Contemporary education and research, are undeniably inextricably linked with state-of-the-art technologies (e.g. platforms for distant education and open courses, virtual universities, ΜΟΟCs). On the other hand, different fields of professional artistic production (e.g. cinema, games) are more and more adopting methods of distant collaboration.
The area which has not been thoroughly exhaustively investigated yet, especially regarding artistic education, is that of «real-time education», as a structure enabling at the same time:
a. the realization of multi-user experiments and the real-time collaboration between different participants (e.g. students, instructors, researchers, professionals) towards the development of joint artistic projects,
b. the organization and archiving of common experience (experimental and theoretical) towards the production of new courses and knowledge in general, and
c. the support of physically distributed participatory actions and events, both in physical and in virtual space (e.g. seminars/workshops, exhibitions, artistic projects for the public).
«Real-time education» with the above characteristics is vital for artistic education and research, but also for other fields, especially interdisciplinary ones.
@postasis proposal targets real-time artistic education through the development of a suitable platform that enables:
a. the setup of real-time courses within the virtual and physical space, accessible by different participants at the same time (multiuser),
b. the collaborative creation of artistic projects, both in the virtual and in the physical space (e.g. a virtual artistic exhibition, an Internet-of-Things installation), by different participants,
c. the support of large-scale geographically dispersed events and actions brining the above experiences to interested stakeholders and the public (e.g. artistic happenings, transnational projects and seminars, interdisciplinary scientific experimentations).
d. the archiving of acquired experiences to new forms of educational material (e.g. ebooks).
The architecture of the proposed platform is illustrated in Figure 1.
The @postasis platform targets educators, students, researchers, as well as many other categories of involved stakeholders (e.g. independent artists, indie producers, art and culture centres, research laboratories), from different areas that use creative technologies, thus deploying a modern ecosystem of creation and development (see Figure 2).
Consortium
The @postasis working group (Athens School of Fine Arts, Paris-8 university) was expanded, after a request for collaboration from the initiators towards different but complementary spaces, namely a software company, Omega Technology (GR), which would undertake the implementation of the basis of the platform software, and two non-profit organizations which would communicate the concepts of @postasis: ARGENIA (IT) representing Generative Art, and MAD Emergent Art Center (NL) representing community oriented practices for experimenting with art and technology, with links to society through the organizations of conferences, workshops, seminars and large events for the public.
Download the project flyer here.