From the roots of DIY Culture, to the core of contemporary History, from Myth and Storytelling to pure. Facts, somewhere between a found objects sculpture and a Network Art experiment, Maiitsoh questions the man-machine relationship in an historical, sociological and artistic way, offering the public and users a challenging, playful, aesthetical and multimedia experience. The corpus of interviews includes one hour or more long interviews with Noam Chomsky, Fons Elders, William Gibson and Jeremy Narby, to name a few. Furthermore the Maiitsoh project works at some levels as a meta-meme, specifically in it’s particular design and ways of being exhibited that makes it an icon of the open-source culture, a statement about contemporary History and Computer History and a mindset proposal for trans-civilizational cultural production and preservation.

Adopting a syncretic approach, the perspective of my artistic and more global Research is based on a traditional Aikido sword exercise called Happo-giri , or “to cut in eight directions”. This shape got in my point of view a symbolical connection with the Buddhist wheel or Dharmachakra. I extend my perspective to contemporary practices, and in a more trans-disciplinary perspective the aims of the research is to analyse and theorize the implication (at environmental and various other level) of any industrialization and globalization of traditional and therefore “ultra local” linked practices or “habits”, and their impacts on the mental and natural environment at a planetary scale. With a focus on particular cases studies inside and outside of my personal body of work and research protocols, I will develop in this paper my personal perspectives on bi-cognitivism, ultra-locality and a contemporary look at Craftsmanship (traditional & modern) as an educational , cognitive and knowledge enhancing tool suitable for a sustainable future.

The participants looked at what art can contribute to society in a time when the forms, values and relations of creative and technological media are being reinterpreted. In order to create a cohesive view on these developments, the subjects were approached from various scientific, social, historical and artistic perspectives, on both a practical as well as a theoretical level. With the symposium we touched upon a series of topics that gave us space for discussion and information exchange.

The Symposium was organized by TodaysArt in cooperation with the International Cities of Advanced Sound and related arts (ICAS) network, the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT) and the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. The realization of the Symposium has been made possible by the support of the EU Culture Programme, the DOEN Foundation, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Zuid-Holland, Witteveen+Bos and Fonds1818.