Eyebeam & Medellin chat

Paul Amitai, senior curator @ Eyebeam
Alejo, Colombia from Switzerland
Stephanie ad: learning and engagement @eyebeam
Juliana, director of museum. Medellin Colombia. http://www.elmamm.org/sitio/
Amanda executive director @ Eyebeam
Roddy associate director:creative residencies @ Eyebeam

Brussels
Femke (Constant, Brussels http://www.constantvzw.org)
Attila Nemes Kitchen Budapest, Fictionlab http://fictionlab.hu/
Wendy  (Constant, Brussels http://www.constantvzw.org)
Jara Rocha (mediator Medialab Prado)
Catherine Lenoble, Irene Vicente & Olivier Heinry (Ping Nantes http://www.pingbase.net)


Q: How useful has lab2lab been?

This was the last item we talked on during the radio show: enable us to take distance (also from your own organization) by going abroad.
taking time to talk and think

In the first meeting we were very focused on ourselves and on how we work, on how we learn and how we teach (the programme funding us is called lifelong learning)
In the second meeting '(madrid) we were very open to others - meeting the medialabs from latin america, and the other madrid organisations such as tabacalera & matadero
The third meeting - this one in brussels - goes a step further.
Marcos: helps imagining new exchange projects
thinking on same things but dealing with a different context (yes each lab is unique, but there are many things that can be thought in common)
ex: session around ACTA

Cath: since it's a long term project (2 years), it makes a difference so that we learn to know each other better, we think and work therefore more efficiently, implement ideas that started at the very beginning of the grant.

Attila Nemes: There were some mutiplicatory outcomes like Fictionlab and Labster research http://fictionlab.hu/ and several cooperations, new project ideas, etc. We just put together a nice network for http://www.furtherfield.org/zerodollarlaptop/ project by l2l participants.

There are a few easy key ingredients to these meetings: a nice time, space, really meeting, taking time to talk & exchange
Because this is the third meeting, we can already go further, deepen topics (so the continuity of the group is also a good thing)

It seems that it was necessary to go through a process of definition and introspection (What is a medialab? What is the kind of medialab we want to be? How do all orgs differ?) before we could start to develop new projects together, help each other with specific questions and projects, work on issues more intensely.

Yolanda (UseLab, University of Seville. Spain): We participated in Madrid´s labtolab session (you probably met Inés). We´re preparing a temporal medialab at Seville for this 2011. We´d like to invite you all to participate in it. We don´t know if include in the activities a "labtolab" or call it in different way. The fact is that we´d like to continue this contact between media-labs and similar initiatives. Is september a good month in your schedules? We´d like to ask for topics you´re interested in. This labtolab session has served to meet and share experiences that would fit in new models for labs for our local context.


Q: Should you avoid repetition? 
Perhaps you should repeat some features which are good, the rest depends much more on the people and the context, still some ingredient must be kept, let's call them basics, time, space, food, being at ease.

It is about dedicating a certain amount of time to rethink, re-evaluate, recontextualize what we are doing and getting inspired by the others' way of doing.
Also a good moment to think about issues that you wouldn't run into in your daily job, but that affect it in different ways (ways you would't imagine before: ie: acta agreement)

Q: How did it all start?
the Latin American labs met during interactivos'10 (that was happening at the same time as the second LabtoLab meeting)  http://medialab-prado.es/article/interactivos10 -> then they decided to meet.
the result of this is labsurlab: https://n-1.cc/pg/groups/22816/lsl--lab_sur_lab/

It's been also very intersting to notice that most Latin-american concerns are shared by such places as Ker-Thiossane, Dakar and Yeta, Bamako. Would be nice to have some of them come too, but culture funding from west-african states is hard to find. It comes mostly from the EU and/or the former colonial country.

The lab2lab meeting in Madrid was an occasion to invite a wider network of participants.
at this meeting in brussels, also olga from furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/ came over in brussels, as well as a bunch of people belonging to the Constant constellation.
Meaning to say: the L2L network is not restricted to the applicants but also open for external organizations and people.

Some issues related to ACTA were discussed in the last days with different outcomes - repetition was very useful here too.

Q: Did you ask for funding to organize labsurlab?

