Dr

EU FP7 FET-Art Project / ICT & Art Connect: Connecting Communities –

Final Outcomes

Dr Camille Baker,Brunel University

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It aimed to:

• bring artists and technologists to work together;

• foster development of new ideas and projects;

• foster new understandings, innovations and directions for the future.

About ICT & Art Connect

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Sigma Orionis (Sophia Antipolis, France)

Brunel University (London)

Waag Society (Amsterdam)

Stromatolite (London)

Black Cube Collective (Edinburgh)

ICT & Art Connect- who are we?

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FET-Art project FP7 funded support action project, addressing the FET (Future

Emerging Technologies) objective

• Aims were to connect the European ICT and Art communities, and foster productive dialogue and collaborative work between them, in order to identify new research avenues, associated challenges, and the potential impact of ICT and Art collaboration on science, technology, art, education and society in general.

How did this evolve?

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Where did ICT & Art Connect originate?

Brussels 2012

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Workshop, conference and exhibition on the subject of Art & ICT

Outcome: there is a need for better facilitation of art & technology collaborations and synergies across Europe.

How it all began- Brussels April 2012

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Where did ICT & Art Connect originate?

Brussels 2012The 2012 event clearly confirmed that a great potential exists in fostering dialogue between ICT and Art practitioners, and now is the time to support deeper interactions and the emergence of novel projects, and to identify emerging areas for the EU’s H2020 in the ICT domain and beyond.

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Key recommendations & questions from the ICT&Art Connect 2012 event report:

“We need to study what problems art and ICT can solve together. What are the elements that work

across both artistic and computational forms? Are there formulae (ie the golden mean, the three act

structure, the Navier Stokes equations) that can be jointly applied? To what degree can craft wisdom be

mathematised; what are the possibilities and limits of computational creativity? Can we establish neural-

based computational models and multimodal automated measures of aesthetic experience? Does there

first have to be a convergence process between art, ICT, brain science and psychology, whereby

each discipline better understands the process and language of the other? What are the

conditions of genuine cross-fertilisation between Art and ICT both in the academic and the commercial

environments? Do we need to understand better the intradisciplinary benefits of art and ICT

collaborations, before going on to understand the inter- and transdisciplinary ones? What are the

policy implications around artistic/software IP on mass media platforms whose users often employ

mash-ups, samples, hacks etc. (i.e. creative commons, antitrust actions, copyright law)? How can we

create coherent policy that both generates innovation and protects rights holders? The element of the

aesthetic in the ICT innovation

process may also need more study.”

What issues were revealed?

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Connecting ICT & Art Communities

• Online Community ict-art-connect.eu• Consultation and Matchmaking Events• Co-Creation Residencies

Response: FET-Art/ICT & Art Connect

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FET-Art approach

Focus on the concerns of artists and technologies, such as addressing:

• perceptual, disciplinary, ‘culture’ or ‘language’ differences between each discipline;

• a poor understanding of how the other discipline works and thinks;

• grievances regarding past interactions in collaborative projects in order to shape new processes and techniques to feed back to funders(EU), in order that they fund better collaborations for better outcomes.

• start new initiatives to nurture new, healthier interactions and collaborations.

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• Art & Tech Social, Edinburgh, Sept 18, 2013

Promotional/Starting Activities (BCC)

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• ICT & Art Connect 2013, Brussels, Nov 9-11, 2013

Promotional/Starting Activities (EC, ArtShare, Waag)

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• European Parliament, Brussels, Nov 11, 2013

Promotional/Starting Activities (EC, ArtShare, Waag

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Promotional/Starting Activities (Brunel)

ICT & Art Connect Stand, ICT 2013, Vilnius

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Promotional/Starting Activities (BCC)

Art & ICT Briefing, Scottish Parliament, EdinburghNovember 28, 2013

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Economies of Art & Technology CollaborationAmsterdamMarch 28 & 29, 2014

Promotional/Starting Activities(Waag Society)

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Media Buzz

Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the EC, mentioned ICT & Art Connect as one of the "great ideas" she witnessed at ICT 2013 for the EU's ICT research and innovation programme – Horizon 2020 http://t.co/KjZUTmxfnb

Robert Madelin, Director General  of the EC called for” artists and technologists to help us make sense of/own our future”, as a result of seeing ICT & Art Connect presentations.

