Live Blogging from the X|Media|Lab Singapore Media R&D event

The conference “Media aRt&D” is held today (28 Sep 2007) in the Art, Design and Media (ADM) Building at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The event is organized by X|Media|Lab. The conference highlights these intersections between the creative and the technological – the interplay between the freedom of art and the precision of engineering, and focus around four areas of discussion: Media Arts; R&D, New Media, New Geographies; and Creative Ideas, Business Plans. We are live-blogging from the conference here till noon.

We are now at the NTU School of Arts, Design Media. We report from the conference “Media Arts R&D”. Note that you need to refresh for more updates from now to noon.

10:00 am: The organizers start off the day by keeping in mind about how the conference is going to pen out. The whole conference is a series of set-piece keynotes from the International Mentors coming to the Lab. There will be no time-wasting panel discussions, just high value information from some of the most qualified media arts and R&D people in the world.

10:05 am: To begin with, Issac Kerlow, the Dean of Art, Design and Media , NTU kickstarted the event. He started with a series of slides that provide an overview of media, particularly new media. He came to this interesting slide with two key words at a time: Imagination and Creativity, Research and Development. The key message is to interface between the science and the art of media. According to him, the media arts are about emotions and ideas, and the technology should be invisible and at the same time, make the process seamless. He brought up three pictures: Hokusai, followed by Green Lantern (a DC Comic hero) as a highly superficial spontaneous story telling and a sculpture by Michelangelo. In each of the example, the moral of the story is the artist uses technology and his or her interpretation of reality based on opinion and preferences.

10.15 am: In the next few slides, he showed contemporary works by different artists. He has skipped a few slides because of the time limit. Of course, most of the contemporary arts are imbued with technology. He remarked that the media arts is about 40 years ahead of time, and how the people of that time can exercise their imagination to create abstract art. He shifted gears and move into animation, from Tarzan (Disney) to World of Warcraft and Second Life. He touches the example of the art is built into the internet landscape by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Artport 2006.

10.20 am: He has now moved to production strategies and what he will be doing with the teams involved in the weekend. It is important to keep in mind that budget, schedule and resources are important to a production process and that is after the creative idea has been conceived. He moves to the function of the creative, management and administrative teams. He remarked that it is important to set up milestones (similar to what start-up companies do for their initial phase). He also tell the audience to make sure that they have a Plan B, because Plan A is usually fantasy and will have reality grounded.

10.25 am: The next speaker, Suhjung Hur, Curato, Arts Centre Nabi (Seoul) came onto the stage. She started with the question how the new media will look after the new millenium. She also pondered whether Asia should continue following the trends of media from the Western world at the present stage. She showcased several projects that her center has started since the year 2001. A lot of the examples interfaced between modern technology and art. An interesting exhibition they did with the theme connectivity, where they allowed the audience to interact with the digital art. She now talks how her centre has created several international conferences and workshops to educate artists and creators. By 2005, they started the Nabi Art Centre in Korea. Now she showcased slides describing the art exhibitions for children and social engagement programs.

I wish that I have some pictures from the conference which I can show you, because the art is simply fantastic. She talked about the collaboration of her centre with a telecommunication company, SK Telecom where they contribute the art content for the public TV screens that allow interaction with the public. She showed an interesting example to map all the bloggers in Seoul (Cyworld Map Project). If you are at a certain location, the web service will send you a story written by a blogger in that location. She also laments that she has too much to say but only two minutes left. She now provided the Festival for media art and digital culture known as p.Art.y (people, art and technology) and how her art centre can be a model for the 21st century. She showed a video which illustrated several examples. For example, they have (i) the old central train station in Seoul where they use it as a theatre to showcase art with traditional Korean music and (ii) a computer animation in the background with an orchestra playing on stage, and (iii) a Dutch couple engaging the public on the streets with a backpack shaped like the mobile phone (a large one where the public can touch and click). I do think that Singapore can pick up a few things from Korea in promoting digital and performance art.

10.50 am: The conference continues with two surrealists, Geoff Lillemon and Anita Fontaine who are interactive art directors, game and mobile art pioneers from Boston. They both created a boutique design studio named Champagne Valentine. For them, they started with a video with surreal art and techno music. Geoff talked about his first project Oculart, on how a user can interact with a piece of art in the web. They showcased several pieces where they interfaced surreal art with computer games, animation, mobile phones and online social networks.

11:15 am: Anina, Founder of 360 Fashion Network (London, Paris and Beijing) is the next speaker on stage. While she is fixing her wifi, I am trying to get battery power.

She is a German fashion supermodel, and a founder of 360Fashion Network and a Nokia Champion. She has her own webpage: Anina.net. Our live blogger managed to speak to her during the VIP networking session and he found her pretty, intelligent and tech savvy. Her passion is to use the new media channels to enhance her brand to be a new kind of supermodel. She started with an interesting pitch to talk about herself, and she was the first supermodel to be featured on Nerd TV and how she wanted to convince her fellow model friends to use technology through her example. She talked about why she created 360 Fashion Network. She is now navigating around the 360Fashion network on the Safari browser. It is a niche social network with online and web applications for fashion models and designers and industry players. It is an interesting example of how social media technology can help a niche area such as fashion.

Blogger’s note: As our live blogger needs to proceed to another appointment, please continue on the event from the links of the other blogs placed here.

Related Links:
1. Live from XMediaLab 2007 at NTU by Sriram Krishnan
2. x media lab 2007 singapore by E27.

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