Pinar Sefkatli
Karen Lancel is currently an artistic PhD candidate at the Technical University of Delft: Participatory Systems Initiative(prof. dr. Frances Brazier, dr. Caroline Nevejan). From 2008 to 2011, she was a member of the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK) research group ‘ARTI’ (Artistic research, Theory & Interpretation), and before that head of the interactive media art department (IME) at MFA Frank Mohr Institute Groningen. Hermen Maat teaches media art at the Minerva Art Academy Groningen and is part of the Minerva Academy research group on ‘Image in Context’ of dr. Anke Coumans. Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat design objects, projections and digital networks to create ‘meeting places’ in cities public spaces. Each ‘meeting place’ or social sculpture functions as an artistic ‘social lab’ in which the artists invite their audience as co-researchers. The audience is invited to experiment and play with social technologies and to reflect on their perception of the city and their experience of body, presence, identity, and community. For every ‘meeting place’ they deconstruct existing communication technologies and strategies and design a new innovative, integrated montage and process of embodied and virtual interaction. The ‘meeting places’ are shown internationally in dynamic urban public spaces such as museums, squares, theatre halls, and train stations. Their work has been shown in for example Seoul, New York, Melbourne, Shanghai, Istanbul, Paris, London, and Amsterdam.