Q: How did you design the list of participants for LabSurLab? did you take into account different models -ways of financing, types of users, geographical contexts...-?
Aniara and Alejo have been helping in choosing the participants, and we, locally, have identified important people/artists/groups that have been doing a very interesting and important work with local communities. It's very important in this context (South America) that the meeting work as a platform for the exchange with those groups that already have projects running here.

Q: Will the LabSurLab meetings be open for Medellin's more 'general' public?
Sure. Participants will be limited, but we can say they will be open to attend, there's interest from a local tv to put at least one lab all the time on their live schedule. lsl will happen not just the space of the museum, but also in a university where they already have undergo 'openlab' initiatives, lsl is a shared event so the science museum has offered the space for workshops with the community that lives nearby, the other museum of the city has a community radio project that will be also part of lsl.. we will be using the public transport to link each of this spaces so theres a chance to develop things in the public space as we go..
We want to make it a city meeting (kind of)... so everyone can learn, and share and discuss.

Q: How does labsurlab work across languages?
Initially we see it as an spanish based meeting, but among us theres people with good french level and if theres a need to get professional translator, then we will have to look for one.. but i doubt it. We will have friends from Brazil so we will mostly speak in a way that takes acount that.

Q: Do you help financing people's travel and accommodation costs?

We're trying to do our best in the fund raising. We need help from the different labs, specially those who can find some resources from their goverments... but we'll definitely cover acommodation, local transportation and alimentation... the most expensive are the air tickets, but again, we're doing our best.

For instance, Nantes has applied for a plane ticket through the Cultures France program funded by French foreign affairs to send someone to Medellin.

External funding is always welcome... 

Q: How many people are you thinking to be able to help financing for attending LabSurLab?


Q: How does the geographical context of the meeting (Medellín this time) affect the program, the items in the agenda? 
 
el MAMM will host a labtolab sequel we call labSurlab, not just cause it takes place in the hemispheric south, but cause is a lab on top of a  lab :) (network labs?). A meeting that can serve the purpose of helping us define some local strategies to not just follow previous lines of social and cultural outreach but as a moment/event/lightung :S where to share working methodologies. Medellin undergoes a deep transformation (similar to any other city trying to catch up on this globalized economical system). It is not a city poor in technical resources and that's personally one of the main reasons why i see fundamental to have a go and exchange with others, queues  from "el  patio maravillas" to the hackersapce in Nantes or the  Sugarlabs  implementations in Peru to the "future of the lab" in europe  can help us  re-think and re-shape what is currently being built in Colombia.

The city government has understood the importance of culture and education in the city and have also invested heavily in technology but apropiation as such has been a difficult road. Several initiatives are however very strong and important in Medellin that are working on community art projects with the use of old and new technologies .... HiperBarrio (golden nica for online communities some years ago), un/loquer (local hackerspace), hypertropico ... and what we have done at least since the Museum is to integrate these experiences to other experiences of the city and the country. 

Q: Where next after medellín?

also L2L meeting in nantes 8-10 june 2011 could be an opportunity to keep on collaborating by having some of you with us or through stream session
Maybe Seville in September? Also Gimeraes (Portugal) is interested.
For sure!

All the above questions like quite well to what we see from Colombia in regards to Eyebeam being only 5hours30min direct flight. But hey, i'm personally against too much travelling.

Q: Face-to-face meetings vs. online communication tools

Im more for the "networked labs" and 2 meeting in the year, one of them a sort of festival. the other one dedicated to developing an updated tactic (for the sake of the methodology of having few lines of research and interest as close as they could be)

Maybe Seville? Also Gimeraes (Portugal) is interested

A good attemp to avoid physical travelling in an interntional meeting was the Electrosmog festival: http://www.electrosmogfestival.net/
 (it didn't work so well. I find physical meetings crutial, but maybe it's to attend 
)Q: Do you feel ElectroSmog was successful in creating meaningful discussion for your organization?

!! great question, they say they were not succesful, f2f is not replaceable by skypes or etherpads :). Im a believer of streams and IRC so, with a bit more of research that could be improved in ways that a new attempt to that question of a networked festival/conference could do better..I couldn't really follow electrosmog, being myself a good reader or Eric's texts and ideas, i felt it was a bit exclusive. Perhaps im to sensitive, but the use of the word International festival do requires integration of more voices and more places that the same old usual suspects.Agree!<-who are you? :) Paul at Eyebeam (Sorry)hehe no worries just joking, never used this before, is fun (the words in/between!)lol

I think part of my interest in working with LABtoLAB is also about how we might bring in some other voices, expand on what is already going on, but also keep it relatively intimate. 

Yes, I think part of it was a logistic/technical issue.
Some of it due to us at Eyebeam being off the time schedule (as we see is tricky here as well ;)
But interesting experiment. Useful precedent for us here as well.

it's debatable wheter it generated meaningful results of not in terms of content, but it was an interesting initiative regarding non face-to-face communications (technically). it was the first time that they organized something like that and I'm sure it can get better. and no, it didn't leave much marks in our organization

It was an interesting exercise in exploring possibilities, but did not lead to new additional exchange/partnership; nor was the online presence especially meaningful in adding to onsite projects at Eyebeam.

In some ways the Electrosmog was most exciting in our engaging our student residents in the conversations and collaborations in the lead up to it, rather than the event itself.

To jump in - From Eyebeam's end, working with Electrosmog worked well with our project that we did in collab with Berlin, Liverpool, and the student residents at Eyebeam. R & A agreeing from the other side of NYC ;)

Q: Have you thought about tools/ways of staying in touch and continue working in between meetings?

From our point of view, this must be one of the objectives, it's very important for the meetings to have feedback before and after so each meeting gets more interesting

[we have also identified exactly this issue as a barrier to sustainability]
meetings work very well, but in the distance is really difficult. One way that has been experienced between west-africa and Nantes, is to start by face to face meetings in Africa, then keeping the relationship through AV streaming and/or bigbluebutton meetings.

(but you are well aware some people in colombia follow well what you have done there in Africa, is a lack of bridges to people in other timezones so they can chime in and put the content to keep the project going when one partie goes into a new direction.. difficult to explain, hope it makes some sense), oke i got some pasta in here to help me out: ( "it seems like there  could have been stronger curatorial and strategic exchanges that could  have made these collaborations even more productive and possibly more  sustainable in the longer term" -> this comes from paul at eyebeam). You're right, it all started from another network namely art factories/*pixel* festivals, and I got hired right in the middle of the ford ;-) but we all learn from our failures

Maybe a good way of keeping it hot (and taking into account that one of the goals is sharing and exchanging infrastructures, people, methodologies etc.) would be to design a network for staff´s exchange -like labbers' residencies for example-.

At Eyebeam we have also identified this as a goal; our experience however, has been that exchange happens for specific projects and it is difficult to sustain exchange over the longer term. We had that goal with FACT exchange/ with MediaLabPrado ?Interactivos? collab. But have not realised ongoing exchange.
It's true... maybe it's easier when you have an specific project you start working together... if not, it's not that easy to keep exchanging.
I think that is one of the things we've identified, so we've been discussing ways we might facilitate. I think Paul will jump in from the other side of NYC...

The trouble with working from different countries/continents seems that keeping continuity between meetings is not evident. Especially when physical meetings are intense and productive, it is hard to accept that in-between not much might happen (or only between certain labs/partners). How to avoid that only certain people feel or take responsible for the overall project?

Notes from Eyebeam

Eyebeam has been involved in some smaller/shorter term collaborations  with a number of different media labs or media art organizations in the  past. It has taken the form of an exhibition, public program, or an  informal residency exchange. But in retrospect, it seems like there  could have been stronger curatorial and strategic exchanges that could  have made these collaborations even more productive and possibly more  sustainable in the longer term.

It's also apparent that across institutions, we often have a lot of  shared research interests (environmental sustainability, urban research,  open culture, art + social change) and similar strategies for  engagement (workshops, master classes, participatory practices), but we  could be doing more on a peer to peer level to share research, and  basically to operate more fluidly as cultural  workers/organizers/producers, working in ways that more closely reflect  the kinds of open models of cultural production utilized by the artists,  designers, and technologists that we support through our residency and  fellowship programs.

