[ISEA2011] Workshop: Attila Nemes & Catherine Lenoble – Labster: Text Collecting Workshop

Workshop Statement

Labster project aims at creating an online, interactive map, in order to offer personal narratives related to the worldwide Art and Technology DIY culture. In the first phase of the project, narrative texts are collected without a standard data input process to catch site of a wide range of terms, notions, definitions of lab’s practices, ecosystems and lab-life. Initiated by Attila Nemes (researcher and curator, Budapest HU) & Catherine Lenoble (cultural producer and writer, Nantes FR), Labster project proposes an ethnographic approach. Through holding workshops and helping people to write their stories, we hope that these personal narratives could build a valuable knowledge database. The next step is to establish how the information contained in this map can be studied and best utilized.In our practice based research we are interested in non-formal communication and non official stories, accordingly:
We wish to avoid official communication material; instead we wish to collect written personal impressions and narratives about labs. Through these stories we can understand better what is going on in the labs as well as the complexity of the labs. We hope to reveal through individual approach the working process within or next to a lab. We want to apply the collected texts on a hypertext map for an ongoing collection of researchable manuscripts, a novel. We wish to link these texts in time and space, by topics and make them researchable by tags. We intend to have multiple entries (ways to tell stories through web2 solutions). Finally, but not least, we plan to hold workshops where people can write and tell us their stories.

  • Attila Nemes: linkedin.com/in/attilanemes
  • Catherine Lenoble works since 2006 as a project coordinator in PiNG, resource-organization in digital creation & fabrication, based in Nantes, France. In charge of ‘territories & networks’ development through digital culture, she has piloted LABtoLAB 2009-11 (nomadic project exploring the role of the lab in offering spaces for collaborative learning and knowledge sharing) and was in charge of the editorial coordination Media Labs in Europe : Mapping places and networks (bilingual review published in march 2011 by MCD). By starting a new collaboration with Attila Nemes, she keeps on studying media labs with narrative approach. As an author, she has published an experimental novel petitBain (éditions à la criée, 2010) with free access to texts through an on-line version. She regularly contributes to on and off-line editorial adventures. pingbase.net