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>
DEMONEN.Theater.Archiv.Buch.Hörspiel
> Prices
and awards
>
Temporary tour-schedule
> The project
> The artistic goals
> What does TROIA mean?
> Objectives of the project
> Approach and methods adopted
for the implementation of the project
> Partners involved in the
project
> Evaluation/Documentation
> Links
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Prices
and awards
TROIA is an experimental platform: an intelligent room in public
space, a mobile architecture transcending the conventional potentials
of stages or art spaces.
TROIA is a European theatre-project developed by the German art
group BBM (i.e. Observers of Operators of Machines) under the auspices
of the Hanoverian City Arts Council.
A 3D interactive theatre performance will be developed locally for
each venue, in addition to a radio play and various film and media
projects that will be presented during daytime.
TROIA is a mobile building located in public space - a (theatre)
arena of the future. The innovative blueprint for TROIA by Californian
architect Neil Denari has received the
International Ace Award for Architecture 2004.
The building currently being constructed is based on Denari’s
concepts and has been adapted to its present design by BBM-member
Martin Hoyer.
TROIA combines art and science, emergent technology, theatre, architecture
and media in an exciting and innovative way. Within the building
wearable multimedia devices, a positioning system and the world’s
first walkable 6-sided pixel screen create a unique immersive space.
Outside TROIA people will be tracked and contacted via their mobile
phones.
BBM has been granted the "Visionenkessel"
Award of the University of Bremen for their concept combining "senses
and telepresence" and for their choreography transforming
spectators into actors themselves in order for them to experience
a totally new sensation enabled by the wearable multi-media tool
called "armpod", a "remote
viewing video/sound streaming device".
BBM will develop the full scheme in cooperation with Loca/PLAN,
a European artist and technicians network based in UK.
The mission is to generate public debate on homeland security systems
and about "technologies of political control",
such as non-lethal weapons, directed energy munitions (demons) and
population-specific biotechnological agents. Therefore TROIA focuses
on the next generation of crowd control, mass surveillance and prison
technologies.
The New York Award jury voiced the effects of TROIA as follows:
Teddy Cruz perceived the project as both a "critique of technology
(…) of communication, protest, and information," but
also "an art project, raising issues about the dynamics of
crowds in the context of resistance and the tactics of government
… that intervene in public space." For Brian Healy it
"politicizes public space." Cox went further, arguing
that Troia "crystallizes what public space is supposed to do,
and that is to initiate a public discussion.""
TROIA is supported through the "Culture 2000"
programme, funded by the Directorate General for Education and Culture
of the European Union.
Co-producers include Vienna Theatre Festival, Theater der Welt Stuttgart
2005, C3 Hungary, Futuresonic Manchester.
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Temporary
tour-schedule
Public performances are scheduled from
July 2005 with the world premiere taking place at the festival "Theater
der Welt" in Stuttgart through summer 2005 with venues in the
cities of Manchester/UK and Budapest/HU and a final presentation
at the festival "Wiener Festwochen" in May 2006.
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The project
TROIA deals with the subject "Technologies
of Political Control": The starting point for the development
of the project is a report, commisioned by the EU Parliament in
Brussels, investigating the state of instruments of repression currently
in use in Europe.
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The artistic
goals
The TROIA project comprises the development and production
of an urban mobile theatre platform by a wide range of leading European
theatre-makers, artists, architects, engineers and scientists.
The whole purpose of TROIA is to focus public awareness
and discussion on the technologies of political control within the
context of a fast developing Europe. It takes the most recent reports
of the Manchester based Omega Foundation as its starting point.
From this TROIA will develop a futuristic stage, a huge transportable
building that will appear in the public forum and engage the public
in ways expected and unexpected. Indeed this mobile modular container
will function like a latterday Trojan Horse by infiltrating the
concious and unconcious precepts of both the visitors and passers
by alike. Though it has the appearance of a gift it carries a dangerous
and at times subversive content.
The architectural structure is a travelling citizens
forum, a hybrid info-box with a spectacular architectural presence.
It is designed for the temporary positioning in the centre of Kaunas,
Vienna and Prague, cities central to the fault lines of recent European
history. Following the projects completion is intended to install
TROIA at a well situated permanent site.
Embedded within the architecture is media art and
technology that will engage actors and visitors in interaction.
The subject matter is communicated by the employment of performers
acting as undercover agents provocateurs with a performance based
on a script that is individually generated by each host country
where TROIA is exhibited, thereby making it as culturally relevant
as possible. The actors, not detectable as such, mingle with the
crowd and go to see the multi-media event with them. Their main
task is to initiate conversations and to infiltrate the public space
with information and opinions.
This combination of subtle dissemination and spectacular
form should open a field of tension within the visitor that lasts
well after the project is finished ... in fact planting a Trojan
"seed" in the the viewer that can inform the public discussion on
the issues the exhibition raises and thereby contribute to an active
development of society in which it appears.
