Art+Communication: TRANS CULTURAL MAPPING
The 7th International festival for new media culture
Riga, Latvia, September 30 - October 3 2004.

The 7th International Art+Communication festival will take place in Riga, Latvia, from September 30 - October 3, 2004. The festival will offer a space of exchange for new media practitioners and grassroots activists and who are critically exploring ideas of locality, in response to the continental European (and global) "normalization processes". The main themes of the festival will include the following:

Local culture and European Normalization
For the new media arts, the internet has been an invaluable tool for mobilization beyond borders, and while, as "net-workers", we may celebrate certain aspects of the integration project, it also potentially poses a threat to local diversities.
This event is intended to shelter debates amongst grassroots activists, new media theorists and practitioners critically engaging with ideas of locality, in the broader context of the continental European (and global) process of cultural and economic integration and "normalization". How does "the local" assert itself while at the same time avoiding becoming reactionary and fundamentalist?

Social Cartography and Tactical Mobility
The very power to "officially" map a space equates to its domination, yet new forms of networking have raised the possibility of a practice of collaborative cartography whereby maps are generated and maintained from below.  This session is interested in creatively envisioning space through using mapping as a metaphor to explore a whole range of actor centred conversations

Locative Media
The term locative media in its most literal interpretation marks a move from William Gibson's dislocated cyberspace to Steve Mann's interdimensional cyborgspace; in which, a combination of wireless networking and location-awareness, would allow for the annotation of architectonic space with
digital media. Yet, perhaps the device is less interesting than the metaphors it conjurs. As this session explores, locative media is, in fact, open to multiple interpretations: as the site for old discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other people; as the framework within which to actively
engage with, critique, and shape a rapid set of technological developments; as the context within which to explore alternative models of social, political and economic relations; or, indeed, as a name for the ambiguous shape of a rapidly deploying surveillance and control infrastructure.

Spectrum Ecology
Electromagnetic radiation is the most ubiquitous form of intelligable noise in communication history. There have been several key technological advances that have contributed to this flooding of the natural spectrum including the invention of technologies for generating electricity and radio waves. As something of a consequence of employing (these often disregarded) portions of the spectrum to
construct "pirate" distributio networks, artists and activists have increasingly turned a critical eye on emmisions from "official" social, cultural, military, and physical sources politicizing the issue of spectrum allocation. This panel looks at this radio activity and the intentions, consequences, and technologies used to examine and manipulate radio waves.

TCM presentations
Bringing together organizations from Finland, Iceland, Slovenia, Latvia, Norway and France, the Trans-Culture Mapping network staged a series of workshops, over the spring and summer of 2004 that sought to explore the concept of locative media; in which a combination of site-specific engagement, digital media, wireless networking, and location-awareness would allow for the exploration of specific locations and cultures on the fringes of Europe. Artists and researchers employed ideas of contextualised mapping (cultural, temporal, acoustical, historical and spatial) to develop open source tools for envisioning a collaborative map of Europe. These investigations into locative media sought to raise new sets of questions, critical perspectives and cultural practice.

ART+COMMUNICATION 7 WILL FEATURE: AN EXPOSITION OF DOCUMENTATION, INSTALLATIONS AND ARTISTS PRESENTATIONS FROM THE TCM WORKSHOPS; "MAPPING THE SPECTRUM" PERFORMANCES; AND A 2-DAY CONFERENCE ON "COLLABORATIVE CARTOGRAPHY".
Contact: rixc ( at ) rixc.lv
The Trans-European Cultural Mapping programme is coordinated by The Centre for New Media Culture RIXC/Riga in collaboration with K@2/Liepaja, Piknik Frequency/Helsinki, TEKS/Trondheim, LORNA/Reykjavik, ELLIPSE/Tours, Projekt Atol/Ljubljana, Locative Media Network.
The project is supported by the Culture 2000 Programme of the European Union. The festival also is supported by Latvian Cultural Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, French Cultural Center, AFFA, British Council in Riga, radio NABA, daily newspaper “Diena” and magazine “Rīgas laiks”.