Panel Statement

Panel:  Interface Play: Media Environments for Ludic Cyborgs

The focus of this paper is the city as an as­sem­blage of in­fra­struc­tures, cul­tures, net­works, com­mu­ni­ties and peo­ple. Ar­chi­tec­ture not only re­lies on build­ing ma­te­ri­als, but also en­com­passes a vir­tual frame­work that has emerged over the last decades and be­come a fun­da­men­tal part of the urban in­ter­face. Artis­tic pro­jects in pub­lic space are be­com­ing a core vec­tor of urban in­no­va­tion, by ex­per­i­men­tally fo­ment­ing new ways of ab­strac­tion and using the city in un­usual ways to pro­duce an un­fore­seen in­ter­min­gling of real and vir­tual space. It seems that the city it­self is be­com­ing the en­vi­ron­ment of choice for media ac­tivists. How the city is being turned into a ludic in­ter­face, a play­ful en­vi­ron­ment and media dis­po­si­tion, is ob­serv­able in sev­eral artis­tic move­ments and pro­jects that trans­form it into a stage and place it in a per­for­ma­tive frame­work. This paper will draw upon the CODED CUL­TURES fes­ti­val and the LUDIC IN­TER­FACES pro­ject and pre­sent ex­am­ples of new artis­tic prac­tices and abil­ity pro­files that use the city as a lab­o­ra­tory, ex­hi­bi­tion space, com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form or hack-space. It will use them to ex­em­plify a deep and crit­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of what code and cul­ture can be and out­line a broad in­ter­face de­f­i­n­i­tion.

• Georg Russeg­ger is Sci­en­tific Man­ager of the re­search and de­vel­op­ment pro­ject “Ludic In­ter­faces” at the In­ter­face Cul­ture Lab, Uni­ver­sity of Art and De­sign Linz, Austria. To­gether with the as­so­ci­a­tion “5uper.net” he is artis­tic di­rec­tor of the CODED CUL­TURES fes­ti­val in Vi­enna. Georg Russeg­ger re­ceived a Ph.D. in me­dia- and com­mu­ni­ca­tion-the­ory and did a Post Doc. at the Grad­u­ate School for Film and New Media (Tokyo Na­tional Uni­ver­sity of the Arts). His last books are ti­tled “Coded Cul­tures” (Ed­i­tor)  “Smart­ject” (Au­thor) and fo­cused on cre­ative de­lin­eation-prac­tices in hu­man-me­di­ated processes of self-or­ga­ni­za­tion within com­plex media en­vi­ron­ments. As an artist he re­ceived a diploma in media arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Ap­plied Arts Vi­enna and works under the alias Grischinka Teufl. Since 1999 he is ac­tive in artis­tic and sci­en­tific fields based on re­search about new artis­tic prac­tices, me­dia-in­te­grated knowl­edge-cul­tures and their greater im­pact on pro­ject de­sign and in­di­vid­ual self-em­pow­er­ment. creativegames.org.uk/LUDICI/masters 5uper.net   codedcultures.net  datadandy.net

Full text (PDF) p. 2090-2093