Brussels event participants’ showcase at EC Parliament. Imperica’s article: http://www.imperica.com/en/features/european-futures-connecting-art-and-technology  

Award for stand with most buzz at EU’s own event ICT 2013 in Vilnius, November 6-8, 2013

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Magazine Articles

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Website, documentation and online communityEach partner was actively promoting the community, inviting their own networks in Europe and worldwide to register on the website and on the social networks; the FET-ART/ICT & Art Connect social media activity includes:

Facebook – with over 729 followers, and 71 friends. The project page had, on average, 201 people actively talking about the posts by the project partners, with a total reach. At one point the number of people who saw our page has been 2,731+ people.

Twitter - with 544 followers, and during the project events the Twitter identity has achieved up to 9 followers a day and has had 664 tweets in total for the project duration (http://twittercounter.com/ICTArt) as of June 29th, 2014.

LinkedIn –with 134 active members.

Outreach/ Online community

Final Review Meeting| July 2014 | BrusselsC Baker/Y Matskevich | Brunel University

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What happened at our events?

• Presentations by experts on collaboration methods;

• Consultation with artists & technologists on past experiences on collaboration and how to make it more effective;

Matchmaking activities to start new collaborations.

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• ICT & Art ConnectHackathon October 28 &29, 2013NEM Summit Nantes, France

Hackathon Matchmaking (Stromatolite)

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• ICT & Art Connect London West January 18 & 19th, 2014Watermans Art Centre

Consultation and Matchmaking (Brunel)

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• ICT & Art ConnectEdinburgh College of ArtJanuary, 24th & 25th, 2014

Consultation and Matchmaking (BCC)

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Consultation & Engagement (Waag Society)

ICT & Art Connect: “Public Engagement in Science through Art”Amsterdam, January 31, 2014

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ICT & Art Connect Barcelona, Feb 20/21, 2014

Consultation and Matchmaking (Sigma Orionis)

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ICT & Art Connect London East: Ravernbourne, White Building & BookclubFebruary 22 & 23rd, 2014

Consultation and Matchmaking (Brunel)

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Create accessible opportunities for artists.

Art organisations and artists should collaborate with scientists and technologists for funding, involving artists from the start, for the whole journey and a deeper collaboration. This should be encouraged as part of future Horizon 2020 calls.

An understanding is needed that the role of the artist is not simply outcome led, but that there should be equal focus on the process.

Artists need to be valued and paid as experts and treated as equal members of projects.

Accept that artists are catalysts, innovators, disruptors and transformers and that each role of is of equal benefit.

Create training in collaboration for both artists and technologists.

Provide appropriate mentoring for collaborative teams.

Consultation Outcomes

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Each partner organised their event differently and drew different types of participants:

The Brunel audience in London for both events were composed primarily of the very active, knowledgeable, and often academic digital media community in London, they were very keen on the topics and wanted an active contribution to the EC recommendations, or were interested in the residency funding or were there for the speakers and performers;

The participants for the BCC event in Edinburgh were generally younger or emerging artists, mainly using traditional art forms; based on the community the organisers were aimed at reaching and are a part of. They were new to many of the issues discussed, as well as many of the technologies.

Consultation Outcomes

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Each partner organised their event differently and drew different types of participants:

Sigma’s Barcelona audience was more diverse and included artists, technologists, citizen science practitioners and activists. They were facing more funding issues, more fragmented communities of practice or less organisational or structural support and more language barriers;

The Waag’s event in Amsterdam in January was a more informal consultation and their audience was made from their mailing list and regular community participants, who are already interested and engaged in many of the issues addressed here and are practicing artists, technologists or are hybrid practitioners. The facilitators were more focussed on art & science public engagement, and thus, the audience were interested in the wider topic of art/science.

Consultation Outcomes

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Emerging primarily from the 2 London events, the Edinburgh event and Barcelona event some common themes arose:

1. Need for Infrastructures to support ICT & Art collaboration; the suggestion were as following:Pan-European match-making facilities and distributed collaborative centres across Europe;Sustainable platforms to access open source tools;Virtual and physical incubators and hubs for collaboration;Need more local hubs or providers of technology for open collaboration.

2. Funding needs More diversified funding and more flexible application process;Funding for travel between collaborators; Funding across all levels from academia to industry; More funding for small organisations;More of follow-up funding (restricted time).

Consultation Outcomes

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Emerging common themes arose continued:

3. Open-ended projects as opposed to working towards particular outcome.

4. Need for access:

To and guidance for application for funding - application for EU funding seems to be perceived as very complex and unattainable (not specific for Art/ICT communities);

To information about what happening in ICT & Art domain - for example of relevant projects and their results;

To relevant networks in ICT/Tech/Art domain;

For artists to technologies: lack of information where to start and where to get access; although some artists can develop their own technologies.

Consultation Outcomes

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Emerging common themes arose continued:

5. Networking

Match-making facilities (more accessible across Europe);

Pan-EU network of national/local networks.

6. Sustainability and dissemination

Post-project sustainability;

Available database of projects and their results and recommendations.

7. Training

Interdisciplinary courses for ICT professionals;

Creative practices in education;

Collaboration training.

Consultation Outcomes

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Emerging common themes arose continued:

8. Communication and support

9. Transparency of decision making and access to decision makers

10. Collaboration:

Effort, task and engagement equal for each collaborator;

Equal idea contribution and respect of ideas;

Interpretation and understanding of collaborators’ needs are essential;

Common motivators;

Collaboration should also involve not only artists and technologists, but also the audience;

Negative experience: too much pressure to create consensus, lack of honesty and transparency about each other skills, lack of communication, differences in expectations.

Consultation Outcomes

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Open to artists or ICT specialists to help find project partners;

Pairs were formed during matchmaking events, OR in direct contact with project partners, OR using the matchmaking tool on online;

Each pairing created a short project proposal, then submitted it for one of our 3 deadlines(end of Dec 2013, end of January, and early March), to start collaborations as late as April;

An expert panel made selection ratings for each proposal, then the final decision was made by the consortium for the next phase, the collaborative “residencies”;

Residencies were facilitated from 1 day (from the Hackathon) up to 3 months, on the premises of one of project partners or elsewhere (artist studio or ICT laboratory).

Open Call & Matchmaking Activities

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Round 1

• BioStrike

• Data and Ethics Working Group

• SenseShifting

• Magic Drawing

• AR Sign Battle

Round 2• Seeing Healthcare

through a Data Lens

• Interactivity features for a diasynchronic artwork

• Hacking Choreography 2.0

• Guerilla Toy Hack Installation

• Gamification of US Military

• Silicasonisphere

• Physical Representations of Time

Round 3

• Dances with Drones

• The Human Sensor

Residencies Projects Chosen

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Brochure or http://www.ict-art-connect.eu/residencies/

Residencies Projects Chosen

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Residencies Projects Chosen

Residents pilot projects exhibited and performed at the exhibition were the following:

BioStrike – artists and DIY Biologists of MadLab, Biologigaragen and the Open Wetlab: Pieter van Boheemen, Martin Malthe Borch, Zack Denfeld, Cat Kramer & Asa Calow.

Hear the City – programmer, Andrew Faraday, musician, Kate Halsall, video artist, Annalisa Terranova;

Linguify – developer/ designer, Benedict Allen and educator/developer, Siobhan Ramsey;

KrowdKontrol – musician Steve Lawson and programmer Liepa Kuraite;

SenseShifting – participatory artist Joana Mollà Hinarejos and interface designer Giovanni Marco;

Art of the Deep – musician/ artist, Thomas Flynn, coder, Daniel Lopez and educator/developer, Siobhan Ramsey;

AR Sign Battle - artists and technologists from Nantes: Pierre Buffe, Mathias Mouchard, Arnaud Perrillat, Félix Raymond.

