Total Regeneration Symposium at cSPACE

This week FreqOUT! took part in the Total Regeneration symposium at cSPACE studio, a conference and round table discussion on roles, agendas and impacts for cultural practitioners within socially engaged and collaborative art practice.

Of particular interest was the presentation of the artist and researcher Aida Sancehz de Serdio from the University of Barcelona about Artibarri, a online network of community art projects. For Artibarri, participation and collaboration between artists, politicians and communities is the corner stone of socially engaded art practice and evaluation is the biggest challenge.

The question, "is it possible to evaluate objectively the outcome of socially engaged art practice?", was debated extensively amongst the attendees. Artibarri's position was that artists, politicians and communities should be engaged in a constant reflection, analysis and dialogue, and that the creation of these networks of experience can and should inspire new practices but that community art projects, "should not be evaluated by any measuring processes but by constructive criticism". Thier philosophy received general agreement amongst the symposium public, which was mainly composed of artists and politicians involved in community practices.

There was also unanimity at cSPACE that a future challenges lies in the consideration of external viewers approaching community art projects and their relative outcomes.

Article by Daniela Boraschi
For more information go to: cSPACE studio

FreqOUT! visits Dorkbot

FreqOUT! spent a very enjoyable evening at DORKBOT last Wednesday Evening.

Held at alternatively at Sate51 near Brick Lane or Limehouse Town Hall, Dorkbot is a monthly event at which 'people who do strange things with electricity' meet and show each other what they are up to. We heard Sampath Jagannathan showcase his 'Homebrew rule based particle model' and Yoshi Introduce 'one of the rarest botanical specimens - “Dendro Cacalia Intoxicum” AKA Drunken Leaf' which turned out to be a leaf modelled out of a beer can rotating on a tiny, credit card sized motor.

We're hooked, and will be back next month for more.

You can find out more about Dorkbot London at Dorkbot London

FreqOUT highlights of BETT conference

The BETT conference is a leading educational technology event showcasing companies and businesses operating worldwide .

Highlights of the day were a presentation by Dan Sutch, Learning Researcher for FutureLab, at the Tomorrow's Learners Today Stand. He tackled the subject "...What if we could re-design our education system from scratch?...What if we made the technology do what we wanted?..." FutureLab is a blue-sky thinking IT & educational reserach group working on projects creating answers to the questions above.

Some of their exciting projects are as follows:
Enquiring Minds - a personalised learing project.
Create-A-Scape - a personalised learning tool that enables young people to learn while discovering their surronding through the potential of wireless and mobile technologies.

Information collected by Ed Whyman
Article edited and posted by Daniela Boraschi