Fatima Lasay),

• The paradoxical availability of funds for both new media arts and education but few takers in lackadaisical societies like Malaysia (Muid Latif),

• The commonplace of higher education institutions basing curricula on the creative economy to position students into selling points for cultural capital in Thailand and India (Thasnai and Ampat Varghese).

• The effect of media practitioners following up what is fashionable resulting in the dilemma of practitioners and educators not questioning or changing the framework of society per se. (Thasnai)

• The lack of mobility of media education across the formal and non-formal sectors where the exchange of knowledge could be used to empower community (Isrizal)

• The crying lack of infrastructure and shortfall of knowledge bases generated in community that could be available in crisis situations (Isrizal)

• The lack of mechanism for the protection of the human rights of open source practitioners persecuted “legally” for contesting varied laws/forms of censorship in societies like Singapore (Isrizal) and need to support media education and sensitivity by using open source tools and methodologies, providing free public access of the Internet and eliminating the no-copy policy which protects the commercial contents of industry (Peter)

• The fact of media education being seldom linked to the broader contexts of human rights and the creation of alternatives to existing notions of civil society (Isrizal, Ampat Varghese, Fatima Lassay).

• Cases of “no-policy” where media arts practitioners were forced to find solutions on their own and to focus on self- or collectively generated infrastructures for interdisciplinary programmes (Venzha)

• Little or no development of creative competences and appropriate tools much earlier in the school education system which only focuses on knowledge creation (Alek Tarkowski). Given the above identification of areas of need/lack/want, some action points suggested were as follows:

1. Open up new practices in the direction of critical discourses in media education. For instance, media education/new media are tools to promote national identity as something that can be sold/traded. New media art practices keep the same framework in place and hence the need for a critical discourse. (Thasanai) 2. Mobile research units can be envisioned in places where there is no infrastructure yet for media education. Examples: The Container project (Jamaica) and Mediashed as best practices. 3. The situation of no-policy raises the urgency for incorporating media education practices in early education. Media art becomes a tool for educating others, cultural practices and the process of interaction becomes the tool, which goes beyond access. Eg. House of Natural Fiber, where who is teaching and who is learning is not important, but the most important thing is its long-term programme where issues of sustainability are being addressed. 4. Collaborative media research takes place outside the university, where there is no prescriptive environment and a wide selection and diversity of tools and practices can generate insight and public debates, articulating questions about the critical structures of the civil society. New dynamics of discourse can become templates for people to try to develop different categories of media arts, as for example mobile education, and to learn how to appropriate technology. There is a necessity to talk about ideas, not in technical terms, but in terms of how to hack them. These practices should then be transmissible and documented in order to facilitate access. (Sally Jane Norman) 5. Design multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural collaborative projects which work locally and produce new forms and bodies of knowledge that have universal values. Incorporate feedback mechanisms as technology is seen as a tool, but it redefines our culture and people. Use technology and new media approaches to revive/relocate the craft or traditional sectors. Initiate funding for initiatives which strengthen local cultures, which can’t be sustained on the national level, but come into being only through international funding. (Ampat Varghese) 6. Institute transparent methods and processes so the implementation of media knowledge such as open source is transferred to institutions. Eg. of best practice are FLOSS manuals, which are easily accessible and explain simply how to use open source tools (Floor)

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS Document produced on Day 3 of 3 WG Meetings and presented at the last ASEF-IFACCA session and the ISEA.

THE WORKING GROUP ON MEDIA EDUCATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY RECOMMENDS: The policy advisors are invited to read the background documents (Amsterdam agenda, Delhi declaration, Helsinki Agenda)

1. Looking for new directions and new perspectives that include a process of critical discourse which appreciates many histories and many voices and takes into account voices that are being drowned by media and lacking critical space or platforms for expression in new media forms. 2. Addressing issues about how informal, technology-driven media works and the osmotic process by which media arts education can incorporate informal media into pedagogy thus enabling new directions and new perspectives in education. 3. Offering New Media arts as a challenge for education and cultural practices and production beyond the much spoken issues like “access”. If one speaks of access, it must be focused through mapping and identification of the specific groups that do not have access and the results made transparent, transmissible and documented for action. (refer to Delhi declaration – going beyond access) 4. That media education is also linked to informal education and that ASEF explore how this can be brought about through new media arts. 5. That provision is made for funding and providing resource components where it is identified that there is a lack of infrastructure for trans-disciplinary and cross-sector actions in new media arts including the creation of short-term and temporary spaces for media education, and mobile media education. 6. The spread of new media tools and practices and processes to school-level education to develop more creativity thinking and competencies, including open and free access to educational resources. 7. That media education is framed within the larger context of human rights and mechanisms of social dynamics, dialogues and debate, allowing local communities to determine their own priorities. 8. The development and delineation of concrete examples and methods for transferring media knowledge of transparent and open source processes for people, communities and institutions involved in media education.

'''BAUDRILLARD'S WARNING '''

There's some interesting pointers in this article concerning the distinction between mono-cultures and high-definition cultures and the threats to the latter. Some of these concerns will hopefully be addressed by ASEF working groups getting the final composite report out.

