Call for Collaborators LAB#01 Medios Sintientes

Deadline: Until April 3, 2022
More information and application form: https://form.jotform.com/220672286277361

Medialab Matadero opens call for the selection of collaborators who want to participate in the collaborative prototyping workshop of LAB#01 as part of the working groups that will develop eight projects related to the theme Sentient Media. The workshop, which will be coordinated by experts and artists, will take place in person at Matadero Madrid between April 21 and May 3. 

The call, whose registration deadline is April 3, 2022, is aimed at individuals of legal age from Spain and abroad, of any level of qualification and from diverse disciplines such as design, art, architecture, urban planning, economics, film, photography, journalism, digital media, environmental sciences, philosophy, engineering, social studies, political science, programming, materials science, activism or any other field. 

Selected projects

A maximum of 40 collaborators will be selected, 5 for each of the 8 selected projects. The collaborators can be part of the development team of one or more of the selected proposals according to their interests, although it is suggested to focus on one proposal to ensure a greater commitment to it during all phases of the workshop. The projects to be developed are: 

• Xenoimage Dataset, Mar Osés and Miguel Rangil Gallardo
  Can non-representational algorithmic images help us to build imaginaries beyond gender?  Xenoimage dataset aims to generate virtual-material devices that allow us to hack the hegemonic visual imaginary by refunctionalizing image databases, in order to disarticulate image management technologies.
   
• ALMA (all your smartphone is able to get to be), Victoria Ascaso, Jaime de los Ríos and Pablo Martínez Garrido
  A space for transhumanist and xenofeminist reflection on the development of artificial intelligence, focusing on its construction as an emotional being, taking our cell phones as the place where we live our intimacy and build our identities.  
   
• Real-time war rug, Zainab Tariq, Anna Eschenbacher, Rita Eperjesi and Fanni Szilvás
  This project aims to create a tangible real-time "war rug" that visualizes current global conflicts by blurring the boundaries between traditional rugs and technology.
   

• Wind to Radio Divinatory Interfaces, Juan Duarte y Bettina Katja Lange
  Wind and electromagnetism are energies that expand on a planetary scale. This research examines speculative computational representations, devising possible links between airflow and radio transmissions, and observing their imperceptibly converging correlations.

• Life trajectories: the travelling insects of the earth, Hebzoariba Hernández Gómez and Daniel Marcial
  Based on a system of detection and recording of trajectories and a collective mapping in public space, this project will try to trace the routes of hymenopterans, lepidopterans and beetles. The detection will be done by installing a camera device in one or several places defined by the mapping.

• Food Memories. Connecting the countryside-city territories, Laura Reyes and collectives La Colmena and Ambiente Tabanoy 
  Co-creation of a digital application where the rural voices of invisible work are recognized and the food memory of the territory is reclaimed through a talking map and the implementation of an urban prototype approaching the deep countryside through agriculture and interactive map-like sensory stations in the public spaces of the city.

• Earth Interface Prototype, a microphone for the planet, Carlos Corpa
  It starts from the premise that the Earth is a living being and aims to obtain an artistic record of this animated entity, thus continuing with this author's research on the figure of the "machine artist", and delving into the possibilities offered by Land Art to produce a dialogue between the natural and the artificial.

• Extrasensory excess: Imagining inclusions with data discards, Tim Cowlishaw
  Research on the blind spots of sensory systems already existing in the city of Madrid through its open data portal, investigating and criticizing its policy and the exclusions they make, and also a way to speculate and make real alternative worlds more just and inclusive for human and more-than-human actors and agents.

How the workshop will work

During the workshop, ideas will be tested and collaborative projects will be developed working in interdisciplinary groups formed by several collaborators and coordinated by the project promoter. The groups will have the support and advice of mentors and experts invited by Medialab and will have a workspace for the development of each project.

Throughout the workshop, they will work with free and open software, since the projects will be based on open standards. The results will be available under Creative Commons licenses that invite reappropriation, reuse and distribution. In addition, the resulting prototypes will be presented publicly at the OpenLab event. 

The workshop will be conducted in English and Spanish without formal translation.

Medios Sintientes thematic

The Collaborative Prototyping Lab addresses the ability of sensory technologies to make the invisible visible and how this visibility has substantial information to conceive the world differently on issues such as health, energy or our relationship with the environment. It does so, however, from a broad understanding of what we think of as technology, to include a technodiversity made up of the ensemble of human and non-human media alike and the capacity of these media to contribute to appropriate collective agency.

For more information, be sure to read the complete rules of the call and visit the website https://mediossintientes.medialab-matadero.es/