The tenth anniversary of graphic design studio LUST is celebrated with a month of events at <>TAG. Parallel to the LUST exhibition Generation Random, <>TAG is organising a symposium on Info Aesthetics. In this light, a number of speakers will offer different and surprising angles to the subject, delving into the depths of data storage, exchange and representation.

At <>TAG, LUST presents a decade of design in an interactive visual catalogue that explores new ways of archiving. The exhibition is not primarily aimed at summing up, it strives to highlight the actual process of design in which failure and success exist side by side. It addresses the issue of data storage, access, exchange and modification that has become increasingly relevant in the digital age.

Accessibility and storing of data has always been an issue of scientific interest. Before 1990, information was mostly stored in physical archives, either on paper or on microfilm. One of the great pioneers in the field of data accessibility was Paul Otlet, who founded the Mundaneum in 1910; a library with over 12 million 7,5x12 cm index cards and documents. In the desperate struggle to cope with the overflow of published information, Otlet laid down the basis for what we now know as the Internet. His aim was no less than to create an archive of humanitys collective intellectual capital, made accessible by a system allowing users to find data to the most specific level.

The Digital Revolution has accellerated the development of data storage and accessibility at tremendous speed. One of the key changes in approaching data that was already predicted by Otlet is the lack of hierarchy that entails the free exchange of information between different users.
Authorship is no longer the exclusive domain of the actual author of a work. Vast numbers of consumers and users can adapt, adopt and improve the original version. The traditional chain of author, editor, publisher, printer and retailer has been permanently distorted by interventions of users at every possible level. Free access to data allows the user to modify and pass on information, thus becoming co-author of the original work.

Bearing all this in mind, LUST has created an exhibition at <>TAG. All displayed projects reveal a great interest in the area where non-linear information structures and process methodologies fuse with the craftsmanship of the typographer or designer.

In the spirit of Otlet, this results in an interactive visual catalogue, in which physical storage media trigger digital information. The exhibition at <>TAG is not primarily aimed at summing up, it strives to highlight the actual process of design in which failure and success exist side by side.
In the course of the exhibition period, a number of masterclasses/workshops, presentations and lectures will be organised under the name Info Aesthetics focusing on topics such as visualisation and mapping of data, generative systems and non-hierarchical systems.

Guest speakers include David Reinfurt (O-R-G, USA), Catalogtree (Joris Maltha and Daniel Gross, NL), Wilfried Houjebek (NL), Jonathan Harris (USA), and Aaron Koblin (UCLA, USA).

PROGRAM OVERVIEW
02|03 OPENING GENERATION RANDOM
09|03 PRESENTATION/TALKSHOW AARON KOBLIN, CATALOGTREE AND WILFRIED HOUJEBEK + CONCERT BY MIKE REINIERSE
15|03 LECTURES BY JONATHAN HARRIS AND DAVID REINFURT
16|03 & 17|03 WORKSHOP DAVID REINFURT
24|03 CITY WALK BY LUST AND LUNA MAURER

PROGRAM GENERATION RANDOM

March 2nd-31st 2007
Generation Random
Exhibition
Location: <>TAG
Entrance: free

Opening:
Friday March 2nd
17:00>20:00
Generation Random
Installation and Random:Lab
Location: <>TAG
Entrance: free

LUST presents a decade of design in an interactive visual catalogue. The exhibition at <>TAG is not primarily aimed at summing up, it strives to highlight the actual process of design in which failure and success exist side by side. All displayed projects reveal a great interest in the area where non-linear information structures and process methodologies fuse with the craftsmanship of the typographer or designer.

