Focus Artistic Research

The project Making Artistic Technology uses participatory learning strategies to communicate the contents and results of the FWF PEEK project “Researching Critical Media Arts & Artistic Technology” to the general public. The project also has particular focus on communicating to young people and young women how they can self-learn technology by undertaking creative projects. The project “Researching Critical Media Arts & Artistic Technology” is situated within a unique interdisciplinary setting between MINT (mathematics, informatics, natural science and technology) and artistic research and production. It is the primary aim of Making Artistic Technology to communicate how knowledge can be generated through the creative use of technology within artistic practice, while also evangelising to young people the vast possibilities of open technologies that can be reached through self-education. Through this scientific communication program we aim not to teach people how to use technologies, but how to learn to make technologies. The program aims to foster a culture, especially in young people, of learning how to research using technology by encouraging them with demonstrations of our artistic outputs. The project also aims to introduce young people and interested adults to the cultures and communities of open knowledge, open source and open hardware that exist in practice with our partner hackerspaces Metalab and Miss Baltazar's Lab. These communities that we have researched within our PEEK project demonstrate functioning environments of self-education, participatory and peer learning. We intend to communicate the significance of these communities for life-long learning and technological empowerment (outlined in our previous research Coded Cultures). Our aim to produce an Open-Access booklet that can be freely transferred between young people over torrents, Facebook, email or simply downloaded from the website making.artistic.technology. The booklet will be produced with the support and knowledge of illustrators, designers, coders and other key figures within the open source and arts domain that we have cooperated with. In Making Artistic Technology we will also cooperate local hackerspaces in Vienna to produce five five-day workshops targeted at youth (13-17) and also five one-day workshops targeted towards interested adults to learn from artistic technologies and open source. Our cooperation partners MuseumsQuartier Vienna and the Open Source Hardware Association will provide additional support to the project with their resources. During the project timeframe, the Open Hardware Summit will take place in Vienna to act as an additional catalyst for encouraging people to engage with the workshops while also supporting further communication of the project “Researching Critical Media Arts & Artistic Technology”.