#OpenDataLDN 3: Wikimedia and New Collaborations

I presented Landscape-Portrait at the bi-monthly meet up of the Open Knowledge Foundation last night. The night of lightning talks featured various talks including the National Archive at Kew, who are having a hack day in the near future, which could be interesting. The night went well, lots of interest from various sources, charities producing personal narratives of those they help, other students. But as yet no programmer, which was the main aim of the evening, interestingly I was not the only one requesting technical help, seems like a bit of a bottle neck.

Asier Mendizabal - Raven Row

Last night i went to a talk by Asier Mendizabal at Raven Row, the gallery owned and run by Alex Sainsbury. I am quite perplexed by the whole evening, it kinda makes me wonder if a gallery, even one as accommodating as RR - is the right place for Mendizabal's work. The works seem like props for a narrative that can only be told by the artist, or a select group 'who are in the know'.
Perversely I think this performative, story telling approach would work quite well within the confines of community based work. Whereby a working group develop a set of props and
a narrative, and the performance on this becomes is the work, the story would then (ideally) be retold and mistold, making its transition from object to symbol mmmmm
sort of - It also struck me that most of his works come from a world which might considered - analogue - the punk movement, 50's abstract expressionism. Its like a music fan who refuses to listen to music after 1973, the narratives that Mendizabal develops are not complicated by the confusion and multiplicity caused by domestic access to computing and digital networks, the references he uses seem, in comparison to the contemporary moment, quite fixed.

LOD - Programmer

I've been searching for a LOD programmer to both advise and probably do some of the programming for the next stage of LP. Kat from the OKF has been helpful but as yet nothing has materialized. As a result I am going to present the work at LDN 3, the monthly meet up of the OKF, hopefully from that something will occur.....

LOD Landscape-Portrait - Programmer/ Open Data advisor Needed !

Overview.

Landscape-Portrait is public art project which collects video portraits of person and place which act as a critique of those produced by demographics. The work tours around the country inviting collaboration between local artists, community professionals and participants within each locale. The work has been running now in its data gathering phase for five years and has collected an extensive archive of video portraits.

The plan now is to release this video content as open data, with the aim of offering an alternative view of person and place to that which is derived from statistical information. In order to do this I need the services of a programmer conversant with Open Data practices (RDF etc), who might be willing to work with me on this next phase.

The project is not a commercial exercise, it has been funded primarily by the Arts Council of England, therefore there is not an extensive budget, however we do has some funding. In addition the project is the focus of my PHD, and therefore I can devote considerable time to it.

If you think you may have some time to help move the project onto the next phase please drop me a line @: kevin@co-lab.org.

Phase one of the project itself can be viewed here: www.landscape-portrait.com