The Aesthetics of Global connectivity: exploring design strategies and networked technologies of distrubted sites trough artistic processes.

The aesthetics of global connectivity: exploring design strategies and networked technologies of distributed sites through artistic processes.

The project is an explorative investigation of the aesthetics of global connec-tivity. The aesthetic approach is a way to explore possibilities in technologically mediated relationships, which then inform the development of consistent models that correlate between the participatory experience, the compositional strategies, and the technological design. The offline/online workshops enable an exploration through developing prototypes and staging events, which involve the total com-municational complexity of the integrated platform as the artistic medium.

The research network is established expecting that researchers at IT University Copenhagen, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Central Conservatory of Music Beijing will complement each other in the interdisciplinary research into globally connected performance activities. The workshops will include the par-ticipation of a wider selection of researchers, using the events to introduce related institutions and individuals to the project themes. The network project includes three workshops on-site at the respective collaborators, and a continuous process of online collaboration.

We want to initiate a close research collaboration focusing on global collabor-ative practices related to the design of explorative artistic platforms, connecting Danish researchers with researchers from China and Brazil. The collaborators shared approach is based on methods of integrated design, which, through artistic exploration, drive technological prototyping processes involving a range of hy-brid technologies. The chosen partners contribute with methods and aesthetic concepts from radically different fields and position (performance/narrativation, organic/artificial symbiosis, music/acoustics), which is intended to form a vigo-rous interdisciplinary collaboration through concrete explorative workshop events.

The intended research takes the perspective of a hybrid ecology of networked communication. We will utilise experiential and situational methods of analysis, and develop narrative models of the semiosis operations embedded in the techno-logical mediation. The prototype events will be generated to situate engaged par-ticipants, viewing the totality of the integrated ecology of online and offline communication as staged aesthetic events. The network project will seek to iden-tify a common ground by transfer of methods and aesthetic paradigms, and en-gage further fields of expertise through each of our local interdisciplinary net-works of collaborators. The workshops will develop explorative prototypes for robotic, performative, and acoustic interfacing, which will be installed at all sites and form the base for online research events.

Our interest is in the new ecologies that takes form in the telematised envi-ronments, and our approach is to view connected spaces and situations as staged events, composed for participatory exploration, and to qualify these new habitats by performance methods of analysis. Through explorative prototypes, driven by artistic intent, we will re-evaluate the telematic ecology of relations. The overall purpose of the three workshops is to consolidate the base for further collaborative research in-between the participants, distributed across timezones, cultural di-versity, and interdisciplinary difference.

Our long-term aim is to explore new ways of conducting explorative research in global networks, and through the developed strategies enact new hybrid tech-nologies and practices. The participants each represent a position of excellence within their specific field, and they are selected to form an interdisciplinary net-work of excellence. We will through the activities planned in 2011 be able to in-itiate a strong ground for research collaboration, based on working prototypes and the developed telematic research platform.

The network partners, and their respective research networks, will form part of a series of research applications. This will take form as a consortium for global col-laboration, which can participate in EU applications towards the FP7 framework. The Danish partner will formulate proposals for both Danish and EU project funding based on the research identified and developed during the network work-shops.