I can’t express how excited I am to be heading to Buenos Aires for this week’s seminar ¿El Paréntesis de Gutenberg?, which is essentially a week-long investigation into how digital media is transforming communication and culture. (I’m depending somewhat on my shaky knowledge of Spanish there…)
I was invited by Alejandro Piscitelli, who I had the pleasure of meeting three years ago at a wild meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was a visit that inspired my favorite Abject Learning blog post, and it appears that Dr. Piscitelli has set the stage for something even more provocative. He has assembled a group of energetic and creative media thinkers and doers (and me) for a series of mini-presentations (fifteen minutes, max), discussions, and work sessions taking place at the city’s prime cultural centre (as well as some pretty fantastic restaurants), with the goal of engaging the public (the seminar is open and free), and creating a book.
I happen to know some of the other guests, and it just makes me more exited, (in order of sidebar list): Mara Balestrini, who I met earlier this year in Barcelona and who blog Transmedia is essential reading, especially for those interested in mobile media; Òscar Ciuró from the magnificent Trànsit Projectes; Sofía Coca and Pedro Jimenez from ZEMOS98 who you may recall have profoundly blown my mind on a number of occasions; Juan Freire, who introduced me to the concept of “expanded education”; and Juan Insúa, who hosted me earlier this year at a wonderful event as Director of CCCBLab in Barcelona. I can’t wait to get to know the rest of these people!
A number of videos for these guests have been made (the one at the top of this post was made by Mara Balestrini, something all us invited guests were to do. Because of the activity in Barcelona this past week (and my ineptitude as a video worker), I never did mine… but somehow this appeared:
If you are wondering, that image of me is drawn from this movie made in my back alley by Sharon Kravitz (guest appearances by Harry and Dexter):
You’ve got nothing to worry about- your Spanish in your video is perfect!
Can I also get Harry the Hybrid’s autograph, he is so cool. And he’s a winner.
Sounds like a great trip!
Nice Edit, DJ. See, nothing to worry about.
We never got a chance to talk about this (or did we talk about anything else) but I wonder if you are going to touch on Parenthetical Violence, of the violence of bracketing. I don’t know what else to say about it, so I’ll shut up (and even that can be a violent act.)
Adios!