Open Lab Egypt (OLE)

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• East & West

• Open Lab Egypt (OLE)

• Dia Hamed

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: East & West                                                                                                                                Institutional Presentation

  As ab­bre­vi­ated “OLE”, Open Lab Egypt is a long-term pro­ject meant to es­tab­lish a lab­o­ra­tory for the de­vel­op­ment of dig­i­tal arts in Egypt, pro­mot­ing the use of Open Source tools in au­dio­vi­sual cre­ation. It aims to raise a local com­mu­nity in Cairo of au­tonomous peo­ple that can start a sup­port for pro­duc­tion of in­ter­ac­tive en­vi­ron­ments and elec­tronic in­ter­faces in the fu­ture, using all the ac­ces­si­ble tech­nolo­gies that might be nec­es­sary. The pro­ject is in­tended for art stu­dents, artists, de­sign­ers, ed­u­ca­tors, en­gi­neers, and sci­en­tists con­tribut­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of cul­tural pro­duc­tion in local com­mu­ni­ties of the Ara­bic speak­ing re­gions.

  Medrar for Con­tem­po­rary Art
  “Medrar” is a non­profit or­ga­ni­za­tion that started run­ning ac­tiv­i­ties since 2005. It rep­re­sents a com­mon cul­tural cor­po­rate and phil­an­thropic plat­form for young emerg­ing artists in all means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, de­vel­op­ing ex­pe­ri­ences and fi­nan­cial sup­port. Con­sid­er­ing the ne­ces­sity to doc­u­ment the on­go­ing Con­tem­po­rary praxis in Egypt and cri­tique based meth­ods, Medrar aims to drive the in­ter­est of emerg­ing artists with pro­vid­ing chances of ac­ces­sion and ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. We be­lieve we can stim­u­late the artis­tic scene in Egypt by fo­cus­ing on the or­ga­ni­za­tion of work­shops and fes­ti­vals that would en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion of new faces, lo­cally and in­ter­na­tion­ally. As an artist run­ning based ini­tia­tive, we are al­ways seek­ing the up­com­ing po­ten­tials of cre­ativ­ity.

Category:

• Panel