Electrosmog

ELECTROSMOG

International Festival for Sustainable Immobility

- A global conference for homebodies
The irony of people jetting around the world to discuss sustainability and the environment is obvious but the recent international festival on the topic enablesd people to attend without having to travel.

ElectroSmog - the International Festival for Sustainable Immobility, ran from March 19 to 21 (NZ timezone.) and was conducted through online video conferences and second life hubs. People took part from Canada, the United States, Germany, Finland, Latvia, India, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom.

CoLab sponsored a breakfast for a video conference that took part in New Zealand on Sunday March 21. CoLab’s James Charlton took part in a collaborative project with the University of Otago, Victoria University, BeSTGRID, Blue Fern and Venture Southland to discover whether electronic connections really are more sustainable and not just creating a new form of pollution or ‘electrosmog’. This was facilitated in New Zealand by ADA (Aoteaora Digital Arts Network - http://www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz).

CoLab’s Becca Woods performed with a group of globally distributed collaborators in ‘Backyard Dances’ where dancing bodies and local backyards were transported via communication technologies allowing them to be everywhere at once, while staying home. Exciting projects were also developed by teams of BCT (Bachelor of Creative Technologies) students as part of the Electrosmog Festival and were online during the festival – see http://creativetechnologies.ac.nz/projects.html

The exploration of Sustainable Immobility is a quest for a more sustainable life style, which is less determined by speed and constant mobility. A lifestyle that celebrates stronger links to local cultures, while at the same time deepening our connections to others across any geographical divide, using new communication technologies instead of physical travel.

The festival brought together a broad coalition of designers, environmentalists, urban and spatial planners, technologists, artists, theorists, alomgside engaged and concerned citizens, with the aim to explore and ‘design’ sustainable immobility.