Data and Ethics Working Group – artists, performers and designers: Elliott Burns, Susana Cámara Leret, Kevin Logan, Geoff Howse, Jack James, Tadeo Sendon and Dave Young, Mike Thompson, with physicist Josep Perello, and Open Data Institute statistician Ulrich Atz;

WIKI-Art Comic Strip – interaction designers and mobile games developers collaboration: Marie Lamouret, Victor Pedraza, Sylvia Morgado and Richard Piron ;

Dances with Drones - Choreographer, Nina Kov and physicist/ 3D programmer, Gábor Vásárhelyi;

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Residencies Projects Chosen

Residents pilot projects exhibited and performed at the exhibition continued:

Seeing Healthcare through a Data Lens – artist/photographer Sujata Majumdar, software systems designer, Ruud de Boo, biologist and informatics specialist, Irene Nooren, and database developer, Barani Dakshinamoorthy ;

Interactive Butterflies  for a Diasynchronic artwork – video artist Bruno Mathez, visual and media artist Carol McGillvray, and artist/programmer Neil Mendoza;

Hacking Choreography 2.0 – Choreographer, Kate Sicchio and Audio/Vsual artist/programmer, Nick Rothwell ;

Guerilla Toy Hack Installation – community artist, David Allistone and programmer and digital artist, Louis d’Aboville;

Death From Above - computer scientist, Jonathan Jouty, visual artist, Richard Phillips-Kerr, and filmmaker/sociologist, Igor Slepov ;

Silicasonisphere – glass artist, Carrie Fertig, and sound/electronics artist, Dave Murray-Rust

Not to  be Reproduced: A Narrative Through Time – painter Mark Conolly and 3D printing technologist, Diego Zamora;

Ministry of Measurement – performance artist group Thickear (Geoff Howse, Jack James, Kevin Logan and Tadeo Sendon) with Open Data Institute statistician Ulrich Atz;

The Human Sensor – Digital Media Artist /Painter/Programmer, Kasia Molga, and electronics engineer, Adrian Godwin.

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What happens during the residency?

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• Experts’ research and experience

• Literature review & other frameworks

• Surveys (start and end)

• Offbot (daily email asking participants about their activities)

• Face to face mentoring meetings

• One-2-one interview with individual participants

Residencies data collected

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To answer when analysing the data:

• Who is leading the work?

• How is that working for them?

• What methodologies, methods and processes are they using to work on the project?

• What cognitive, communication and knowledge style does each participant seem to exhibit, and how does that work with their partner? What is working what is not?

Residencies analysis

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To answer when analysing the data(continued):

• Is the way of working together collaborative or is it cooperative?

• How are the pairings handling interpersonal relations, problem-solving/conflict resolution, ego issues?

• Are there any noticeable cross-disciplinary culture/language/terminology/thinking differences?

• What is the effort, tasks and engagement by each collaborator?

Residencies analysis

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To answer when analysing the data(continued):

• What are the skills and experience/background/ approaches to work? What are the similarities and differences?

• What (if there is one) is the split in idea contribution and how are they respecting each others of ideas and IPR?

• Are the collaborators sharing skills, knowledge, expertise, space etc., equally?

• How are the collaborators using their time over the duration of the residency and what is the pacing of activities between them – is it equal?

Residencies analysis

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To answer when analysing the data (continued):

• Are there any facilities, equipment, space and environment issues?

• What is the post-collaboration legacy in terms of sustainability, dissemination and future contact plan?

• How did the mentoring process affect the residency?

• How did the project timescale affect the residency?

• Did the team feel the collaboration was a success? What did they get out of it? What would they have changed about it with the benefit of hindsight?

Residencies analysis

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• ICT & Art Connect Final Exhibition at Fo.Am Studios

Final Event: Brussels, May 11 & 12, 2014

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• ICT & Art Connect Final Presentation in European Parliament

Final Event: Brussels, May 11 & 12, 2014

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Summary of significant outreach results

Outreach activities: online community and dissemination activities have been very significant and on-going past the project end;

FET-Art reached a larger European community and excited the artists and technologists, to see the on-going activities and support;

Existing and new approaches for ICT /Art collaboration within ICT/technology communities, organisations and industry have been demonstrated by artists and technologists;

The project activities, conversations, and on-going activities of the ICT & Art Connect initiative will encourage the European Commission to develop additional initiatives to nudge the ICT industry to involve artists in their future undertakings, research and development.

Conclusions

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● Pan-European matchmaking facilities and distributed collaborative centres across Europe should be built;

● Sustainable platforms are needed to access open source tools;

● Virtual and physical incubators and hubs (needed in general and to ensure a sustainable legacy beyond lifetime of FET-Art project of ICT & Art Connect website);

● More diversified funding streams and funding across all levels from academia to industry (technology sector should be encouraged to co-fund public/private partnerships; public procurement…);

● Creation of Engineering, Computer Sciences and Visual Arts research hubs coupling state and private funding, in graduate level institutions (example is a model found at Concordia, Montreal (Canada) http://hexagram.concordia.ca).

Policy Recommendations: Infrastructure

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1) Create Embedded Artists Residencies:

The artists should be deeply embedded within long term research projects across the European Union’s research portfolio

2) Create a New Art/Technology Awards Programme:

Create an awards programme for new, innovative ideas in art/technology collaboration. Artists/Designers pitch ideas and selected ideas are paired with a research project/team.

=> InnovationBoth models offers the potential for highly innovative outcomes, in art, technology and in citizen engagement which will to Europe to be known globally as leaders in innovation, inclusivity, and creative forward thinking.

Policy Recommendations: Models of integration of artists as experts

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● Programs to integrate technologists as advisors for artists in residence.

● Awards for technologists tackling technological challenges with interdisciplinary collaborations.

● Longer term relationship building to bring technologists on board to understand the value of working with artists as catalysers, not just to make artwork but to ask differnt questions.

Policy Recommendations: Models of integration of technologists

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● Projects should take place across more of Europe, to represent the diverse cultures and communities, rather than mainly in north western, more financially stable countries;

● Programs and the ICT & Art discourse is heavily modeled on the UK and Northern Europe, thus, future support should take into account Southern and Eastern Europe to support as well;

● The idea of connecting ICT & Artis not new, but those currently engaged in it are already working collaboratively and supporting such initiatives; thus, there is STILL a need reach those not currently engaged, both in ICT and Art…

it may be in these ‘hard to reach’ sections of the ICT & Art communities that real innovation lies.

Policy Recommendations: Diversity & Innovation

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● Better access to existing projects across Europe with a widely accessible database of artists and technologists;

● Wider, better promoted dissemination of project results;

● Funding for exhibiting prototypes, enaging with audiences and getting feedback – which has been developed during ICT & Art CONNECT residencies (e.g. fellowships or prizes to exhibit at major ICT & ART CONNECT events).

Policy Recommendations: Dissemination

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● More time is needed, so that collaborators’ logistical situations can be assessed in advance, and sufficient budget is allocated to facilitate implementing collaborative methodologies that best suit the teams – paying each ICT industry wages (esp. artists);

● Mentoring and project management is vital. Project needs must be assessed initially, to enable best results, and that if required, additional resources should be allocated;

● Greater examination of the personality matches of collaborators and working style is essential to gain further knowledge of best models and process for communication and collaboration;

● Time tracking is essential to plan against teams overworking.

Policy Recommendations: Residencies

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• More time to develop projects and relationships overall;

• Funding for art/tech collaboration within tech companies – public/private partnerships in ICT& Art;

• More open events like initial event ICT & Art Connect in Brussels 2012 – with rotating participants to steer the EU art/ICT activities and funding directions;

• Develop funding for art/tech specialists to work within academic environments to support the industry projects – 1M a call for 5 projects per round per year was suggested.

Other Policy Recommendations

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