PROGRAM INFO AESTHETICS

Friday March 9th
20:30>22:30 Simultaneous audio/visual presentation and debate in talkshow form by Aaron Koblin (USA), Catalogtree (NL) and Wilfried Houjebek
Location: Paard van Troje (small hall)
Entree: Euro 8,50 (EX-IS entrance included)

Aaron Koblin, Catalogtree (Joris Maltha and Daniel Gross) and Wilfried Houjebek will give a simultaneous presentation and discuss their work with each other. The audience is welcome to join the debate. The debate will finish with a concert by Mike Reinierse (based on the mind-mapping data (collected in the panel- (discussion). This multimedial presentation is also offered as part of the EX-IS festival. See for the full program of EX-IS www.ex-is.nl

Thursday March 15th
20:00>23:00
Lectures by Jonathan Harris (USA) and David Reinfurt (USA)
Location: Auditorium KABK (TBC)
Entrance: free
Co-hosted by Zefir7

Jonathan Harris will talk about recent projects which include We Feel Fine, a site that harvests human feelings from a large number of weblogs, 10x10, which automatically chooses the top 100 words and pictures in the world every hour based on what is happening in the news, WordCount, which presents the 88,000 most frequently used English words, arranged side by side as one very long sentence and many more.

David Reinfurt is a graphic designer in New York. Since 2000, he has run
O-R-G inc., a graphic design practice that works for cultural and educational institutions in a range of media. David is currently working with Stuart Bailey under the name Dexter Sinister, employing the Just-In-Time principle.

Friday March 16th & Saturday March 17th
12:00>18:00
Semi-automatic generation
Two-day Masterclass/Workshop by David Reinfurt
Entrance: Euro 20, (both days, lunch included)
Signup: info@tag004.nl (20 participants max.)

David Reinfurt leads a two-day workshop on semi-automatic generation.

Saturday March 24th
12:00>18:00
City Tour
Location: starting from <>TAG
Entrance: free
Signup: info@tag004.nl (25 participants max.)

The City Tour, organised by LUST & Luna Maurer takes the rhizomatic city as a starting point. In botany, a rhizome is an underground horizontal stem of a plant sending out roots from its nodes. The main question is: what is a rhizomatic city and how can we experience it? The tour is a quest for physical locations in which (graphic) design, interactive media, architecture and urban development connect and blend.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

LUST
Graphic design studio LUST is especially interested in exploring new angles and attitudes towards graphic design and software; the target groups are manifold. According to the LUST philosophy, design is the product of an analytic process based on extensive research.
In the course of time, LUST has developed a design methodology which has been refered to as process-based design or self-generating systems; the analytical process eventually causes the final result to develop autonomously. LUST employs a range of media, like for example graphic design, interactive installations, exhibitions and architectural graphics. Apart from this, LUST has a great interest in gathering data and information and representing these in ways that give a transparent view of the subject in question. This is done in charts, graphs and interactive presentations. LUST consists of Thomas Castro, Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen and Jeroen Barendse and works in the field of graphic design and interactive media since 1996.
www.lust.nl

AARON KOBLIN
Aaron Koblin received his MFA from the Department of Design|Media Arts at UCLA and his BA in Electronic Art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Aarons work has been shown internationally at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, Japan Media Arts and other festivals. Utilizing a background in the computer game industry, he led a course in game design for the web at UCLA and has been working with data driven projects as an interactive designer and researcher.
www.aaronkoblin.com

CATALOGTREE
Catalogtree is an Arnhem-based bureau for graphic design, founded by Joris Maltha en Daniel Gross in 2001. Both designers have a special interest in lists of figures. Unsurprisingly, their work is often related to the visualisation of quantitative data, moulding raw data into transparent visual information. Catalogtree creates magazines, posters, books and websites. Both Joris and Daniel lecture interactive design at the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design.
www.catalogtree.net

WILFRIED HOUJEBEK
Wilfried (Utrecht, NL) is a culture hacker. Under the moniker of socialfiction.org he has organised countless psychogeographical walks all over the world. Recent commissions include work for the city of Dordrecht, Psy Geo Conflux (New York), the PixelACHEfestival (Helsinki), RAM5 (Riga), Urban Festival (Zagreb), Urban Drift (Berlin). In 2004 he won the Transmediale software art prize for walk, a futuristic project for open space that transforms cities into computers.
www.socialfiction.org