[http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol3_2/smith.htm]

Annette

Workgroup 2 Creative Research, Iterative Design Cycles, Academic Research & Creative Communities

Moderator: Bronac Ferran (UK) Rapporteur: Annette Wolfsberger (Austria/The Netherlands) Members: Adam Somlai Fisher (Hungary) / Tapio Makëlä (Finland) / Anne Nigten (The Netherlands) / Debbie Esmans (Belgium) / Isaac Mao (China) / Hyunjin Shin (South Korea) / Judy Sibayan (The Philippines) / Awadhendra Sharan (India) / Kamal Sabran (Malaysia) / Andreea Grecu (Romania) Observers: Sarah Gardner (Australia) / Karmen Franinovic (Croatia)

Context How can artists and designers take on a different role? How can they become part of a multi-disciplinary team that works from the beginning with scientists, planners, policy, educators, citizens and specific content researchers? What support structures exist to facilitate this new way of working? Where are the models of good practice? How can these be best documented? Fast changes in information architectures and rapid innovation prototyping make it difficult to apply old methodologies which impacts on academia and other spaces where innovation was traditionally housed. The specific cycles of iteration used by designers and artists (brainstorms with very different people, concepts, prototypes, scenarios of prototypes with real users) have to be taken into account and combined with expertise and knowledge from technical specialists and content producers. Knowledge of the past is still useful and is drawn on intuitively by artists and designers.

Working Process The design process was decided upon collectively by the group. Points made by members of the working group in the questionnaires beforehand were used as the starting point for discussion. The following issues were identified as common or important:

Transdisciplinarity: What models of development exist both in education and in more informal settings that can best support contemporary processes of innovation?

Sustainability:

New kinds of research challenges:

The group arrived at a series of recommendations and potential actions which are summarized below. We have included also the arguments leading to the recommendations which can be further shortened for any published paper.

There has, despite previous effort such as the Helsinki agenda, been little political will or political conviction at the top of arts and cultural agencies to redistribute funding from more traditional forms to new and contemporary forms. There is now an urgent need to make stronger arguments that can (a) show how this failure to respond to movement within practice will be damaging in the long run to audiences and to the position of the funding agencies and (b) to show the benefits of the small investments that have happened as contributors to the broader creative economy (and other important social and environmental agendas).

Objective: A Common Platform could create a common language and help in many ways to show, demonstrate, argue, provide advocacy, brokerage, documentation of practice, leverage, create connections. It should be online and network based: While not duplicating existing tools and methods it would offer a space between different processes and offer the missing conceptual framework for new media practices & policies. If it existed it could act as a missing bridge, offering a space for creative research and lead to a broad(er) critical, more diverse, discourse. It should include the critical blogging sphere. What is needed is a supportive framework for global discourse and support (a ‘safe zone’) with constructive feedback mechanisms that allow for, include, enourage and embed emergent and new voices and initiatives.

This platform would be a good opportunity to create space for collaborative exchange ie bank of media knowledge which uses currency of exchange of good and interesting practice (similar to what Bricolabs has started to do regarding labs). This would further increase an awareness of how media arts organisations now work – within a mixed ecology.

It could also address the lack of discursive practice: there is a need for more extensive peer review systems. This lack makes it hard for practices outside traditional forms to be understood and evaluated effectively (see Sarai models for good examples of autonomous publishing). At the same time, the platform could act as a voice of media arts that communicates, translates and interprets within a broader cultural, social and scientific environment/discurse.

The group discussed issues of in- and exclusion and asked would it be possible to create a space of absolute openness, or if it would be more supportive of free expression if it was partly protected. For discussion.

2. Recommendation: demonstrate media culture's key role in addressing cultural diversity, innovation, social cohesion and environmental issues.

The group were strongly supportive of the role of new media in expressing cultural diversity and expression. New media practice is clearly in an advantageous position to mediate in this area as it is diverse in essence. Media arts practice and research (in both production and dissemination) exceeds boundaries between sectors, disciplines and political systems. Demonstrating this effect using the platform as advocacy above could help to provide arguments for support. Research and projects in culture, innovation, science and art that are transdisciplinary and transcultural need transdisciplinary and international means of funding.

Linked to all of this, in context of environmental crisis – there are also many examples of media culture's role in informing environmental and ecological contexts debates. More work at research level is essential. We suggest that notions of ecological sustainability which are linked to ethics could be transferred to an idea/concept of cultural sustainability (ie referring to by distributed means of working within media arts).

See things as cyclical - generally in arts these cycles are iterative – so steps may be short-lived but part of a long term emergence of innovative developments which require long term thinking and documentation over time of the results.

Critical example, Open Source project led by Government in Brazil – big impact but not long lasting – needs to be seen relative to other examples in other countries. These processes and projects are intrinsically of transnational and translocal importance.

3. Recommendation: enhanced flexibility in funding (for transdisciplinary research & development and to allow more mobility of artists and ideas)

Action: collect examples of good funding and support practice to inform advocacy document(s) and to publish to show how things can work. Make arguments to funders based on analysis and collective work – demonstrating the difference additional funding in the right way can make eg for collaborative research, practice based PhDs, etc. Build up concept of research residencies as way forward on a practical level to embed into existing residency and exchange programmes. Collect together research and media based PhDs to show value across different contexts.

