Earlier this year we participated in the NODE Forum for Digital Arts. Congratulations to the festival and the documentation team on this beautiful glimpse of what happened that week in Frankfurt.

We got older. And as we got older we realized we had rules. Not the rules of our parents. Not the rules of some big corporation or government. Rules of interaction, of engagement, etiquette even. We had grown up in a world of magical objects – things with attributes, properties, menus and options. And slowly we introduced this magic back out into the world – at least on the surface of things. In our desperation for control in a world more and more out of control, we began expressing these rules about objects in our aesthetics. Guided by visions of a near future in which the real and the virtual would be seamlessly blended, we created prototypes and simulations with increasingly higher fidelity. Yet the tyranny of the frame prevailed. Our rules collided with systems of another dimension. Stubbornly, we carried on building the simulacrum. We gritted our teeth, we dug in our heels, and we fought to stay lucid as our dreams shimmered across legions of rectangles.

Directed & Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Art Director and Production Designer: Patrizia Kommerell
Produced by KS12 as artists in residence in the Deutsche Boerse Residency Program at the Frankfurter Kunstverein
Commissioned by NODE Forum for Digital Arts
Curated by Eno Henze
Festival Director: David Brüll
Assistant Curator: Jeanne Charlotte Vogt

Featuring (in order of appearance):
Dmitry Paranyushkin
Onyx Ashanti
Gabriel Shalom
Protey Temen

Guest Appearances by:
Diego Agúllo
Jessica Cooke
Tom Plümmer

CC 2013 BY-NC-ND KS12

“Gabriel Shalom and Patrizia Kommerell’s (KS12) stories switch between fact and fiction. Their video essays, which mainly consist of interviews, experiment with new forms of narration, which originate from modes of production and association found in a digitally linked community. NODE13 commissioned KS12’s new work, which has been produced under the title ‘Another Dimension’ as a part of the Deutsche Börse Residency programme in Frankfurt.” – Thanks NODE for the nice words!

It would be great to see you at the premiere of Another Dimension next week:
Monday, February 11, 2013 – 20:00 (8PM) at the Frankfurter Kunstverein

We got older. And as we got older we realized we had rules. Not the rules of our parents. Not the rules of some big corporation or government. Rules of interaction, of engagement, etiquette even. We had grown up in a world of magical objects – things with attributes, properties, menus and options. And slowly we introduced this magic back out into the world – at least on the surface of things. In our desperation for control in a world more and more out of control, we began expressing these rules about objects in our aesthetics. Guided by visions of a near future in which the real and the virtual would be seamlessly blended, we created prototypes and simulations with increasingly higher fidelity. Yet the tyranny of the frame prevailed. Our rules collided with systems of another dimension. Stubbornly, we carried on building the simulacrum. We gritted our teeth, we dug in our heels, and we fought to stay lucid as our dreams shimmered across legions of rectangles.

During the next several weeks we will producing our newest video essay “Another Dimension” during our artist’s residency in the Deutsche Börse Residency Program at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

Another Dimension will premiere at the 2013 edition of the NODE Forum for Digital Arts on February 11th, 2013 at 8pm in the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

This video essay features the artists Dmitry Paranyushkin, Onyx Ashanti, Gabriel Shalom and Protey Temen.

original photo courtesy of Eno Henze

Eno Henze sent us this photo of a certain familiar yet mysterious object from his recent trip to Amsterdam. We first met Eno last year at the Resonate festival after screening Timeless. Now, almost a year later, we’re happy to announce our participation in the NODE forum for digital arts in Frankfurt thanks to Eno’s support. We’re looking forward to give updates as the project progresses, so stay tuned for more details about our new Design Fiction piece, Another Dimension.

From the KS12 studio in Berlin we wish you a happy new year!

Why is Portland an interesting place to create a startup?
How can we understand entrepreneurs and software engineers to be a new creative class?
What roles do story and performance play in the creation of an enterprise?

Following the true story of a group of aspiring startups in the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE), in the context of Portland’s creative and technology ecosystem, KS12 presents Early Stage, a Video Sprint in collaboration with PIE which starts a conversation on these topics and invites your participation.

