4-7 November 2010
İstanbul Modern Cinema Hall
briefly
The second international conference of amberConference will be held in conjunction with the amber’10 Art and Technology Festival, on 6,7 November 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey. The aims and scope of this conference are to create a platform of discussion and dissemination for the various themes and topics in which Science, Art and Technology converge.
The theme for this year’s event is ‘Datacity’. For the first time in history the World’s urban population has outnumbered its rural counterpart. Cities have become the predominant habitat of humanity. The requirements of rapidly growing cities, coupled with the contemporary technological possibilities bring about new urban reality that is data. amberConference takes up the relationship between city and data as its theme. For more please click the link above.
program
(The conference will be held in English.)
4th of November 2010, Thursday:
Film Screening
İstanbul Modern Cinema, presenting four films inline with the theme of amberConference. Screening is curated by Müge Turan.
11.00
Cyber Wars (Avatar), 2004
Director: Jian Hong Kuo, 103′
In the Asian city of Sintawan everyone’s identity is recorded in the Cyberlink database. The only way to escape Cyberlink is to use simulated identities. A bounty hunter who makes a living tracking these and a police detective uncover an insidious game played by giant corporations. As they try to save not only their own lives but the lives of everyone in the city the game is reversed. The hunters have now become the hunted. This cyberpunk story from Singapore will bring together fans of Blade Runner and Avatar.
13.00
The Gene Generation, 2007
Director: Pearry Reginald Teo, 96′
In the futuristic world of Olympia, a city on the verge of destruction, Michelle, a next generation hit girl battling DNA hackers, realizes she has greater problems in her life: Her family! An Asian action movie full of amazing effects that takes place in a future age in which DNA is sold to forge new identities leaving people lifeless and mutated.
15.00
The Running Man, 1987
Director: Paul Michael Glaser, 101′
In the year 2019, in an America turned totalitarian, television programs rule people’s lives. On “Running Man,” a widely popular live television show, criminals are entered into a brutal race with high stakes. Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger), a wrongly accused ex-cop, is the new victim of the contest and no one has survived this bloody show.
17.00
Eyeborgs, 2009
Director: Richard Clabaugh, 102′
In a near future, as a protection against the escalating terrorism people are under surveillance in all areas of their lives, watched by mobile robotic cameras called Eyeborgs. But despite this, bizarre murders are taking place. In charge of investigating these murders, federal agent Gunner Reynolds discovers that the cameras have recorded events very differently than what actually happened. Is this a method employed by the state to suppress the opposition? Or has the terrorist enemy gained control of the system? A must-see for science fiction fans!
5th of November 2010, Friday:
Workshop/Lecture
10:00-13:00
“Data Visualization and GIS for Urban Systems”
Selim Balcisoy
Directory and control infrastructures used in urban cities produce various data within different intensity and content. These infrastructures, such as security systems, gas control systems, and traffic sensors produce and store data in an instantaneous manner.
Evaluating these data within a holistic approach, which implies taking into account of criteria such as population and income of the inhabitants of a city, not only provides quantitative information, but it generates knowledge on the socio-economic structure of a city. Certain visualization software can provide the visualization of such complex and multilayered data required from a holistic approach.
In this workshop, we will firstly focus on data visualization software and discuss the efficiency of their visualization principles. Subsequently, we will examine certain examples of data visualization software in order to operationalize the points discussed in the workshop.
14:00-17:00
“Locative Contours, Residua and Documentary Inclinations”
Tina Bastajian ve Seda Manavoglu
This workshop aims to engage participants to explore and discuss hybrid or ad-hoc forms of locative media tactics, which activate and also challenge our approaches with residua in-situ. We will introduce our project, Coffee Deposits:::Topologies of Chance (aka Siting Maps in Cups) that initially began as a charting of movements, rhythms and dwelling. By moving through the mode of mobile and ad-hoc Turkish coffee encounters, the project also attempted in parallel to introduce location aware gestures, augmenting these encounters with digital traces: statistical, speculative and factual.
We will elucidate upon the methods, processes and contingencies, which informed our subsequent traversals and logic of ‘capture’ in Istanbul during the fall of 2009. Thus, the residual media (interviews, GPS data, etc.) were then contoured into an interactive architecture (DVD-ROM), and currently we are developing ‘post-scripts’ from the project that will be re/dis/located in urban space.
Tina Bastajian I am a film/media artist and currently a Phd researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Aspects of my research have focused on strategies of documentation, preservation and re-presentation of historical performative film works (i.e. Expanded Cinema). In tandem I am working in praxis and theory to chart and interrogate subjective mapping tendencies in locative media practices that evoke and reconfigure themselves as potential geo-cinematic constellations. Themes of the fragment, translation, and archival proclivities are also intrinsic to my work within experimental and diasporan film.
6th of November 2010, Saturday:
Keynote and Panels
9.30 Registration
10:00-11:00 Keynote speaker: Kazys Varnelis. “Everyday Life in the Ambient City”
“In this talk I explore how locative media, mobile telephony, ubiquitous computing, and the Internet have teamed with political, demographic, and social changes to thoroughly reshape our urban environment. Rather than existing in a deferred future, as they did through the years to 2008, these technologies are here now. I investigate the psychological and sociological consequences of these changes together with the role they play in neoliberal ideology.”
11:15-12:45. Panel one: Mapping, Interface, and the City
Marco Cesario, Lena Hopsch. “The digital superstructure of the city at the age of the global information processes”.
Sean Kearney. “Urban Mundane & Serendipity in the Digital Age – Reimagining the City Map”
Bengi Basaran. “Urban Space Beyond Dystopia: Fragments of Cyberpunk Cities”.
13:45- 14:45 Panel two: Orientation and the City
Deniz Yatagan, Burcu Bostanci. “The impact of GPS Devices on the experience of the city”.
Marc Tuters. “Forget Psychogeography: Locative Media as Cosmopolitics”.
15:00-16:30. Panel three: Senses and the City
Eva Kekou, Matteo Marangoni. “A new Sense of City through Hearing and Sound”.
Varvara Guljajeva, Mar Canet Sola. “The Rhythm of City”.
Greg Giannis. “Peripato Telematikos”.
7th of November 2010, Sunday:
Keynote and Panels
10:00-11:00 Keynote Speaker: C.J. Lim. “The Garden of Eden Redux – Smartcities”
“Adam and Eve did not have to go far for sustenance, for everything was aplenty in the Garden of Eden, where every type of tree, pleasing to the eye and good for food was planted. The new Garden of Eden – Smartcity proposes the reintegration of cultivated land within an urban economical and ecological context, and the establishment of the city-dwelling farmer. Urban agriculture will result in food immediacy, nutrition, health benefits, job opportunities, incomes for urban poverty groups and provide a social safety net. Smartcity is a vision, a manifesto and provocation.”
11:15-13:15. Panel four. Design, Data, and the City
Emrah Kavlak. “ Envisioning information for Istanbul: the study of a guide design as an urban visual interface to improve usability of the city”.
Georg Russegger. “The City as Interface/Workspace”
Horst Hörtner.”GeoCity Mobile: Extending boundaries of Urban Discourse”
Silvia Kalcic. “Architecture and Video. Media/Facades”
14:30-15:30 Panel five. Data, Presence, and the City
Knowbotic Research. “Opaque Presence – latent urban invisibilities”.
Cagri Zaman. “Perso.n-e-t”.
Ebru Yetiskin. “TRANSLATORS OF DATA TO BE EXCLUDED: Aestheticization and Empiricization of the ‘Unrecognized”
15:45-17:15 Special Panel. Title to be announced
17:00-17:30 General Discussion