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What does TROIA mean
On the one hand, the title TROIA as a cryptonym
refers to the technical instruments made available to the performers
and visitors. In robotics and in the terminology of programmers
an "intelligent agent" is a tool acting autonomously according
to certain instructions. The second level of meaning of "agent"
refers of course to the domain of spying and to the underhand methods
of political interests. As well (bio)chemists call gas and other
active substances an agent. Apart from the archaeological context
TROIA as a concept is related to the European cultural heritage,
to the critical lines of democracy and to the roots of occidental
civilization.
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Objectives of the project
The artistic objective of the project is to bring
about a new social and political relevance for the theatre in the
public space, and this namely by the combination of innovative forms
of theatre, media art and architecture. The project sounds out the
relation between the "fundamental freedom of the citizens"
and the "internal security". The aim is to raise a public
awareness of this important topic in an enjoyable way. Scientific
and political approaches are translated into a language which is
understandable for the general public. By an intensive examination
of the new technologies of political control TROIA promotes the
participation and the self-responsibility of the citizens in a concrete
and sustainable way. Public space is simultaneously the playground
of the street performances, the place of spontaneous meetings of
citizens and the place where modern surveillance and control technology
is used. Therefore in this space cultural, social and political
interests overlap.
The project in essential shall establish a methodology
of how artistic platforms can become a very distinct forum for involving
a large public in a complex discourse.
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Approach and methods adopted for the implementation
of the project
Basis of the common project-development is an extensive
report of the NGO Omega Foundation, Manchester/UK, which deals since
over 15 years with the subject of "internal security"
and technologies of control. The report is commissioned by the European
Parliament´s STOA panel (STOA is short for "scientific
and technological option assessment"). In accordance with a
strategic paper presented by the robotics-performance-group BBM,
Hanover, GER, the project has to work out appropriate "translations".
The form of communication elaborated by TROIA differs
from the conventional formats of a non-intelligible specialist terminology
and translates such jargons by the means of appropriate forward-looking
media into a comprehensible language.
By probing the past political systems contradictions,
TROIA makes visible the inner-European cultural and historical diversities.
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Partners involved in the
project
GER: Hanover, Museums and Culture Department of the
City Council,
Heinz Balzer
A: Vienna, Wiener Festwochen, Luc Bondy, Marie Zimmermann
CZ: Prague, FCCA Foundation Center for Contemporary Arts, L. Hlavacek
LT: Kaunas, Meno Teritorja, Daiva Citvarienë
HU: Budapest, C3, Center for Culture and Communication, M. Peternak
GER, Stuttgart, Theater der Welt Stuttgart, Marie Zimmermann
A: Vienna, University of Vienna, Institute of Philosophy, Prof.
Dr. W. Pircher
UK: Manchester, Omega Foundation, Steve Wright
SL: Maribor, Association for Culture and Education KIBLA, P. Dobrila
UK: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Visual Neuroscience, Dr.
A. Thiele
UK: Manchester, Futuresonic, Drew Hemment
GER: BlinkenArea
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BBO
GER: Hamburg, Sunshine Project, Jan van Aken
hübotter
gmbh
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![[BBO]](img/bbo-logo.gif)
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Evaluation/Documentation
Video: Another aspect of the TROIA-project
is the work — beginning with the start of the project —
on a documentation. The contents will get a great extent of precision
through the documentation. The video attaches great importance to
every technical and historical detail.
Like in a flow diagram the testing of this model of
democratic participation will be documented and analysed. This will
be done through video recording of the visitors’ reaction during
the complete length of the presentation. As well, lots of interviews
will be made on DV in each country and edited afterwards.
The video material will be analysed, first for the
re-organisation of the choreography as such (for the next staging),
then added to a documentary video that will be accessible in its
actualised version at every event.
The video will be in the original language with English
subtitles.
Library: In a virtual library the scientific
background material will be present at the exhibition place.
Information can be exchanged and added online to keep
the process of gathering of different European aspects dynamic in
the sense of an open archive.
Visitors are offensively invited to use and change
the content of the library, add articles or books or pictures or
write statements or talk about and record their experiences with
the subject of "internal security matters".
This will be collected, stored, alphabetically organized
according to content aspects and edited as a kind of modern encyclopedia
on European contemporary history of political control.
The archive will be in the original language of the
document and in English translation.
Book:
A book of approx. 600 pages will be published containing
revised versions of the best lectures from the three TROIA conferences,
additional informative textes, pictures and documentation material.
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Links:
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http://troia.blinkenarea.org
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http://www.loca.org.uk
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http://www.futuresonic.com
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http://www.sunshine.org
- http://www.lettre.de
[siehe
Archiv, Heft 61 ]
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http://www.visionenkessel.de/projekte.htm
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http://www.visionenkessel.de/ideenwettbewerb.htm
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