Three Wednesdays for the Digital Revolution | Α' Cycle | Talks in the context of the exhibition Digital Revolution

The Onassis Stegi organizes three talks in the context of the exhibition “Digital Revolution”, critically examining technological evolution and the way it has affected our lives.

Three speakers from different disciplines and with different experiences share their knowledge of the emancipatory nature of technology, despite its dominating presence in our lives. They also talk about the importance of securing an open and free participation in technological development, whether these are technologies of surveillance, or the buildings that surround us, or objects that we use.

Program

Wednesday 2 December 2015 | 19:00-21:00

“Subversive media” | James Bridle

Technology cuts both ways. The same systems which are used to obscure and control can also be deployed by artists, activists, and journalists to reveal and democratise. The same networks which surveil and process can also be detourned for sousveillance and derailment.

James Bridle will discuss such technologies, including freedom of information and open source intelligence, in the context of his own work, and the work of others.

Wednesday 9 December 2015 | 19:00-21:00

“Radical Frameworks” | Theodore Spyropoulos

Architecture today must participate and engage with the information-rich environments that are shaping our lives by constructing behavioral frameworks that will allow for change, embracing an adaptive and participatory model of living. Models of the past cannot operate, as blueprints for our future, when science fiction has become fact; architecture today has to move beyond representation and beyond the fixed and finite tendencies that declare what architecture should be and work towards what it could be.

The lecture will discuss the role of design research within experimental practice examining design frameworks that enable open and evolving interactions. The move examines an architecture that is emotive, life-like and self-structured. Examples of this research developed by the architecture and design studio Minimaforms and the AADRL will serve to express proto-typical examples of this approach.

Conceiving architecture as an ecology of interacting systems moves the fixed and finite tendencies of the past towards spatial environments that are adaptive, emotive and behavioral. Environments within this framework are attempts to construct interaction scenarios that enable agency, curiosity and play, forging intimate exchanges that are participatory, emotive and evolving over time.

Enabled through programmable matter, actuated soft robotics and embedded sensing technologies, behavioral complexity offers new terms of reference for architecture. This architecture will engage us, challenge us and enable new species and taxonomies of proto human-machine ecologies.

Wednesday 16 December 2015 | 19:00-21:00

“The Makers' Revolution: A Movement or an Industry?” | Irini Papadimitriou

This presentation will explore the background, growth of maker culture and importance of making and technology; it will show how making has made a new turn with technology, and a powerful way for problem-solving through collaboration, sharing and community.

In particular it will focus on makerspaces in the UK as well as organizations supporting such work (ore why they should do) presenting examples of what makers do, innovative work and how makers and the industry come together.

James Bridle

James Bridle is a British artist and writer based in Athens, Greece. His artworks and installations have been exhibited in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia, and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands visitors online. He has been commissioned by organisations including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Barbican, Artangel, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and been honoured by Ars Electronica, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and the Design Museum, London.

His writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Frieze, Wired, Domus, Cabinet, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, and many others, in print and online, and he has written a regular column for the Observer.

His formulation of the New Aesthetic research project has spurred debate and creative work across multiple disciplines, and continues to inspire critical and artistic responses. He lectures regularly on radio, at conferences, universities, and other events, including SXSW, Lift, the Global Art Forum, Re:Publica and TED.

He was been a resident at Lighthouse, Brighton, the White Building, London, and Eyebeam, New York, and an Adjunct Professor on the Interactive Telecommunications Programme at New York University.

Theodore Spyropoulos

Theodore Spyropoulos is an architect and educator. He is the Director of the Architectural Association’s world renowned Design Research Lab (AADRL) in London. He has been a visiting Research Fellow at M.I.T.’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and co-founded the New Media and Information Research initiative at the AA. He has taught in the graduate school of UPENN, Royal College of Art Innovation Design Engineering Department and the University of Innsbruck.

In 2002 he founded the experimental architecture and design practice Minimaforms with his brother Stephen Spyropoulos. The work of Minimaforms has been exhibited and published internationally. The work is in the permanent collections of the FRAC Centre, the Signum Foundation and the Archigram Archive, and has been recently exhibited at MOMA (NYC), Barbican Centre, Detroit Institute of Arts and the ICA (London).

Recent projects include a proposal for two thematic pier landmarks and the illumination concept for a Renzo Piano’s master planned 760-acre National Park in Athens, a large-scale land art intervention in Norway, and a proposal for self-organizing urbanism named Emotive City. Previously Theodore has worked as a project architect for the offices of Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid. In 2013 the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture awarded him The ACADIA award of excellence for his educational work directing the AADRL. His published books include Adaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living and Enabling.

Irini Papadimitriou

Irini Papadimitriou is Digital Programs Manager at the V&A, mainly responsible for activities such as the annual Digital Design Weekend: a big-scale event of interactive installations, labs and talks, showing digital art and design projects and offering audiences the opportunity to meet the artists and explore processes. (themes have included Making and Technology, Gesture & Communication, Art, Design, Science Collaborations, Digital Value and Civic Design); Digital Futures: a meetup and open platform for displaying and discussing work by researchers, artists, designers, companies and other professionals working with art, technology, design, science and beyond.  It is also  networking event, bringing together people from different backgrounds and disciplines with a view to generating  future collaborations; and Digital Design Drop-in, a show & tell and pop up studio event presenting projects on the intersections of art, design, craft, technology and science.

Irini is also Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans, an arts organization presenting innovative work and supporting artists working with technology, where she is curating the exhibition program and an annual digital performance festival.

She is also one of the organizers for London’s Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire, a day of making, learning, inventing and tinkering and the recent Maker Assembly event.

Twitter: @irini_mirena