INVITE-TODAY: Chat Online at بافت | BOFT :::: a media installation by Yasir

[yasir ~يا سر‎]

[ Invitation ] - something to do today !

 بافت | Boft    a media installation
by Yasir Husain


Come  Video Chat  with people 
at a  New Media installation  at an
international conference in  Karachi 

The installation will be on from 9 am to 5 pm on 26th October 2010 only (Karachi time)
Please join in !

There is likely to be more people in the second session than in the first.
The Conference url is:  http://www.aku.edu/events/IEDIC2010/ .
This an invitation to interact at the conference through the internet.


[ Instructions ]

1.  Open Skype.com. Download Skype 5 [ Skype 5 Download ] for video conferencing with multiple people. Otherwise you can have a 1-on-1 video chat.

2.   Update your Status. Describe yourself in one label or choose a topic you can talk about. This may be the conversation opener, such as: 

Artist, Oil Tycoon, Urban Gardner, Journalist, Filmmaker, Teacher, Mechanic, Banker, Musician...
or Art in Pakistan, Flood Relief & After, Globalization, Maths education, ...

3.  Add all of these as contacts [ Skype name  / Email ]
Karachiconference1        /        karach...@gmail.com

Karachiconference2        /        karach...@gmail.com
Karachiconference3        /        karach...@gmail.com
Karachiconference4        /        khic...@gmail.com

4. Call one of the contacts you added and chat away. There is an element of randomness in this on both sides. So let us see what happens... If there is no response, try one of the other contacts or try again after 10 minutes, or a little later.

You will be part of an Installation Boft بافت, a media kiosk, set in a room at the Aga Khan University's Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED), Karachi. People at the conference will interact with the installation and are expected to be a diverse group concerned with contemporary education.

Boft بافت (pronounced Baft in Urdu) a farsi word, means both 'old part of city' and 'weave'. In this installation we are pointing out the place of language, media and technology in relation to the city (Karachi) and its dwellers.

"Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses."  - Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations (1953).

"Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned." - McLuhan in Understanding media (1964).

Finally, we acknowledge the place of Farsi (Persian) in the development of ideas, cultures and languages, particularly Indo-European which, covers most of the East and West. With this installation, we are still weaving with the electronic, oral, visual and textual technologies and the old city is thriving. Farsi is the second-most used language in the blogosphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farsi

The installation will only be on from 9 am to 5 pm on Monday, 26th October 2010 (Karachi Time).

Yasir Husain
yasir...@gmail.com
بافت | Boft  - a media installation
Karachi


I also have 2 presentations at the Conference:

1. Games Towards Social Change (with Ata Kirmani)
2. Networks in Karachi - Culture, Literature, Politics and Flood (Incl Sahana) (with Afaq Bhatti)

Full schedule:
http://www.aku.edu/events/IEDIC2010/docs/Full%20Conference%20Programme.pdf