The aesthetics of global connectivity: exploring design strategies and networked technologies of distributed sites through artistic processes.

The project is an explorative investigation of the aesthetics of global connectivity. The aesthetic approach is a way to explore possibilities in technologically mediated relationships, which then inform the development of consistent models that correlate between the participatory experience, the compositional strategies, and the technological design. The offline/online workshops enable an exploration through developing prototypes and staging events, which involve the total communicational complexity of the integrated platform as the artistic medium.

The research network is established expecting that researchers at IT University Copenhagen, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Central Conservatory of Music Beijing will complement each other in the interdisciplinary research into globally connected performance activities. The workshops will include the participation of a wider selection of researchers, using the events to introduce related institutions and individuals to the project themes. The network project includes three workshops on-site at the respective collaborators, and a continuous process of online collaboration.

Research area and scientific focus
We want to initiate a close research collaboration focusing on global collaborative practices related to the design of explorative artistic platforms, connecting Danish researchers with researchers from China and Brazil. The collaborators shared approach is based on methods of integrated design, which, through artistic exploration, drive technological prototyping processes involving a range of hybrid technologies. The chosen partners contribute with methods and aesthetic concepts from radically different fields and position (performance/narrativation, organic/artificial symbiosis, music/acoustics), which is intended to form a vigorous interdisciplinary collaboration through concrete explorative workshop events.

The intended research takes the perspective of a hybrid ecology of networked communication. We will utilise experiential and situational methods of analysis, and develop narrative models of the semiosis operations embedded in the technological mediation. The prototype events will be generated to situate engaged participants, viewing the totality of the integrated ecology of online and offline communication as staged aesthetic events. The network project will seek to identify a common ground by transfer of methods and aesthetic paradigms, and engage further fields of expertise through each of our local interdisciplinary networks of collaborators. The workshops will develop explorative prototypes for robotic, performative, and acoustic interfacing, which will be installed at all sites and form the base for online research events.