Panel Statement

Chair Per­son: Michel Dar­tel, Crit­i­cal Re­spon­dent: Va­lerie La­m­on­tagne

Pre­sen­ters: Kasia Molga, Julie Legault, Sey Min, Jelle Valk & Olav Huizer, E-Tex­tile Work­space, Boris De­backere, Piem Wirtz & Jan Misker

Every year, V2_ In­sti­tute for the Un­sta­ble Media in­vites a small group of up-and-com­ing artists to spend their sum­mer in the V2_Lab for an in­tense short-term res­i­dency. Dur­ing these so-called Sum­mer Ses­sions, the se­lected artists are given the op­por­tu­nity to de­velop an art­work in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with V2_’s ex­pert de­vel­op­ers, cu­ra­tor and pro­ject man­agers.  This year’s Sum­mer Ses­sions will wel­come an­other se­lec­tion of up-and-com­ing artists into the V2_Lab to work on pro­jects in the fields of aug­mented re­al­ity, wear­able tech­nol­ogy, and ecol­ogy – the three cen­tral re­search themes of the V2_Lab. By hold­ing these Sum­mer Ses­sions res­i­den­cies in par­al­lel, V2_ aims to pro­mote a cre­ative syn­ergy be­tween these up-and-com­ing artists.
In this spe­cial edi­tion of V2_’s Test_Lab pro­gram at ISEA2011, the out­come of the Sum­mer Ses­sions 2011 will be pre­sented. As it is cus­tom to V2_’s Test_Lab, the pro­jects will be demon­strated live and the au­di­ence will be in­vited to as­sess the art­works hands-on.