There is a sense of urgency for collaborative projects, particularly in the area of environmental media practices as well as artistic open source and social software informed by local expertise and contexts. Currently, a clear lack of funds prevents projects that are not nationally based from becoming sustainable. Funding programs should be established both locally and through international foundations to support translocal initiatives.

The new schemes should allow for flexibility in funding. There is a need for short, medium- and long term transdisciplinary funding schemes taking into account the different cycles, duration and scope of projects; i.e. strategic, application based research, prototyping/implementation focus, the differences between project-based and (artistic) research processes; the nature of disciplines, sectors and teams involved; the mobility of artists, researchers and ideas, cross-disciplinary and internationally distributed work and collaborative social projects embedded into communities.

Example, One example is the Interact scheme in UK, placing artists in business contexts to develop joint R&D has been very effective – could be used as critical exemplar as documentation is underway. Other countries also have interesting problems and challenges with some good examples but there is insufficient documentation and evaluation.

Funding structures and conditions often imply the need for long-term projects to develop ‘something’. It is crucial for research evaluation to become much longer to provide evidence for sustainability in research structure/context. At the same time, for short-term projects (ie initial R&D phase) existing funding is too slow and rigid. Also, the understanding between sectors needs to increase, since methodologies used by artists (ie rapid proto-typing) and the value that artists can bring as researchers might not be recognized in ie the scientific arena.

Across and within countries, there often is very little dialogue and coherence and collaboration between different national policy strands (i.e. government information/technology and national commission for culture and arts not communicating to each other). This non-dialogue between European, governmental and non-governmental funding bodies and policy bodies is an important area to address.

Media culture has to understand it is not always understood.

But if there was more emphasis on openness and transparency, then the ground for understanding would be there. So if public money is used then it should be open/knowledge based and outputs and processes should be shared? This could become part of public policy, and increase media arts role in a broader cultural and social environment.

Sustainability arguments can also be leverage – eg funding results should be assessed, monitored and understood over a longer time period. Whilst media arts can act as a catalyst, as temporary window and be intervention-based – it can also, over time, have very good results. Thus there is a need to put long-term effort into evaluation even if the project or process is temporary.

Collaborative projects can take many forms and transcend art forms/disciplines as well as sectors. Further research should be done into the methodologies that can be applied to transdisciplinary projects to better understand the needs and requirements.

Open methodologies for example, Anne Nigten’s PhD research on defining artistic methodologies (process-patching), artistic techniques or methods also from other disciplines, using a defined methodology processes.

4. Recommendation: Stronger arguments for supporting research based media practice and its mobile, transnational and transdisciplinary nature

Action: Set up a pool of people (ie from this initiative and also others) who can develop specific methodologies and case studies to back up this call and ensure publication from this meeting underlines the transdisciplinary and transcultural nature of the practice, underlining mobility etc.

The interpenetration between media arts practice and media arts research (happening in academia) has been badly documented and poorly understood so more work needs to be done to help this to happen. The critical framework and advocacy may enable this to happen. It is very important to put more bridges in place between these fields to maximize possible outputs - create more effect.

Safeguarding and supporting the mobility of artists, researchers and ideas (as well as a safeguarding freedom of speech and a non-censory environment) is crucial to new media arts practice and research. While the media arts sector is hybrid, organizational transformation also takes place in the outside world (ie funding), but the practice changes much quicker than the policy response or the law. However these changes can have huge impacts on media arts.

Why? Mapping could lead to an acknowledgement and further understanding of diversity and increase dissemination. It can be used to support practice - for the community as well as basis for policy development, by observing trends and supporting strategy.

In the past, relatively small support for media arts organisations has lead to over-proportionate impact of media arts on the broader cultural field, R&D and innovation and the broader society. The lack of empirical data might partly be explained by a lack of tools and instruments (though these might be applied from other disciplines, ie social sciences) but has lead to a lack of advocacy for new media culture. This dynamic survey/documentation should acknowledge the (local) hybridity, complexity, topical diversity, areas of practice and communities that are structured around certain topics and changing vocabulary, and document transitions, maturation and heterogeneity of the sector.

While recognizing that the field is transformatory and dynamic, and mixed economy models should be tested and encouraged, it will always need specific (public) support. Continuous mapping could provide the necessary argumentation to underpin this claim.

Example, Virtueel Platform's project observatory for models of innovative practice in The Netherlands shows how to increase visibility and dissemination of good practice, and the development parameters for accountability (and success).

6. Recommendation: Develop a framework for continuous professional development & training

Action: Highlight responsibility of many different agencies – use platform to make case, find examples etc. and initiate meeting of possible actors and partners to investigate possibilities for international collaboration.

There should be structures in place to develop knowledge networking to create knowledge framework for policy makers, administrators / managers, cultural practitioners, knowledge exchange & skills sharing & networking & professional development. Should include all kinds of skills and professional development - peer to peer learning, opportunities for placements, internships, mentoring etc in areas such as legal, technical as well as artistic and critical discourse.