In July 2009, Eyebeam ran two programs used as reference here – a Curatorial Masterclass on curating and open source led by Sarah Cook from CRUMB (http://eyebeam.org/events/summer-school-curatorial-masterclass), and the College of Tactical Culture,  a think tank on creative activism led by Stephen Duncombe and Eyebeam  fellow Steve Lambert (http://eyebeam.org/events/college-of-tactical-culture). They both involved peer to peer exchange on  specific themes or topics. Knowledgeable practitioners from a variety of  fields were brought together to discuss how they work, share skills,  present successes and failures, give feedback, and possibly collaborate  on future projects.

For reference, video from Curatorial Masterclass public presentations available here:
http://eyebeam.org/search/node/curatorial%20masterclass%20video

Based on initial conversations with different labs, some possible areas of discussion might be:
1. Making the lab public – methods for exhibiting/presenting  research; models for engagement, participation, collaboration with  communities
2. Residency exchanges
3. Documenting and/or publishing institutional research and output
4. Archiving the creative research of residents and fellows
5. Funding models

Understanding that a lot of this territory has been explored through  LABtoLAB and The Future of the Lab, the question would be, where do the  participating labs want to go from here? What's useful, interesting,  relevant to each other's practice? How might we build on what's already  been learned, processed, and implemented? How might we bring in some  other perspectives to enhance the work that's already been done? At the  same time, how do we keep it fairly intimate and manageable?

Some additional questions:

What would the structure of an expanded network be? [recognising also that there is a 20 year history of many different "networks", so how to build on this history, learn from it, contribute to it?]  How would ideas be exchanged? Who sets agenda? Who will lead this network? What does leadership look like? How is network history honored and maintained?

There are possibly some informal modes for connecting the network:
- Monthly thematic discussions
- Share open calls across network: This would be a way of fostering ongoing people connections
- Be more aware of what artists have traveled across our various labs, they are the best current link across the labs
- Could we sponsor a pool of our rss feeds for our artists to see
(this could be a listing of opportunities available at the different labs across the network -- residency calls, etc.)

There are possibly some formal modes for connecting the network:
- Apply for funding to:
    - support an Eyebeam fellowship where working in our lab + another is part of the program
     - Study trips to spend a couple weeks at another lab. would include staff and fellows
    - Have a pool of money to support project exchanges, which would also support staff spending extended periods with other labs
    
    Recognise that one of the key assets we have are artists and researchers who already spend time traveling to various other labs in our loose and informal network: how do we capitalise on this knowledge network?
    
    We meet at conferences and festivals, but rarely have opportunities to spend research time with one another.

Q to Eyebeam: Have you thought of taking advantage of your context (geographically) to formalize a network in north america (including canada)?

We actually see that as a problem for us. In the USA there are few "lab" models: either they are academic labs; though there is a strong emerging "hackerspace" network. GAFFTA (http://www.gaffta.org/in SF is a recent new addition. We have begun conversations with SAT http://sat.qc.ca/ in Montreal, but not formalised anything. 

We're trying to find the reference above to the fact that we are on same time zone as Columbia. And actually closer than the US West Coast. I think its an interesting proposition to explore pan american networking better.

We don't have the advantage of close distances, a longer history of multiple mediaLabs (and Networks) and inter-country [in the case of Europe - EU] funding models that Europeans enjoy [we don't mean that pejoratively or with jealousy, just as a matter of fact], well, not sure it's gonna last long!

(there's really a direct connection (colombia-northamerica i,e.) and we know how close our langs are, cultural crossing there is sort of a responsibility... on another crossing, i've been since late nineties dreaming of a link with the baltic, our friends in Latvia have done great work, but yes, Miami is a 3.30min direct flight from medellin.)


I guess is not only about geographical proximity but also about cultural connections. making all sorts of borders diffuse. that's the way to go!

indeed


Just imagine an international labtolab of labtolabs. a world meeting. huge!
metalabtolab?
:)
:)


names dont matter, what is great is to have an open genealogy for this project, 
by the way, there is another L2L project connecting labs betwwen eu & asia called 
http://lab2lab.natural-fiber.com
well always better to talk about it...