This year’s Consciousness Reframed conference has just finished, and we just returned home for a little while.
A sunny Munich hosted the tenth edition of the Planetary Collegium‘s annual conference themed “Experiencing Design, Behaving Media”.

We presented two FakePress projects: Conference Biofeedback and Ubiquitous Anthropology.

Conference Biofeedback @ Consciousness Reframed

Conference Biofeedback @ Consciousness Reframed

The two projects form a continuous line of thought: the emergence of narratives built on interstitial spaces built through technologies on-between bodies, architectures, objects, places. Build new spaces for expression and communication that are overlayed on ordinary reality.

Conference Biofeedback allowes you to acquire new sensibilities directed to the feelings of the people you are talking to. While the USB device that we produced for the conference was somewhat cumbersome (I just finished soldering it at 5am in the morning before leaving for Munich) it provided quite an interesting experience: while i made the presentation, people interacted with the web interface and actually gave me quite a few shocks.

While I always question myself about the interestingness of the things I talk about, I guess the availability of this novelty contributed quite a bit to the great deal of clicking-and-shocking-the-lecturer that was going on among the people in the audience. :)

The project was presented as a “war on boring conferences” but people were truly happy about the implicit possibilites: we discussed about these devices as low information publishing tools that could interact with our common practices by providing externalized sensibilities; and also about the possibilities to break communication codes and create spaces-in-between that can be used for autonomous, self-determined self-expression, beyound authority, control and censorship.

These techno-practices have uses that can provide useful for creativity, commerce, art, information, communication and education. But, most of all, they are an explicit expression of the ways in which contemporary sensibilities might change, they show possible directions towards changes in attitude, in the concepts of public and private spaces, in the adoption of new forms of identity and social collaboration, new politics, new relationships with the environment and with people.

And new expression of the Ethnographic Self are the focus of Ubiquitous Anthropology: multi author, location based narratives that allow to go beyond classic anthropological researches, often expression of single points of view provided by anthropologists and researchers, and to create spaces for the expressions of all the actors involved. Look at the world from the point of view of other people, accepting and valuing different perspectives and individualities. Become multiple by “wearing” the voice of the Other. A perceptive jukebox through which discourses, points of view and sensibilities can truly evolve.

Here is a video of the presentation:

(sorry, it’s the wrong way…. please turn your monitor on the side.. I promise I will never use my iPhone on the side ever again :)  )

The Consciousness Reframed conference was truly worthwhile: lots of friends presenting truly interesting projects and researches. I do advise you to check out the presentation list and the materials that will be published shortly at the conference’s website.

An interesting side note: we just published the book telling the story of Angel_F‘s first year of life. We met Derrick de Kerckhove in Munich and we gave it to him as a present. Here’s a picture below :)

Derrick de Kerckhove and Angel_F

Derrick de Kerckhove and Angel_F

But that’s another story, and we’ll tell you all about it as soon as we get back from AHAcktitude. Our little Angel_F will be there as well, so you might as well drop by if you like.

Stay tuned.