The overall approach of DUST AND DATA consists of the establishment of a series of interlooping “spaces“ using interdisciplinary “workshopping“ as a method.
These spaces can be defined as a working situation using a literally interdisciplinary approach, bringing together different disciplines and their respective working methods: The systemic and technoid approach of code writing will be joined with the abstract constructs of ideas that define many curating processes, and with the outright physical dimension of architecture. The various working methods – in short: coding, critical debate, construction, will be brought to one table or workbench. The habitus of these workshops and spaces will at many moments echo the historical use of the Glyptothek: Like the groups of students and artists who used to congregate around a single plaster cast of an ancient sculpture for studying and drawing, the team of DUST AND DATA will gather together with international experts and critics of various fields around these pieces of art to work on single definitive hands-on approaches dealing with the options of AI supported curation and its physical expression through exhibition design.
DEFINITION SPACES
All three involved disciplines (curating, AI, exhibition design), represented by the project’s core team start the process with a set of palpable methodical approaches to be discussed, developed and processed into precise and hands-on approaches, answers and tangible designs, thereby setting the research grid and rhythm for the overall project. In a later phase these spaces will also serve to reflect and build on the external critics’ input from the CRITICAL-SPACES and transform them into genuine implementations.
CRITICAL SPACES
Six bi-monthly meetings will regularly redirect and adjust the working process by navigational input from leading thinkers and practitioners from the fields of curation, AI and exhibition design, with a clear emphasis on challenging and scrutinizing the assumptions and biases inherent to AI.
LIMINAL SPACES
The overall working process shall be subjected to an increasing degree of public exposure in the format of a workshop discussion gone sneak preview. A limited audience will be introduced to the developing concepts while they are still work in progress. This format is crucially important to the project since the audience’s reaction and input can be taken into account for the ongoing work, but also because some of the approaches and concepts include the audience as active contributors, interlocutors and source.
CONCLUSIVE SPACE
After 18 months of the project‘s time span all the international experts who were initiating single concrete implementations will return for a joint session of reviewing and auditing the current development of all approaches. In a (semi-public) symposium-esque format, there will be physical models of AI based curatorial approaches put in dialogue with the experts and in defensio-like situations. Part of the audience present will consist of a group of junior curators, AI programmers and junior exhibition designers as well as the core team.
HACK SPACE
In direct succession to the CONCLUSIVE-SPACE this event will be a marathon-style working session which is a common format within programmers’ culture. The junior curators, AI programmers and exhibition designers, who were introduced to the project in the CONCLUSIVE-SPACE, will be assigned single approaches. They will make a teamed up effort to compete in turning single approaches into prototypes of applicable curatorial show cases, exhibition-machines or installation pieces. The results will serve as input to the final CONSTRUCTIVE-SPACE.
CONSTRUCTIVE SPACE
The project’s last six month period will be used for a final documentation of the assembled approaches, of the models, code and curatorial developments (e.g. a projected publication) and will be finalized within hands-on displays and physical proof of concepts for use in the final PRESENTATION SPACE.
PRESENTATION SPACE
The projects final activity will be a performance- and exhibition-like presentation of the achievements and the works-in-progress. The PRESENTATION-SPACE will be a final point for DUST AND DATA but at the same time a starting point for further endeavors based on the findings of this specific pesentational situation. Thereby DUST AND DATA might well continue as an ongoing format of critical discourse and curatorial presentation.