Read / Write Reality

FakePress Publishing, Art is Open Source,
Ninja Marketing and Ostello “Borgo Scacciaventi”
are proud to present

Read / Write Reality

three days of intensive workshop
on the possibilities offered
by Ubiquitous Publishing
techniques and technologies

13 - 14 - 15 + 16 September 2011
Cava de’ Tirreni
ITALY

READ/WRITE REALITY (RWR) is an intensive and visionary workshop created by FakePress Publishing and Art is Open Source in collaboration with Centro Studi Etnografia Digitale to pragmatically explore the methodological, technical and technological possibilities offered by Ubiquitous Publishing, to identify new businesses, new forms of expression, new opportunities for culture and knowledge, new tools for freedoms.

RWR is useful for:

designers wishing to know, understand and use Ubiquitous Publishing technologies;

communicators who want to understand and learn how to bring digital information out of the monitor, into the city, in people's pockets, on objects and in the places we traverse in our daily lives;

developers, who want to learn how to build engaging ubiquitous interactive experiences;

artists, journalists, scientists and researchers wishing to add ubiquitous technologies to their toolset for expression, information, knowledge, education and research practices;

and strategists with the desire to gain knowledge and insights to confront with the next step of digital communication.


RWR will be held on September 13-14-15+16 in Cava de' Tirreni, at the Ostello "Borgo Scacciaventi", a beautiful setting in a 15th century building near to the famous Amalfi coast.

The workshop will fill 3+1 days of intense activity, visionary discussions, engaging hands-on practices, on-the-field explorations and content-production, great food, wine and scenery, in contact with the rooted traditions of the beautiful South of Italy.

How does RWR work?

RWR is a hands-on and minds-on workshop.

During the workshop we will create a complete ubiquitous publishing team and we will realize a complete project, end-to-end.

An initial phase will allow us to get to know each other and what/how/why each one of us would like to obtain from the workshop: be it understanding how to practically use a technology, how to integrate a technological practice or possibility in your company, how to use it within your institution, how to design ubiquitous experiences for your users, how to enact radical communication practices ubiquitously across cities, bodies, objects and architectural spaces.

We will use this information to form groups: for strategy, for technology, for content production, for software development, for interaction design, for post-production.

Each group will join in a complete end-to-end process to create a fully working ubiquitous publishing product.

We will choose a theme, selecting from important issues, radical points of view on the world, ecology, sustainability, social innovation, local development, designing and realizing a product that is narrative, visionary, useful.

We will build our product from scratch, up to the end: we will guide and follow you through the conceptualization, design, implementation, testing, content production and release of the product.

During the process we will introduce you on the methodologies, conceptual frameworks and techniques through which you, your company, your organization or your collective can use ubiquitous technologies to enact new forms of communication and expression, new business models, new ways in which you can activate your strategies and observe their effects. Out of the monitor, in the spaces of cities, on bodies, objects, products.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES & NEW VISIONS FOR LOCAL REALITIES

The workshop will produce a platform which will remain alive and active.

This is an important detail which exemplifies one of the main strategies behind RWR: ubiquitous technologies can enable and realize entirely new opportunities for the development of local realities, promoting the history, cultures, heritages and, most of all, the expressions and ideas of the people which inhabit and traverse territories and spaces, making them alive and filling them with value and richness.

The first edition of RWR will create an open platform which will be expanded in its next versions and which, during the workshops, will be used to create the first step in the creation of a working experiment in localized communication and action.

The people involved in the workshop will have the chance to interview some of the most amazing and interesting operators in the area of the Amalfi coast, working in agriculture, arts and crafts, traditional food production, culture, heritage and innovation, listening to their stories, understanding their philosophies and operative strategies, and turning this wealth of information into the content of the publication produced during the workshop, using augmented reality, location based services, natural interfaces and other advanced forms of interactivity.

A living, functional and innovative form of publishing which will be able to make this richness accessible and usable directly from its territories, and which will be open for further, continuous, emergent interactions from all actors involved.

WHAT WILL YOU LEARN?

You will learn:

how to conceptualize and implement a publication that is accessible through multiple devices (computer, smartphone, tablet) and interaction metaphors (keyboard/mouse, multi/touch screen, gestures, location-based, augmented reality, object-based, architecture-based).

how to design and produce content in ways that allow for optimized fruition across all these devices and forms of interaction.

how to design experiences which are distributed across all these devices and forms of interaction, maximizing accessibility, usability and creating beautiful and engaging cross-medial user experiences.

how to get people involved in these kinds of ubiquitous experiences/products/services/publications, how to communicate them, how to integrate them in social networks online and offline.

how to create virtuous loops which use ubiquitous technologies to promote the development of your territory, of your products, of your company, of your ideas, of your strategies.

how to assess fundamental themes such as users' privacy and freedoms of expression, and how to promote freedom of information through open data.

how to understand and visualize information, in ways which are beautiful and insightful, and which work perfectly across a variety of media.

how to contextualize data and information ubiquitously, across places, objects, times.

how to adopt and support open platforms, to maximize business returns, accessibility, freedoms.

These are some of the technologies we will use at RWR

iPhone, iPad, Android smartphones and tablets

location based, GPS, digital compass

accelerometers for gesture-based interactions

augmented reality: location-based, marker-based, computer vision based

mobile tagging: QRCode, barcodes

HTML5, CSS3, WebGL

multimedia of all sorts, 3D, 2D, sound, immersive sounds and visuals

projection mapping for architecture-based content and interaction

THE PROGRAM

PROGRAM DETAILS

DAY 1

WELCOME: greetings for everyone, general introductions, overview of the next days, getting to know each other.

INTRODUCTORY SEMINAR: we will introduce the technologies which we will use during the workshop; we will outline and collaboratively build our working strategy for the next days; we will introduce the key concepts of ubiquitous publishing, a theoretical and research background, and point out the reference sources for concepts, theories, technologies and techniques which are used to build our approach.

CREATION OF WORKING GROUPS: many of the activities of the workshop will require working in groups; we will form some groups according to skills, desire to confront with specific issues and according to our strategy. Groups will be formed based both on the types of activities which they will perform (software development, cross-media design, ubiquitous content management, strategy, post-processing, access and usability, experiences...) and to organize the content hiking sessions (see next sections)

CONCEPT CREATION: we will analyze how an ubiquitous publication is conceived, from scratch; from the creation of the idea, to the definition of the concept, to the choice of technologies, to the creation of a business model to make it sustainable, to the definition and planning of the whole implementation cycle.

TECHNOLOGY SESSION: we will present a series of technologies which are useful to create your ubiquitous publications, describing the strategic scenarios offered by each of them and the opportunities in terms of user experience, technical feasability, support for different devices, design and development process. We will focus on web/iPhone/iPad/Android/tablet devices and services using technologies/techniques such as Augmented Reality, geographical location, accelerometer and compass driven gesture based interaction, publishing on architectures, QRCodes and object-based AR.

DAY 2 / DAY 3

GOOD MORNING AND RECAP: these sessions introduce each day. We will use them to go over the themes touched the previous day, to open up discussions and to organize the rest of the day.

CONTENT HIKING: the groups formed on the first day will each be assigned a mission in which we will all go and visit some of the most interesting and outstanding people, operators and places of the Amalfi coast. Be it famous or hidden landmarks and ancient ruins, the producers of the best mozzarella in the world, the thousands years old producers of wonderful wines, the last keepers of incredible traditions across food, architecture, arts and crafts, design, or the best emerging innovative entrepreneurs. We will visit them and produce a story through images, videos, interviews and articles, and we will create all this so that it will be accessible and usable through ubiquitous technologies such as augmented reality and location-based services. The practices of anthropology and ethnography will be used as well as the skills on technology and design.

DEVELOPMENT GROUP/DESIGN GROUP: the groups will split among the ones which are more focused on technology and the ones more focused on information and experiences. Each of the resulting working groups will work on the project which will be presented at the end of the workshop, and which will create the platform which will live beyond this first instance of RWR, and be expanded and extended in its next editions. A full design/development cycle will be covered during the workshop: creative brief, benchmarking, targeting, conceptualization, information architecture and design, experience design, iterative creation of the prototypes, creation of the technological architecture, interconnection with social networks, development, usability testing, deployment and launch.

UBIQUITOUS PUBLISHING: the teams will join back together and work on the production and post-production of the content. The layers of information will be created, the stories will be prepared to be usable across multiple devices and interaction metaphors, the multimedia contents will be re-encoded, formatted, post-processed, embedded into interfaces and interactions, informations will be geo-referenced, positioned in three-dimensional space, and attached to the interactive experiences.

UBIQUITOUS MOVIDA: we will engage the wild nightlife of the Amalfi coast, with a mission: create the best augmented reality experience dedicated to such an open, fun, multi-faceted, multi-cultural nightlife scene. Informative, entertaining, engaging, and getting everyone in the streets involved into expressing themselves. We will go to some of the hottest spots in the nightlife of the Amalfi coast and ubiquitously capture it, to be included in the publication.

DAY 4

The Ostello Cava will host the Digital Ethnography Week End promoted by the Centro Studi di Etnografia Digitale in the days immediately following RWR.

The event features an impressive list of contributors and themes. Among others Alberto Abruzzese, Alex Giordano, Adam Arvidsson, Robert Kozinets, Alessandro Caliandro, Stefano Pace, Bernard Cova, Bertram Niessen, Piergiorgio degli Esposti, Nathan E. Hultman, Elanor Colleoni, Alfonso Amendola, Roberta Bartoletti and Luisa Leonini will confront with the current scenario of Digital Ethnography.

more info can be found here:
http://www.etnografiadigitale.it/weekend/



The results of RWR will be presented by FakePress during this important event.

We would most enjoy if one, some or all the workshop participants would like to join us in the presentation of the workshop and of the resulting ubiquitous publishing platform.

RWR participants are, thus, invited to prolong their stay in Cava dei Tirreni and to collaborate with us in the presentation of RWR.

It is a great chance to present your work, your interest in ubiquitous publishing, and to put your art/practice/business in contact with some wonderful people from all over the world.

Who are we?

Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
(Art is Open Source and FakePress Publishing)


Salvatore and Oriana have used several identities over the years to create and perform engaging, planetary actions which have interconnected arts, sciences, research, humanities, politics, activism into global performances that have raised awareness and attention to critical aspects of our time.

Teaching in universities, creating artificial intelligences and interactive systems, enacting global performances which cross media, cities, bodies and the practices of our daily lives are just some of the tools that have been used by Salvatore and Oriana to suggest drastically reinvented scenarios which make us systematically re-think our ordinary world from scratch, imagining new possibilities for arts, business, sciences and politics.

Salvatore and Oriana have exhibited in multiple festivals, events and museums all over the world, they regularly attend and contribute to the international scientific community through teaching, publications and conferences, they perform radical actions in various parts of the globe and happily live their personal revolution every day, by living what they call "a continuous state of workshop", promoting knowledge sharing and dissemination, freedoms of expression and a collaborative view on the world.

more info can be found at
http://www.artisopensource.net
http://www.fakepress.it

we collaborate with:

Transmediale (Berlin); ISIA Design (Florence); Seed Media (New York) and Visualizing Europe; Università "La Sapienza" (Rome); Osservatorio TuttiMedia; Contemporary Arts Museum Casoria (Naples); ISEA – The Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts; Accademia delle Belle Arti di Macerata; Queen Mary Univeristy, Courtauld Institute, Writtle College, University of Westminster, Goldsmiths University, South Bank University (London); CS Cantiere (Milan); Live Performers Meeting; Fondazione D'Ars e Milano in Digitale; il Piemonte Share Festival; Artissima; Università Bocconi; IEEE; Ordine degli Architetti of Rome; Planetary Collegium; NABA - Nuova Accademia delle Belle Arti (Milan); RoBOt Festival (Bologna); Frontiers of Interaction; Furtherfield; Rhizome.org; HCI; (re)Actor3 (Liverpool); Franz Mayer Museum (Mexico City); Istituto di Cultura Italiana (Mexico City); Sydney Biennale; Instituto Technologico de Monterrey (Mexico City); Academy of Sciences (Prague); MEME Fest; Technarte (Bilbao); Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino; Planetary Collegium; ADD Festival; MACRO Contemporary Arts Museum (Rome).

APPLY TO THE WORKSHOP!

please send your application to:
info@artisopensource.net


for info:
mail: info@artisopensource.net
skype: xdxdVSxdxd


http://www.artisopensource.net
http://www.fakepress.it
http://www.etnografiadigitale.it
http://www.ninjamarketing.it/
http://www.ostellocava.it

CONDTIONS

the workshop costs 1000 euro
students, non-profit organizations, education, artists, under 26: 150 euros
over 70: free

REQUISITES

Various profiles are expected, ranging from managers to hackers and everything in between. Different people will do different things during the workshop, according to their objectives. We plan on supporting participants who are interested in the more strategic subjects connected to ubiquitous publishing techniques, as well as the ones who want to understand how to actually design and implement them, through multi/cross media and software development. We will have the FakePress Publishing team form and assist different groups of participants according to the composition of the ensemble.

The only real requisite is a basic knowledge of the technological and social-networked scenarios of our times and a sincere strategic desire and curiosity to know more about the issues presented in the previous pages.

DEADLINE FOR ENROLLMENT

20 Aug. 2011

ACCOMODATION

a number of accomodation options are available on the website
(starting from 15 euro/day)
http://www.ostellocava.it

MEALS

Meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) are not included, but both Cava dei Tirreni and the whole Amalfi coast offer fantastic opportunities to taste and experience wonderful local and tarditional food at really affordable prices.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

During the workshop you will need your laptop computer.

It is advisable to bring along your smartphone and/or tablet computer if you have one.

Also, bring along your cameras and videorecorders, as we'll be going on location to shoot interviews, stories and images which we will use for the publications.

for info:
mail: info@artisopensource.net
skype: xdxdVSxdxd


http://www.artisopensource.net
http://www.fakepress.it
http://www.etnografiadigitale.it
http://www.ninjamarketing.it/
http://www.ostellocava.it