GMU:PostCompost

Projektmodul
Lecturer(s): M.F.A. Christian Doeller, Dr. Klaus Fritze
Credits: 16 SWS
Date: Thursdays 13:30 - 18:00
Venue: Room 204 / EOW site in Oberweimar
First meeting: 20.04.2023, 13:30, Room 204

Description:

What happens when an area enters a state of self-abandonment, the boundaries and frameworks collapse, cultures go wild? What processes of decay and growth follow the loss of control and how can we position ourselves and develop empathy?

In the project module »PostCompost« we dedicate ourselves to the ecosystem of an industrial wasteland, which is currently in the process of renaturation / succession, and investigate its conditions, layers and possible developments.

Students from different disciplines form an artistic research group that sets out on a speculative expedition through the area of the former EOW site in Oberweimar. We draw inspiration from the approaches of various scientific disciplines, incorporate them into our own experiments, and subject them to critical reflection. We focus on documenting the existing as well as on new processes of development and growth. We test digital and analog techniques of viewing, listening, making visible, collecting, digging, monitoring, archiving, ordering, identifying, linking, interpreting, transforming and extrapolating. We do not see ourselves as external observers, but as empathetic co-creators and actors of the ecosystem. Our goal is the fragmentary description and development of a place on different temporal levels, where »natural« processes and the legacies of »human civilization processes« directly confront each other.

Our weekly meetings take place mainly on the site of the former EOW complex in Oberweimar. Here we offer introductions to strategies and techniques from the fields of biology and DIY electronics / data processing. We deal with relevant artistic and theoretical positions as well as with the historical context of the site. Field trips and workshops are planned, results of the project module will be presented in the context of Summaery 2023.

Students from all disciplines are welcome. Prerequisites for participation are an interest in working outdoors and a willingness to engage with the site outside of weekly meetings. No prior technical experience is necessary.

Please send applications with a short motivation letter (4-5 sentences) by mail to christian.doeller@uni-weimar.de.

Participants:

• YOUR NAME

Artists / Links:

• Zheng Bo
• Futurefarmers
• Hicham Berrada
• Agnes Denes
• Kyriaki Goni
• Lois Weinberger
• Ingo Vetter
• Peter Hutchinson
• Hieronimus Bosch
• Mel Chin
• Ingo Vetter

Schedule:

November 17 – introduction

- utopia in the context of DIY technologies

- utopia and technical sensors as interfaces to environments

- utopia and the maker movement

Topics:

Technology:

• Getting started with Arduino
• Connecting and reading different sensors
• tools to capture real-time sensor data
• tools to transform the collected data into different phenomena

Art & Thinking:

• Contemporary (media) art positions that relate to the subject matter
• Sensors as interfaces between beings and their environments
• perceptual awareness and sensors as magnifying glasses of everyday processes
• interactive prototypes and simple tools as interfaces to »the other«
• Strategies in working with sensor technologies and input/output systems
• Feedback mechanisms, cybernetic circuits
• Relations between the physical and the digital

Literature:

• Silvia Lindtner, Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell: Reconstituting the Utopian Vision of Making: HCI After Technosolutionism
• Jennifer Gabrys, How to Do Things with Sensors, https://www.jennifergabrys.net/2019/09/how-to-sensors/
• Jennifer Gabrys, Program Earth, https://www.jennifergabrys.net/2016/03/program-earth-environmental-sensing-technology-making-computational-planet/
• Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making kin in the Chthulucene
• Byung-Chul Han, Shanzhai, https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534369/shanzhai/
• Hannes Bergthaller, Eva Horn: Anthropozän zur Einführung, ISBN 978-3-96060-311-5
• Klimakunstforschung, ISBN: 3883962996
• Christiane Heibach: Dem Spüren auf der Spur: Zur Wahrnehmung biologischer und technischer sensorischer Systeme, Link: https://www.medienobservationen.de/pdf/20200430Heibach1.pdf
• Verena Kuni: The Plants Are (Watching) Sensing, Link: https://www.medienobservationen.de/pdf/20200430Kuni6.pdf
• Field_Notes – From Landscape to Laboratory, https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/hybridmatters-production/media/Field_Notes-From_Landscape_To_Laboratory-2013.pdf

Criteria for passing:

• document exercises on the wiki, present them for the rest of the class
• experiment, attend the classes and develop your own prototypes and experiments relating to the topic