The panel session ‘People, Places and Distributed Communities’, addresses the forms of movement and architectures for participation, which emerge through bottom-up and ground-level, independent artist initiatives.

Often artist led communities develop out from a need to address contextual and resource issues within a particular locality. Within recent years, virtual and digital media have allowed for such concerns to have a global reach. However, with the success of any community, issues such as growth and sustainability, ownership and authorship, creative process and output, have to be continually negotiated and constructed.

For this panel, four mixed media practitioners have been invited to discuss and present independent, networked and/or grass-root communities and projects they have initiated and been involved in.

Speakers:
Teresa Dillon, IRE/UK - artist-researcher-director, Polar Produce/N.I.P./UM
Luis Silva, PT - curator, Upgrade! Lisboa and Rhizome
Takuro Lippit, NL - musician and Artistic Advisor, STEIM
Paulo Raposo, PT - musician and director of Sirr records
Chair: Luísa Ribas, Docente FBAUL, PT

Location:
Clube Português de Artes e Ideias
Largo Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, 29, 2o [ao Chiado]

Bios
Teresa Dillon
Teresa Dillon’s work focuses on the exploration of human, socio-cultural and economic relations, behaviours and forms of communication that emerge within and between different systems and ecologies. Drawing on a variety of technologies and methods, she creates work, which combines pop, DIY, low and high art aesthetics.

Over the years, her approach has led to a broad body of work from location or site-based, performances and installations, to academic and applied research and interface design, to the curation and production of public art events and programmes, as well as music, sound art and writing.

Alongside her individual practice, Teresa currently directs the Bristol based collective Polar Produce (including Kathy Hinde, Philip O’Dwyer and Maarten de Laat), through which she co-organizes and curates the OFFLOAD programme. In 2007, Teresa set up N.I.P. - New Interfaces for Performance a European, distributed touring network and research space for practitioners working and developing interfaces for live performance and interactive installation. N.I.P. currently includes 12 artists, draw from across the UK, Portugal and The Netherlands. Teresa’s work has been shown internationally, she has published on creative collaboration, new media and design. She also works as a freelance producer (BBC) and lectures at Cambridge University.

Takuro Lippit
dj sniff (Takuro Mizuta Lippit) believes in the instrumental autonomy of the turntable and the musicianship of the DJ. He is a turntable musician working in the field of improvised and experimental music. His music focuses on the live reconstruction and narratization of the phonographically amplified - the music, the sound, the technology and the past. To achieve this, he uses a unique setup consisting of hand-made hardware interfaces and a custom Max/MSP software along with one turntable and DJ mixer. He is also a concert/event curator for electronic music and a researcher of music technology.

While studying Art History and Philosophy in Tokyo, he was active as a DJ in the underground electronic music scene and formed a collective called smashTV productions which organized genre-mixing events such as anti-Gravity and bistro-Smash!. In 2002, he moved to New York to pursue graduate studies in computer music and physical computing at NYU’s ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program). Since 2005 he has been involved with STEIM’s (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Amsterdam) R&D lab and is currently its Artistic Co-Director.

dj sniff regularly performs with computer musician Yutaka Makino as Audile and with saxophonist Keir Neuringer.

Paulo Raposo
Paulo Raposo is media artist, composer, curator and radio producer based in Lisbon, Portugal.

After studies of philosophy and cinema in Lisbon, he has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer sound, performing, recording and exhibiting works in France, Germany, UK, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Baltic States and United States.

His work spans across different sound investigations including public space and field recordings, audio-visual environements, electracoustic and interactive works that explores the inter-relationships and displacements between digital process and architectural spaces, using computer and custom-built software to create abstract and delicate sound works. Critics referred to his work as “an opportunity to hear contemporary sound art in one of its best moments with the perfect blend of phonography and masterful processing” and “an imaginative and border-crossing project with its sensors open in all directions”.

Raposo performed and colaborated with numerous artists, including Janek Schaefer, Jason Kahn, Stephan Mathieu, Kaffe Mathews, Marc Behrens, John Grzinich, Zbigniew Karkowski, eRikm, André Gonçalves, Carlos Santos, Carlos Zíngaro, Christopher Murphy, Koji Asano, Sara Kolster, among others.

He curates Sirr since 2001, a label dedicated to promote challenging sound art, and organizes numerous events.

Luísa Ribas
Assistant at the Communication Design Group of the Fine Arts School - University of Lisbon (from 1998 to present date). Master in Multimedia Arts (2002) with a dissertation entitled “On the Role of Sound in Audiovisual” and Degree in Communication Design (1996), both at FBAUP. Visiting assistant at ICICOM - FLUP, in Sound Theory (2004/2006).Visiting assistant at FBAUP (1997/1998).