Dear all,

Here is the call for workshops, lectures and presentations. NODE20 is taking place from October 2nd to 8th 2020 in Frankfurt and we’re getting started planning the program for the community. Together with you! We call the community program the summit for creative technologies. We are daviduser and joreguser and we are the spearheads of its curation. In our quest to improve the process of the selection and curation of the overall workshops we’ve chosen a board consisting of vvvveterans sebluser, miikuser, kathiuser and motziuser to help us make decisions. But since we are creating this program for you, you are of course our most important advisors, because we need to understand what interests you in order to make the program meaningful for everybody.

Therefore we want to hear from you:

What do you want to learn?
What can you offer to teach?
How does our theme affect you?

The NODE20 Theme

This year, NODE will examine art-making and creative practice in times of planetary crisis. A crisis that is, in large part, fuelled by our technology needs (Internet use, for example, accounts for one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year). How seriously do we as a community of digital creators take our share of responsibility? How can we rethink our practices both in terms of footprint and criticality and empower others to do the same? And how do we leverage NODE as a cultural platform that brings the public into the conversation?

The arts and culture program, spearheaded by this year’s curatorial team of Jeanne Charlotte Vogt (NODE), Carmen Salas (Connecting Dots), Alexander Scholz (HOLO) and other experts in the field, will tackle some of these questions head-on. Taking the form of an interdisciplinary laboratory jam-packed with discursive and hands-on formats, we want to collectively explore how art and technology can be used for creative countermeasures that – hopefully – effect change. To do so, we invite you, particularly those of you typically underrepresented (gender, race, sexual orientation), to submit ideas for talks, workshops, and creative interventions.

Also: in order to be able to shape the program with the community’s needs in mind, we’d like to hear your thoughts about the subject from all of you! Please take a moment to fill out the Google form linked below and let us know if and how environmental concerns affect you.

https://forms.gle/N9Xbxsnxj7aCPRPG6

What’s going to be different this time

We used to start the festival on Monday and end it on a Saturday. This time we start on Friday evening and will have the closing party on a Thursday night! Like this we’re expecting a more public audience in the beginning and will be going more nerdy towards the end.

There will be no more complicated workshop-seat booking-system. Everyone with a ticket for the day can join any event. First come first serve. This comes from experience in the past where we’ve never really had the resources or even saw a necessity to enforce the seat reservations. We still believe that no one will miss their favorite workshops because typically there was always still the chance to find a spot in each room, even if only standing. Also we’ll try to record many of the events again so that they can be revisited later.

Instead of only 3 or 6h workshops, this time we’ll have different formats:

daily 3h vvvv gamma fundamental
3h vvvv gamma beginner workshops
general 3 or 6h hands-on workshops
1h lecture
1h presentation

ad 1) We’ll be running daily 3h vvvv gamma fundamentals workshops. Like this we’re hoping to level the knowledge of people who will be attending the follow-up beginner workshops. The content of these will be standardized so that it is easy for many people to host them.

ad 2) If you’re hosting one of these you know that your participants will at least have gone through the fundamentals. So here we are looking for creative, playful hands-on workshops that should work towards some kind of output that participants can take away. Consider a little music-visualization as mp4, a printed generative design poster, an executable app, a lasercut, a 3d print… These workshops are targeted at people who’ll have their first contact with vvvv at NODE20. These workshops are targeted as well at people who did not know about vvvv before. The argument for the workshop should be the output that we create with the help of vvvv. Also other tools are of course not forbidden!

ad 3) The classic hands-on workshops we had in the past editions of NODE. These are targeted at the classic vvvv user and can range from intermediate to advanced. If you propose or request a workshop for non vvvv users that’s fine also. Think combining tools and practices. Think in subjects. Think also about the leitmotiv.

ad 4) There are topics that are relevant but don’t need to be taught as hands-on workshops. Think: How are you using vvvv and other tools in your production pipeline Best practices (technical, creative process, workflows) About the tool you created with vvvv (Timeline, VJ Tool, CMS solution,…)

ad 5) Here we’re looking for more inspirational and theoretical talks targeted not necessarily only at vvvv users but anyone with interest in design, art & technology

Apart from those five types of formats we’ll curate a schedule out of, like last time, there’ll also be a chance for participant-provided content. More on that in a later announcement.

vvvv beta and gamma

This year is crucial for the vvvv world, we know. We basically have two tools that are relevant to teach, with VL being the link between them. Ideally vvvv gamma is released with 3d support before NODE20 making it a complete alternative to vvvv beta and NODE20 the best moment to kickstart you into the future. But keep in mind: Anything you learn about vvvv gamma will be applicable to vvvv beta via VL, and also the other way round, many concepts you can learn with vvvv beta, like Transformations, Shaders, Physics, Protocols… can also be applied to vvvv gamma.

Not too many people may yet feel confident enough to teach with vvvv gamma. This is where the vvvv group will help out. Teaching the teachers first. So if you show your interest in teaching with vvvv gamma they are offering to help you prepare the workshop and make sure you are confident teaching it.

How to contribute

For details on how to contribute please read

Feel free to request/propose as many events as you like. Only before you do so please check if there is already a similar request/proposal and consider adding to that existing discussion rather than starting a new topic. Discussing entries is very much encouraged hoping that it can help us all to better define individual proposals/requests.

Then for both requests and proposals use the like-button of the topic to show your interest in it. The six of us will then look at the discussions and like-counts to get an idea of what’s hot and what’s not. Please note that a high like-count here will not be a guarantee for a workshop to take place as requested/proposed. We’ll have more parameters to consider for each workshop than just the likes but they’ll certainly be a factor for our decisions.

Deadline

This call doesn’t have a strong deadline but we’ll make a first curatorial assessment on April 20 2020. So to maximize your chances of being heard make sure your entries are there before that day. What happens afterwards, we’ll announce by then.

What we offer and what we expect.

Instead of paying fees for workshops/lectures, at NODE we always decided to rather spend our financial resources on covering contributors stays for the whole week. We believe that making sure they stay longer, allows for more meaningful interactions and results in a better investment of our limited resources to the benefit of the whole community.

Our budget is not fixed at this stage, but compared to NODE17 we already know that we have to be more cost-effective. So this time around we cannot cover travel-costs by default for every contributor. Instead we’ll want those who cannot afford it to contact us and we’ll try to find individual solutions.

So to sum up, here is what we can offer:

You get a full festival pass for the whole week
You get accomodation for the whole week

And here is what we expect:

You pay your own travels unless you need support in which case you get in touch with us to find a solution
You co-host at least one other workshop
You help out in the preparation of at least your own workshops and events

Happy brainstorming to you! Let us know if you have any further questions. We are very much looking forward to your submissions and discussions!

And finally some refreshment for your memories: