Open Call for participation HDSA2020: Network Imaginaries

Open Call for participation HDSA2020: Network Imaginaries
Name	Open Call for participation HDSA2020: Network Imaginaries
Location	The Internet and a distributed network of local hosts
Date	2020/06/15
Time	[[]]
PeopleOrganisations	Hackers & Designers
Type	HDSA2020
Web	Yes
Print	No

Hackers & Designers Distributed Summer Academy 2020: 'Network Imaginaries'

• When? 20-25 July, 2020
• Where? The Internet

Apply here before June 15, 2020!

Are you interested in exploring the possibilties and boundaries of network infrastructures, inter-social and technical communication protocols, material implications of connectivity? You want to lift the fog off cloud concepts? Are you thinking through making? Are you looking for new challenges and cross-disciplinary collaboration? Join the H&D Summer Academy 2020!

In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic Hackers & Designers acknowledges the importance of continuity and solidary action, thus proposes an alternative format for the 6th edition of the H&D Summer Academy (HDSA2020). Without rendering the current events as an 'opportunity' we restructured our annual H&D Summer Academy into a distributed workshop programme—taking place in one dedicated week in July! The outcome and highlights will be shared during a public program in autumn. In earlier editions we worked together with approximately 25 participants during 2 intensive weeks. While we promote the importance of physical encounters for community building, making friends and allies, having discussions and start new initiatives, we think its important to stay safe.

We have received a large number of incredible workshop proposals, which enable us to start new collaborations with initiatives in different places in the world, develop and facilitate remote learning formats that will be presented and shared online, with a bigger group of participants. In the week of 20-25 July we will be all hacking and designing in our own local communities or at home while being connected with the larger H&D network. We are therefore happy to open the call for participation:

We invite creative practitioners whose interest lie in critically and practically engaging with technology, to join us in reflecting and reimagining distributed practices. Whether it be fashion designers, system administrators, or disobedient citizens—we invite the H&D community and the wider public to learn together about network technologies in experimental and hands-on ways. Under the overarching title 'Network Imaginaries' we challenge and activate participants to use and push the boundaries of existing technology and programming platforms (webware, hardware, software), online/offline networks, high and low tech (internet, IPFS, darknet, peer2peer, blockchain, bot networks), and user experience, all in a practical manner—and while addressing the ethical implications of the proposed technologies and processes.

The workshop program is organized in a distributed manner. Workshop proposals we submitted and selected through an Open Call. The final program will be published by the end of June 2020 on the H&D website.

We are looking for artists, thinkers, coders and other makers to delve with us into 'Network Imaginaries'

How does the distributed HDSA work?

• The program is comprised of 6 to 10 'workshop scripts' – that is, workshops prepared for online encounters across the world and across different time zones. The workshops will accessible to all participants and workshop facilitators for the duration of the HDSA.
• Participation is free of charge yet we are asking you kindly to consider donating an amount between EUR 30-50,00
• You will have to get supplies at your own expenses. Technical riders will be shared a month in advance.
• Workshop facilitators will be available for occasional questions from participants during the workshop week 20-25 July 2020.

Related Activities

Throughout the years H&D has been exploring and imagining different network concepts and networked practices in many ways. Looking back at some of our activities dealing with ‘Network Imaginaries’ we are getting very excited about the upcoming Summer Academy! Below are some examples of activities we organized in the past:

• Hypermush a workshop with Andre Fincato and Marcel Goethals during HDSA2018
• Modem Workshop a workshop with Dennis de Bel & Roel Roscam Abbing during HDSA2016
• Build your own node a workshop with Frank Beks The Things Network during HDSA2017
• Dowse a workshop with Dyne.org during HDSA2016
• Eliza Ludd the Fog and the Shade a workshop by Char Stiles and Ollie George during HDSA2019
• Walking Signals Workshop Part One a workshop by dianaband in 2019
• Protocols a workshop by Joel Galvez during HDSA2018

About Hackers & Designers

H&D is a non-profit workshop initiative with an emphasis on technology, design and art, and cross-disciplinary exchange. By creating shared moments of learning and unlearning, H&D invites ‘makers’, and ‘users’ to discuss topics related to reliances on technology in our daily physical and digital, private and professional lives. H&D furthermore promotes and stimulate self-initiation and strategies of self-determined making to enable socio-technological literacy and critical citizenship.

Kindly supported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie