MEDIA DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE IN FLANDERS BELGIUM - BAM

In 2009, a year after its release, Cross-Over, the dutch predecessor of this book,
was awarded the Plantin Moretus Prize for innovative graphic design and book
architecture. Cross-Over was designed by Open Source Publishing (OSP), a
multidisciplinary design collective that uses only Free Software tools. OSP works
with the principles of new media in the design of books and introduce tagging
or data visualization in the printed work. As the book was a collaborative
creation, OSP made a clear statement by walking up the podium as a group
when collecting the award on the evening award ceremony.
Like many other media artists, OSP explores the art of working on the
borders of disciplines and known practices and, in that way, comes across
undiscovered possibilities, aesthetics and trajectories. Pieter Van Bogaert
states in this book that these media artists master the art of mediating.
Media artefacts and experiences indeed mediate between people, disciplines,
domains, visions, mindsets and cultures. The cultural output that results
from this art of mediating could be called participatory, since they are the
result of a process of sharing, collaborating, adding and distributing between
– more or less – large and diverse groups of people. They are the product of
a participatory culture, which manifests itself in “a hybrid constellation of
information technology and large user numbers interacting in a socio-technical
ecosystem.” (Schäfer, 2008, p.135).
M E D I A L A B S
Cross-disciplinary collectives – like OSP – that systematically question, apply
and stimulate the art of mediating are close to what David Garcia describes
as media labs in the Dutch version of Cross-Over. According to him something
can be called a media lab from the moment it works across the borders of
disciplines, sectors and cultures. The media lab triggers conversations about
difference, has a clear cultural component and puts experiment and risk central
in its ways of operating. Its cultural output is a multiplicity of forms of sensual
expression.
The media labs in Belgium are most often autonomous artistic places
that gather knowledge and practice experience in the art of mediating. Belgium
has quite a lot of such labs, which resemble what David Garcia calls Tactical
Media Labs. To explain the meaning of the word tactical, we oppose it to the
term strategy. The strategy is formulated by an authority, can be localised
spatially and is reasonably stable. If an individual behaves according to rules
that an authority has laid down for a space, his or her behaviour is strategic
(de Certeau, 1988). The tactic, however, is a self-designed approach to that
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