[ISEA2011] Panel Statement: Mar­tin Rieser – Loca­tive media and the pol­i­tics of space

Panel Statement
The paper  de­scribes two re­cent loca­tive walks con­structed in Athens using the Em­pe­dia Soft­ware suite de­vel­oped for iphone and An­droid smart­phones. The pro­jects were large scale col­lab­o­ra­tive work­shops in­volv­ing  a broad range of dis­ci­plines to tease out the na­ture of pol­i­tics in re­la­tion to city space in Athens. One work­shop: Codes of Dis­obe­di­ence and Dis­func­tion­al­ity used graf­fiti as a trig­ger for pub­lic in­ter­ac­tion and the de­con­struct­ing of the po­lit­i­cal codes be­hind pub­lic man­i­fes­ta­tions of re­sistence to the neo-lib­eral fi­nan­cial cri­sis and its sup­posed reme­dies. The sec­ond walk Urban Dig­i­tal Nar­ra­tives ad­dressed the issue of dis­place­ment in the newly gen­tri­fied Gazi area of the city and cre­ated a var­ied por­trait of an inner city area under great pres­sure from a chang­ing econ­omy and the pres­ence of a va­riet y of eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties. The au­thoer will ask how ef­fec­tive can loca­tive media be both a rep­re­sent­ing these is­sues and lay­ing them be­fore an in­ter­ested proac­tive au­di­ence.

Mar­tin Rieser‘s art prac­tice in in­ter­net art and in­ter­ac­tive nar­ra­tive in­stal­la­tions has been seen around the world in­clud­ing Milia in Cannes; Paris; The ICA Lon­don and in Ger­many, Mon­treal, Nagoya in Japan and Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. He as de­liv­ered pa­pers on in­ter­ac­tive nar­ra­tive and ex­hib­ited at many major con­fer­ences in the field in­clud­ing ISEA: Mon­treal 1995, Rot­ter­dam 1996, Chicago 1997, Nagoya 2002, Belfast 2009, Uni­ver­sity of Oslo 2004, Sig­graph, 2005, Re­fresh Banff Arts Cen­tre 2005, Dig­i­tal Match­mak­ers Trond­heim 2005 Plan ICA 2005, NAI Rot­ter­dam 2008, In­tel­li­gent En­vi­ron­ments Seat­tle 2008,Barcelona 2009, Lo­cunet Uni­ver­sity of Athens 2008, ISEA 2009 and at many other con­fer­ence venues across the UK and Eu­rope.  His in­ter­ac­tive in­stal­la­tions in­clude Un­der­stand­ing Echo shown in Japan 2002, Hosts Bath Abbey 2006 and Se­cret Door In­video Milan 2006, The Street RMIT Gallery Mel­bourne 2008. He is cur­rently de­vel­op­ing mo­bile art­works for Vi­enna (The Third Woman), and pub­lic in­stal­la­tions for the new DMC in Leices­ter (Se­cret Gar­den) . He has pub­lished nu­mer­ous es­says and books on dig­i­tal art in­clud­ing New Screen Media: Cin­ema/ Art/Nar­ra­tive (BFI/ZKM, 2002), which com­bines a DVD of cur­rent re­search and prac­tice in this area to­gether with crit­i­cal es­says. And has re­cently edited The Mo­bile Au­di­ence, a book on loca­tive tech­nol­ogy and art due out this year from Rodopi, also logged in a blog. He has also acted as con­sul­tant to bod­ies such as Cardiff Bay Arts Trust and the Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Gallery Lon­don, Arkive in Bris­tol, The Soros Media In­sti­tute in Prague and UIAH in Helsinki.

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