• Kasia Molga is a Lon­don based in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary artist and in­ter­ac­tion de­signer, who ex­plores no­tions of in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness and hy­per­linked world through the de­ploy­ment of so­cial media tech­nolo­gies. Al­though po­etic and vi­su­ally beau­ti­ful her work ques­tions the ef­fect of in­stant in­for­ma­tion flow and con­nec­tiv­ity on the per­cep­tion of self in the con­text of “Space­ship Earth.” She holds an MA in In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary De­sign from Cen­tral Saint Mar­tin Col­lege of Art and De­sign (Lon­don, UK) pre­vi­ously stud­ied Fine Arts (MFA) in Acad­emy of Fine Arts in Poz­nan (Poland).
• Julie Legault‘s re­search, con­cerned with un­ful­filled promises of the fu­ture, ad­dresses the in­evitable hy­bridi­s­a­tion of man and ma­chine. As an in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary de­signer, she ex­plores the pos­si­ble fu­tures of ac­ces­sories through tech­nol­ogy, func­tion, and fan­tasy. Her hope is to make /change the fu­ture, cre­at­ing wear­able won­ders.Grad­u­at­ing in 2011 with an MA in Gold­smithing, Sil­ver­smithing, Met­al­work & Jew­ellery from the Royal Col­lege of Art, Lon­don, Julie pre­vi­ously holds a de­gree in Dig­i­tal Tech­nolo­gies in De­sign Art Prac­tice from Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­sity in Mon­treal, Canada, her home­town.
• Sey Min is a multi-dis­ci­pli­nary in­ter­ac­tive de­signer, who’s in­ter­est is in deal­ing with live data sets in var­i­ous media for­mats. Through her pro­jects she re-imag­ine how hu­mans re­late to tech­nolo­gies, to so­ci­eties and cities, and to en­vi­ron­ments. She is the founder and or­ga­nizer of randomwalks.org, which is half profit/none-profit media art stu­dio in korea. Sey Min re­ceived a M.F.A. in the in­ter­ac­tive media from Pratt in­sti­tute. randomwalks.org
• Jelle Valk is a young de­signer with a back­ground in ty­pog­ra­phy, graf­fiti and graphic de­sign. Jelle re­cently grad­u­ated at the Min­erva Acad­emy in Gronin­gen after com­plet­ing an in­tern­ship at the Am­s­ter­dam-based graphic de­sign agency Total Iden­tity and going on an ex­change with Auck­land Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy’s Graphic De­sign and 3D An­i­ma­tion and Mod­el­ing pro­gram. To­gether with Olav Huizer and 3 oth­ers, Jelle founded the artist col­lec­tive WERC, which fo­cuses on new ap­proaches to apply de­sign in media through an­i­ma­tion, video, ty­pog­ra­phy, graphic de­sign, audio, sculp­ture and ar­chi­tec­ture.
• Olav Huizer is an in­no­v­a­tive young de­signer look­ing for new ways to ap­proach tech­nol­ogy using graphic de­sign and new media. Olav cur­rently stud­ies graphic de­sign at the Min­erva Acad­emy in Gronin­gen (NL) and re­cently did an ex­change at the TTVO de­gree pro­gram in media of Tam­pere Uni­ver­sity of ap­plied sci­ences (FI). To­gether with Jelle Valk and 3 oth­ers, Olav founded the artist col­lec­tive WERC, which fo­cuses on new ap­proaches to apply de­sign in media through an­i­ma­tion, video, ty­pog­ra­phy, graphic de­sign, audio, sculp­ture and ar­chi­tec­ture.
• E-Tex­tile Work­space is an in­for­mal set­ting for both crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion around and about wear­ables, as well as for hands-on work on in­di­vid­ual pro­jects. It aims to open a space where prac­tice is in­ter­twined with knowl­edge shar­ing, feed­back ex­change among the in­vited par­tic­i­pants – mem­bers of the wear­able com­mu­nity in The Nether­lands – and with crit­i­cal re­flec­tion on the state-of-the-art in wear­able tech­nol­ogy.
• Boris De­backere is man­ager of the V2_lab, media artist and teach­ing at Trans­me­dia, a post­grad­u­ate pro­gram in Arts + Media + De­sign in Brus­sel (B). As a media artist his main in­ter­est is the pos­si­ble in­te­gra­tion of dif­fer­ent ex­pres­sion forms, with an em­pha­sis on elec­tronic sound and image. Most re­cent work and re­search is con­cen­trated on trans­lat­ing and trans­form­ing the cin­ema con­cept into other forms like Live Cin­ema per­for­mances and au­dio­vi­sual in­stal­la­tions. His work in­cludes ‘vor­tices’ and ‘probe’ re­ac­tive in­stal­la­tions deal­ing with the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the viewer and the screen.
• Piem Wirtz is pro­ject­man­ager at V2_Lab. Her main in­ter­est is in wear­able tech­nol­ogy pro­jects, where she is not only in­volved from a man­age­ment per­spec­tive but also in the hands-on pro­duc­tion of art­works. Piem holds a Msc in In­dus­trial De­sign En­gi­neer­ing and is par­tic­i­pat­ing as a dancer in the con­tem­po­rary dance group Dat­tah. To­gether with Melissa Cole­man she ini­ti­ated the E-Tex­tile Work­space, a plat­form for dis­cus­sion about wear­able tech­nol­ogy and smart tex­tiles. Be­sides host­ing the monthly Work­spaces, Piem is coach­ing artists in V2_’s res­i­dency pro­gram and is su­per­vis­ing the team of hard­ware de­vel­op­ers.
• Jan Misker was ap­pointed pro­ject man­ager at V2_ in 2006. He is re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing pro­jects that have a strong tech­no­log­i­cal and/or sci­en­tific as­pect, for ex­am­ple in­volv­ing wear­able tech­nol­ogy or aug­mented re­al­ity. Fur­ther­more he is very in­ter­ested in all as­pects of con­tem­po­rary dance. Jan holds an MSc in Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence and En­gi­neer­ing.
• Michel F. van Dar­tel, Ph.D, is cu­ra­tor at V2_, the In­sti­tute for the Un­sta­ble Media, where he de­vel­oped the event se­ries Test_Lab, a plat­form to demon­strate, test, pre­sent, and/or dis­cuss con­tem­po­rary artis­tic re­search and de­vel­op­ment (aRt&D). Prior to his cur­rent ap­point­ment at V2_, he worked at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity as a re­searcher in the cog­ni­tive sci­ences. Michel holds an MSc. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and a Ph.D in Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence.
• Va­lerie La­m­on­tagne is a dig­i­tal media de­signer-artist, the­o­rist and cu­ra­tor re­search­ing techno-artis­tic frame­works that com­bine human/non­hu­man agen­cies. Look­ing at the rich prac­tice of per­for­mance art, so­cial in­ter­ven­tion and in­ter­ac­tive in­stal­la­tions, she is in­vested in de­vel­op­ing re­spon­sive ob­jects (specif­i­cally wear­ables) and in­ter­ac­tive media sce­nar­ios which in­ter­lope the pub­lic-at-large, the en­vi­ron­ment and mat­ter as “per­former”. She is the Founder and Di­rec­tor of 3lec­tro­mode, a de­sign stu­dio in­vested in de­vel­op­ing wear­ables that com­bine D-I-Y tech­nol­ogy with cur­rent fash­ion re­search. Her work has been show­cased in fes­ti­vals, gal­leries and mu­se­ums across Canada, the United States, Cen­tral and South Amer­ica and Eu­rope. She holds a BFA and MFA in vi­sual arts and is presently a PhD can­di­date at Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­sity in­ves­ti­gat­ing Per­for­ma­tiv­ity, Ma­te­ri­al­ity and Lab­o­ra­tory Prac­tices in Artis­tic Wear­ables, where she teaches in the De­part­ment of De­sign & Com­pu­ta­tion Arts. valerielamontagne.com  3lectromode.com