Social
Spaces

Wat is stroom?
STROOM is een cultuursubsidie van de provincie Limburg die kansen geeft aan creatief talent. Deze subsidie geeft beloftevol talent een duw in de rug om een nieuwe stap te zetten in hun professionele ontwikkeling.

Stroom geeft power via twee beurzen.

As you already might have read in previous posts, Social Spaces will be present at the E-Culture Fair 2010 (organized by BAM, the Flemish institute for visual, audiovisual and media art, “Virtueel Platform” and “Medienwerk NRW”) in Dortmund (Germany) on 23rd – 25th of August.

Elien Haentjens wrote an article for Knack on digital culture in Flanders and the E-Culture Fair. In the article, she reports how the digitalizing of the cultural field is unstoppable: artists and designers use new media more and more often. To archive this digitally made art is an upcoming challenge for the future. But also the archival of all sorts of cultural heritage – which not yet exist in digital forms – is an interesting topic for inquiry. All though several Flemish initiatives are making an effort to get a better understanding of this digitalizing of art and cultural heritage, Flanders is still behind in comparison to countries such as the Netherlands, France and Great Britain. Therefore, the E-Culture Fair might just be a perfect opportunity to exchange knowledge on this subject and see how other projects deal with this topic.

You can read the entire article here (it is in Dutch, though).

On 23rd – 25th of August, the research group Social Spaces will be present at the E-Culture Fair 2010 in Dortmund (Germany). The fair is organized by BAM, the Flemish institute for visual, audiovisual and media art, “Virtueel Platform” and “Medienwerk NRW” and is part of RUHR 2010, the European Capital of Culture and ISEA 2010 (16th International Symposium on Electronic Arts). The E-Culture Fair revolves around (cross-disciplinary) projects on (media) technology, art, research and creative industry. Here, companies, schools, universities, research groups and artists from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany will present their work. At a booth at the Fair, Social Spaces will present itself and several of the projects the group currently is involved in (closely collaborating with Z33 – house for contemporary art, the Province of Limburg and the Expertise centre for Digital Media).

For Project Lab the students of the bridging program Communication & Multimedia Design worked together with ‘Klankenbos’ of Musica. ‘Klankenbos’ is a permanent collection of sound installations in open air, accommodated at the ‘Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof’ at Neerpelt (Belgium) and unique in Europe. Musica aims to be a low level access to sound art and installations. This for instance expresses itself in the fact that ‘Klankenbos’ is always accessible for visitors (24 hours). During Project Lab, students had to work out a typical C-md solution for a cultural organization, integrating the five key courses of C-md, namely Graphic design, Audiovisual applications, ICT, Communication and Marketing. A briefing by Eveline Heylen and a visit to ‘Klankenbos’ served as a kick off of Project Lab and a starting point for the work of the students. Each team of students worked out a project thereby expanding awareness of Musica, addressing hard to reach target groups or experimenting with other ways of communication and participation with people.

Under the LSM program (Limburg Sterk Merk: Limburg strong brand), the MAD-faculty in Hasselt and Genk (Belgium) obtained substantial fundings in order to stimulate the research at the MAD-faculty (PHL and MDA) through doctoral fellowships, starting in Jan. 2011. In total it concerns 7 full-time PhD-fellowships for four years in arts & design research.

The proposed project and research question of the applicant will have to match the theme of one of the MAD-faculty research groups, among them Social Spaces (see our mission statement under ‘About’). In addition, there has to be a potential for upgrading the Limburg region. There are several substantive criteria that the application must meet. The detailed call with the assessment, template, LSM file and multi-year plan of the research group Social Spaces, will be made public during the first week of July 2010.

Interested? Contact MSterckx [at] mail.phl.be or liesbeth.huybrechts [at] mda.khlim.be