JONATHAN HARRIS
Jonathan Harris is an artist working primarily on the Internet. His work involves the exploration and understanding of humans, on a global scale, through the artifacts they leave behind on the Web.
In 2004 he received Italys Fabrica Fellowship from Benetton. At Fabrica, Harris created the award-winning sites 10x10, which automatically chooses the top 100 words and pictures in the world every hour based on whats happening in the news, and WordCount, which presents the 88,000 most frequently used English words, arranged side by side as one very long sentence.
Since Fabrica, Harris has made projects like We Feel Fine, which uses large-scale blog analysis to study human emotion; Phylotaxis, an exploration of science and culture; and justcurio.us, an anonymous question and answer system. He is an organiser of Princeton Universitys Art of Science Competition, and is an advisor to the clothing company Distilled Spirit, and to Etsy.com. He currently works as Design Director of Daylife, a global news service in New York.
www.number27.org

DAVID REINFURT
David Reinfurt is a graphic designer in New York. Since 2000, he has run O R G inc., a graphic design practice that works for cultural and educational institutions in a range of media. Prior to forming O R G David was an interaction designer with IDEO San Francisco, where he designed the interface for the MTA MetroCard vending machines. He has been a visiting critic at design schools including University of Texas, Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Yale University, and Royal College of Art. David currently teaches at Columbia University and Rhode Island School of Design.
David is currently working with Stuart Bailey under the name Dexter Sinister. Dexter Sinister recently established a workshop in the basement at 38 Ludlow Street, on the Lower East Side in New York City. The workshop is intended to model a Just-In-Time economy of print production, running counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. This involves avoiding waste by working on-demand, utilizing local cheap machinery, considering alternate distribution strategies, and collapsing distinctions of editing, design, production and distribution into one efficient activity.
www.o-r-g.com,
www.dextersinister.org

LUNA MAURER
Luna Maurer (1972) is a graphic/interaction designer based in the Netherlands. After completing courses at the Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute she has done many different kinds of projects ranging from interactive narration to performances and fashion. Instead of seeing herself as a graphic designer she approaches her work as a designer of systems. By crystallizing structures and making systems visible she wants to purify information and communication and make them more honest.
Information should be structured in such a way that the structure (or the system) creates a meaningful image.
www.poly-luna.com,
www.poly-xelor.com

<>TAG Background
<>TAG is a platform for contemporary audio and visual art, based in the Hague and Amsterdam. We do a lot of exhibitions, and invite people from different backgrounds to do performances, lectures, workshops, etc. Our venue at the Hague also serves a monthly concert programme aimed at contemporary electro/acoustic music.
We aim to offer a diverse picture, and there are virtually no boundaries as to what can happen at events, although themes like new technology, social issues, popculture, etc. can be seen to recur in a lot of work.
We have a network of members whom we work with on a regular basis. A great part of our crowd is from Art Academies and Conservatories all over the Netherlands. Of course, we also like to welcome other artists, designers and researchers one of the goals of the organisation being to create network and share knowledge, experience and expertise. <>TAG is fully subsidised by several funds as well as the Dutch government.

Locations
<>TAG HQ
Stille Veerkade 19
2512 BE The Hague
+31 (0)70 3468500
info@tag004.nl

PAARD VAN TROJE
Prinsegracht 12
2512 GA Den Haag
+31 (0)70 7503434
info@paard.nl

KABK
(Koninklijke Academie van
Beeldende Kunsten)
Prinsessegracht 4
2514 AN Den Haag
+31 (0)70 3154777
post@kabk.nl

Generation Random and Info Aesthetics are made possible by
Het Fonds voor Beeldende Kunst, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst, Mondriaan Foundation, VSB Fonds, Fonds 1888 and Stroom Den Haag.

Special thanks to
KABK, Het Paard, the EX-IS festival, Resolume, Martijn van Boven