database dilemmas

Database Dilemmas
The third and final theme for this year's Impakt Online commissions
will be 'Database Dilemmas'. The deadline for submitting proposals is
September 15, 2003. From these proposals, two projects will be chosen
for the commission, which will be publically launched on December 1,
2003. Thematic and practical details follow:

The process of collecting, structuring and storing information and
data is a phenomenon typical of digital times. Obviously, data are
the fundaments of almost any digital platform. As an archiving tool,
the database seems to be the most dominant form by which to organise
and structure information. So far.

The obsession with organising and archiving information has also left
its traces in contemporary digital art practices. Many artists have
discovered the database as a new domain for artistic, social and
aesthetic experiments. In the last decade, these artists have been
developing several different approaches toward its specific
characteristics. Their dilemmas concern, among others, the narrative
[how to create narrative from a static collection of data?], the
formal/structural [how to change the specific indexical form of the
database?] and the socio-political [how to change its character from
a closed, controlled system into an open, public one?].

Impakt intends to seek and show projects from artists that explore
the phenomenon of data-collections and the particular structure of
the database from a critical point of view. What are their poetics,
aesthetics and ethics? How do they visualise collections of
information in their projects? How do they approach the traditional
model of the
database? With which aims do they attack, transform and extend its
static form and encyclopaedic structure?

'Database Dilemmas' was conceived by Deanna Herst for Impakt Online.

Call for Proposals

Deadline for Proposals: September 5, 2003
Project Completion Date: November 15, 2003
Launch: December 1, 2003

*Proposals must be written in English, and the project accessible to an
English-speaking audience
*Proposals should include a project description:
—description of content
—details of the technical implementation, including ALL server-side
software required
—rough estimate of total project size in Mb
—time line
—relation to the theme
*Proposals should also include an artist[s] biography:
—short CV
—documentation + URLs of previous projects
*Projects should be accessible to users of all three major Operating
Systems: Linux, MacOS and Win32.
*Previously exhibited projects will be immediately disqualified
*Please do not send any unsolicited large attachments [i.e. >400K],
as they will not be opened. If you must provide us with large files,
please send us a URL or FTP location for them.

Impakt will provide webhosting for the project for 1 year, and pay a
fee to the accepted artist[s] of EURO 1000.

Address for submissions:
online@impakt.nl

Impakt Festival
P.O. Box 735
3500 AS Utrecht
The Netherlands

http://www.impakt.nl/online/