Deep Learning: CAN to co-host Mapping LAB at Mapping Festival 2018

Visual audio, deviant electronics, deep learning: at the upcoming (14th!) edition of Geneva’s Mapping Festival (May 9 – 12), we are proud to co-host Mapping LAB – a one-day educational program of 13 workshops run by leading artists, designers, and researchers in our field. Join us!

Exploring “visual audio + deviant electronics” since 2005, Geneva’s Mapping Festival belongs amongst the premier digital art summits that has likely seen and done it all (the list of past participants does read like a media art who’s who). That’s why, for the upcoming 14th edition, festival directors Ana Ascencio and Justine Beaujouan are pulling out all the stops: new formula, new venue, new everything. From May 9th to May 12th, a total of fifty international luminaries – artists, designers, scientists, researchers, musicians – will take over the new urban campus of HEAD (Haute Ecole d’art et de design Genève) to stimulate eyes, ears, and minds. And stimulate they will: from the incisive topics to be discussed within the Forum Paradigm_Shift (ethno-futurism, the intelligence explosion, Internet materiality, #GLITCHFEMINISM, the future of money, body-machine relations, the utopia-dystopia divide) to the riveting roster of audiovisual performance artists participating in Mapping LIVE (including Plaid & Felix’s Machines, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, Moritz Simon Geist, Philipp Vermeulen) – the 2018 edition of Mapping indeed promises to be a big step up. To complement the agenda with a befitting educational track, CAN was invited to curate and produce Mapping LAB, a one-day workshop program informed by the latest in creative practice. On May 10th, join us and fifteen multidisciplinary practitioners from the ‘CAN universe’ for an intense twelve-hour session of learning, networking, and exchange!

Come learn (more) about machine learning, augmented reality, interface prototyping, data visualisation, application building, vector graphics scripting, counter-surveillance, live performance, synthesizer making, sensory hacking and more.

 

Mapping LAB tile view: participants will learn how to use Processing, ARKit, Unity, openFrameworks, TouchDesigner, Paper.js, AxiDraws, circuitry, electromagnetic field (EM) detectors, Modul8, madMapper, LEDs, generative adversarial networks (GAN), pix2pix, programmable polymers, or XCode

Anyone familiar with our initiatives will know that education is at the heart of what we do. Be it OFFF, Resonate, Circle of Light or ACT, our vision of a productive festival typically includes hoards of students hunched over a new software sketch or a prototype they just built. For Mapping LAB, we are excited to bring some of our favourite artists, designers, and researchers – many previously featured on CAN – to Geneva for an intense day of learning, experimenting, and sharing across discipline lines. Develop new skills with critical engineer Julian Oliver, machine learning authority Gene Kogan, paper electronics whizz Coralie Gourguechon, ‘oscilloscope whisperer’ Ted Davis (whose Processing library XYscope was last year’s big CAN hit), visual artist and design Dana Zelig, media artist Dries Depoorter (of recent Die with Me fame), NEEEU’s mobile AR enthusiasts Raphaël de Courville and Stef Tervelde, media artist and ‘sensory hacker’ Susannah Hertrich, cultural researcher Daniela Silvestrin, TouchDesigner Technical Director Markus Heckmann, editorial data visualisation expert Lisa Charlotte Rost (Bloomberg, NPR, Tagesspiegel), speculative design collective N O R M A L S, and original drawing machine connoisseur Jürg Lehni. However, participants will not only learn from our instructors, but also from each other: Mapping LAB will be a shared, communal experience that begins with coffee in the morning, continues over group lunches, and concludes with informal presentations of results over drinks at night (followed by an exclusive preview of MANU/FACTORY, an alchemical audiovisual performance by the Transforma collective). Rather than a mere sub-section of the Mapping program, Mapping LAB will be a hands-on ‘festival within the festival’. Join us!

Mapping LAB (May 10) workshop overview:
Machine Learning for ArtistsGene Kogan (US)
Network Counter-Surveillance Boot-CampJulian Oliver (NZ)
Rethinking UIs for a Post-Screen EraN O R M A L S (FR)
TouchDesigner & Life PerformanceMarkus Heckmann (CA/DE)
Visual Programming with Paper.jsJürg Lehni (CH)
Processing OscilloscopesTed Davis (US)
Data Visualisation for a Post-Truth WorldLisa Charlotte Rost (DE)
Programmable Matter & PhotoelasticityDana Zelig (IL)
Augmented Reality DIYRaphaël de Courville (FR) & Stef Tervelde (NL)
Draw (and Play) a SynthesizerCoralie Gourguechon (FR)
Browser History MatchmakingDries Depoorter (BE)
Mapping, Mixing, Modulating Light & VideoGael Abegg Gauthey (CH)
Hacking the Human SensoriumSusannah Hertrich (DE/CH) & Daniela Silvestrin (DE)

For detailed workshop descriptions and requirements see the Mapping LAB page.

→ Get your ticket here and register here

Paradigm _Shift Forum (TLBR): hear from philosopher Yuk Hui (on “Technodiversity”), artist Legacy Russell (on “Glitch Feminism”), artists Jürg Lehni and Susannah Hertrich (in conversation with artist Marco Donnarumma, educator Rosario Hurtado, and neuroscientist David Rudrauf), and others

Interested in Mapping LAB? Consider staying for the entire festival, as this year’s edition has so much to offer. There’s the Forum, where select experts tackle critical issues in digital art and culture. And then there’s Mapping LIVE, a dense after hour program of audiovisual performances, live music and DJ sets. Here are the highlights:

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Mapping FORUM (May 9)
Paradigm_Shift #2

Continuing the timely conversations of last year’s inaugural edition (that we were proud to participate in), Mapping’s Forum Paradigm_Shift returns with ruminations on “Humans + Machines by Design, not by Default.” Once again, curator Carmen Salas assembled an eclectic cast of voices to chime in: we’ll hear from philosopher and researcher Yuk Hui (on ethno-futurism, the intelligence explosion, and “Technodiversity”); artist and writer Legacy Russell (on Internet materiality and #GLITCHFEMINISM”), and curator and media researcher Rachel O’Dwyer (on cashless society, the future of money, and “what your money says about you”). In the panel “Beyond The Utopia-Dystopia Mindset” theorist and transmediale curator Daphne Dragona will discuss ‘realistic futures’ with critical engineer Julian Oliver and artist, designer, and IMPAKT festival instigator Tobias Revell, followed by HEAD’s Rosario Hurtado exploration of “Minds, Bodies, and the Machine” with artists Marco Donnarumma, Jürg Lehni, Susanna Hertrich, and neuroscientist David Rudrauf.

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Mapping LIVE (May 11 – 12)
Electric Light Orchestras

While traditionally strong, this year’s selection of audiovisual performances, live music, and DJ sets is easily worth festival admission alone. After Wednesday’s opening spectacle by Plaid & Felix’s Machines and Thursday’s exclusive MANU/FACTORY preview by Transforma (that will premiere at The Barbican in September 2018), the audiovisual intensity will peak on Friday and Saturday night. We particularly look forward to Antoine Schmitt’s Chronostasis illuminating the urban canvas around the campus, Moritz Simon Geist playing his sonic robot sculpture Tripods One, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand’s Force Field – a 2017 CAN favourite – levitating water droplets to musical compositions by Paul Prudence, David Rudauf’s VR experience Idioritaime {Your Skin Is My Sky}, Derek Holzer orchestrating his analog Vector Synthesis, Michela Pelusio’s undulating SpaceTime Helix, and Philip Vermeulen’s Physical Rhythm Machine / Boem BOem generating thundering (danceable) beats as hacked tennis ball machines fire away at speeds of 150+ km/h.

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Finally: once again, we’re happy to provide festival attendees with ‘further reading’: HOLO 2, our periodical on ‘emerging trajectories in art, science, and technology’ will be available throughout the festival. If you haven’t already, pick yourself up a copy near the Mapping registration desk. See you in Geneva!

Mapping Festival 2018 | Mapping LAB 2018 | Tickets

Mapping LIVE (top to bottom): Plaid & Felix’s (Rube Goldberg-ian) Machines, Transforma’s MANU/FACTORY performance, Philip Vermeulen’s Physical Rhythm Machine / Boem BOem, Moritz Simon Geist’s sonic robot sculpture Tripods One, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand’s Force Field

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