Medialabs

Since 1990 I have spent most of my working life in ‘media labs’, simply workspaces where people work, learn and develop and experiment with media, with the note that all are connected to the internet and resources are shared. Much of it is based on the idea of collaboration between creative and technical minds, on social engagement and principles of sharing, open source and open data.

  • The flying Desk, Amsterdam, now split between Desk.nl and and Desk.org. I am actually the founder and started as a private whole sale company, 1994-1997. Several artists made their first steps on the Internet through Desk. When commerce started to prevail I moved away and went nomadic.
  • Media lab at the ZKM Media Museum Karlsruhe. Work space for Salon Digital, 1997-1999. We focused on online media art and strange things like ‘net based arts’ or net.art.
  • Bootlab, Berlin, previously known as the bootstraplab or mikrolab which I co-founded. 1999-2005. The bootlab is modular environment, people produce and present, show and discuss.
  • Re-Lab, Riga, just visited once in 1999, but I hope to get back. Has evolved into RIXC.
  • The Thing in New York, just jumping in now and then, 1997-2001.
  • Spent a couple of times at The Thing Basel, 1996-1998.
  • Visited one or twice Etoy in Zürich, 1997.
  • Unfortunately, I have never visited backspace, London.
  • In 2001 and 2002 I worked at Mondialonline, a collection of activities, not really a medialab, but still…
  • After labin in fall 2001 I spent time much at Ljudmila until 2002, or the Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, which is ‘s’loutly fabulous’, but very cold in the winter.
  • Multimedia Institute in Zagreb, with it’s net.culture center “mama”, (cybercafé, presentation space, DJ lounge). In 2001 and 2002 a residency program and establishes a medialab. I will be here until May, co-organising a “week of new media culture” – working title.
  • In 2002, I became director of Hull Time Base Arts in Hull, UK where I worked until 2005 to establish an arts centre with a media lab at it’s core. In 2004 we created a digital class room. In 2005 there was the conference ExStream in Vienna. Sadly, the new arts centre has not been realised.
  • In 2004, I visited the Redundant Technology Initiative in Sheffield.