July 25–August 5, 2016
Application deadline: June 15
Hackers & Designers
Frans de Wollantstraat 84
1018SC Amsterdam
During the summer of 2016 Hackers & Designers invites an international group of ambitious artist, designers and developers for a 10 day hands-on workshop program, including collective dinners, lectures, a film program and a concluding exhibition.
Open call
The H&D Summer Academy is open for professional practitioners and undergraduate/graduate students in the fields of design, art, and/or technology in and outside of The Netherlands.
All workshops are accessible for both tech-savvy and newbie nerds.
At work.
The program will center around the controversial topic of immaterial labor, and the effects digital economies have on our current techno-society—a crucial and on-going discussion at stake in both design/art and developer practices.
H&D invites the summer academy participants to go into discussion and critically reflect on their (digital) activities that exist outside/alongside the traditional wage-based definition of labor. What does it mean to contribute to creative commons and open source projects, to self-initiate, to promote and publish on social networks, to perpetually generate content, to evolve multiple identities as bloggers, vloggers, and mobile journalists…?
Progam
The program will be divided in two blocks each of 5 days. Both program blocks fall under the thematic umbrella: “At work.”
The block Soft Work focuses on software construction alongside looking at soft concepts including soft money, soft intelligence, soft power, soft forms of organization of work, etc. while taking place at De PUNT.
The second block: Hard Work focuses on Hardware construction along hard concepts like hard money, hard data, hard labor, etc., while taking place at the Fablab of WAAG Society. The two blocks complement each other in terms of taught technical skills and content.
Approach: hands-on, DIY (do it yourself) and DIT (do it together)
Concepts like encryption, crypto-currencies, post-scarcity, etc. will be addressed in a workshop manner. The hands-on approach and challenges that come with making as opposed to talking will stay central throughout the whole program.
H&D believes that in order to develop a deeper understanding of the qualities and disadvantages of technology we need to look inside the black boxes of the technology that we heavily rely on in our daily physical and digital, our private and professional lives. Therefore we urge the participants of the summer academy to open the box, look inside it, rummage through it or even make their own boxes.
Approach: collaboration
Technologists will, contrary to convention, be invited to engage at the beginning of the creative process. Similarly the designers and artists will be encouraged to experiment with unfamiliar and deeper technological concepts with which they may not be immediately equipped. It is through the collaborative approach where common vocabulary and understanding will arise, and be available in future endeavors beyond the Summer Academy.
Locations:
De PUNT, Amsterdam: first program block, July 25–29
Waag Society, Amsterdam: second program block, August 1–5
The workshop program will be accompanied by a public program including a film screening at Waag Society, a concluding exhibition and a lecture night at De PUNT.
Price:
Full program, inclusive welcome dinner, daily lunch, free access to the public programs: 350,00 EUR (excl. VAT)*
Apply now. Limited spots available.
Sign up before June 15 by sending a short motivation (150 words max) to [email protected] and send along some work examples if you have (pdf under 2 mb).
If you are interested in occasional Summer Academy announcements sign up here.
*Participants who sign up for the full program are prioritized in the selection process. Joining one of the two program block is possible in exceptional cases.
The Hackers & Designers Summer Academy is generously funded by Stimuleringsfonds
