Aideen Doran and I have been invited to perform our CryptoMeditation workshop as part of the Designs on eLearning conference on 17th September 2015.
As digital technologies continue to transform the creative and pedagogic landscape, we face exciting possibilities and new challenges for the future of education. The 2015 conference aims to explore forms of learning that take place in digital contexts within and beyond HE institutions. For its 10th Anniversary, DeL 2015 will be hosted by University of the Arts London in the prestigious new Central Saint Martins building. #DeL2015
In this short workshop for the mind, body, and device, artists Aideen Doran and Fiona Chambers will introduce a series of strategies for living in the network world. CryptoMeditation addresses how our everyday engagement with technology is increasingly an embodied experience, as computing hardware has become smaller, fitting into the palm of the hand or worn on the wrist, and software interfaces become increasingly invisible to the user. Technologies are becoming naturalised as benevolent, non-human factotums, familiar spirits. At the same time we have never been so surveilled, all of our most intimate data available to be tracked by both governmental and corporate powers. The artists invite you to take control of your online self, disconnect from your smartphone, and reconnect to your body.
The workshop will move between mindful meditation exercises and CryptoParty: a DIY movement of self-organised groups who meet to teach each other the basics of encryption in free public workshops.
There will be opportunities for discussion throughout the event.
Yoga mats will be provided, but if you prefer to bring your own feel free to do so.
Doran and Chambers have been collaborating since 2013 on a joint project of research into the collapsing distinctions between labour and leisure in contemporary capitalism. Most recently they have exhibited in Platform Arts, Belfast and Glasgow Project Rooms.