A Video Sprint produced by KS12
Produced during the 2012 class of the Portland Incubator Experiment at Wieden + Kennedy

Featuring the 2012 PIE companies:

Marshall Kirkpatrick, CEO, Little Bird
Michelle Rowley, Founder, Code Scouts
Gabriel Shalom, Creative Director, KS12
Trent Peterson, Founder, App Thwack
Aaron Raddon, CTO, Lytics
Kyle Banuelos, CEO, Stublisher

Including interviews with:

Andy Baio, Organizer, XOXO Festival
Barb Stark, Director of Culture, Cloudability
Michael Richardson, Co-founder & Technical Product Manager, Urban Airship
Renny Gleeson, Global Director of Interactive Strategies, Wieden + Kennedy
Amber Case, Co-Founder & CEO, Geoloqi
David Embree, CEO, Athletepath
Robin Jones, COO, Geoloqi
Brad Feld, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Foundry Group (via Skype)
John Jay, Global Executive Creative Director, Wieden + Kennedy
Dave Yewman, President, Elevator Speech

Directed and edited by Gabriel Shalom
Designed and produced by Patrizia Kommerell
Production Assistant: Kris Cantrell
Second Camera: Jason Roark, Don’t Act Big
Music “Lamplighter” and “Acre Lux” by Campfires, © 2012 Jeff Walls

See the full Demo Day pitches:
Little Bird
Code Scouts

KS12

App Thwack
Lytics
Stublisher

CC 2012 BY-NC KS12

continue the conversation: #earlystage

Young Cultural Leaders Forum at Salzburg Global Seminar. Photo courtesy of Salzburg Global Seminar.

Last week we participated in an inaugural forum on young cultural leaders at the Salzburg Global Seminar created in partnership with National Arts Strategies. The seminar brought together over 50 people from all over the world to discuss and learn from one another across a broad range of issues in arts and culture. The group of people included a wide range of professionals working in both public, non-profit and private positions within organizations, festivals, institutions, companies, foundations and governments. The international diversity of the session reminded me of the sort of mix of cultures I was familiar with growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC, as well as the time I spent finishing my undergraduate studies at Bard College in upstate New York. On the first full day of the seminar I had what I felt to be a breakthrough insight that informed the rest of my experience in Salzburg. During a workshop about effective communication and active listening I wrote this observation in my notes:

Treat conversations like video interviews.
Witness the other and give them permission and space.

Learning to listen at the Young Cultural Leaders forum in Salzburg last week. Photo courtesy of Salzburg Global Seminar.

Over the last two years I have interviewed over a hundred people. When I am conducting an interview I make an extra effort to tune into what the person is saying. I find that the more I focus and follow what they say, the better my responses are and the more organic the conversation flow becomes. This may seem obvious but its not easy – it takes practice and extreme concentration. Whenever I’ve rushed or stuck too closely to a prescribed list of questions the process invariably results in more static footage. The answers tend towards short or rehearsed. These sorts of more question-oriented interviews always feel pregnant with untapped potential. In thinking deeply about the power of active listening I discovered the similarities to the interviewing process to be outstanding.

Why should granting another person permission to explore and elaborate be reserved for when the camera is rolling? Why isn’t this the default approach to all the conversations we have? How does the presence of a recording device change the way we focus our attention on another person?

I have returned from Salzburg with these questions resonating strongly. As we dive back into our work editing Early Stage we carry a renewed sense of the importance of listening in all the work that we do as storytellers.

Being back in Berlin after three months in Portland, its difficult not to give in to the desire to compare and contrast the two cities. It’s safe to say we miss Portland. In our newfound homesickness we’ve indulged in watching (and re-watching) clips of the TV show Portlandia on YouTube. And having gotten a chance to get to know the city this summer these sarcastic sketches ring true on many levels. The results of our experiment extending the conversation from Early Stage onto Quora reflected this self-aware side of Portland in the fact that the most upvoted answer to all of the questions we posted was this list of zingers from Ken Westin about why not to create your next startup company in Portland. Due to the popularity of Ken’s answer, we thought it would be fun to adapt it into a collaborative video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yet there is certainly a counterpoint to this view of Portland – one which may have a hard time grabbing the limelight from this sort of good-natured sarcasm because of its sincerity. It’s embodied by the long and thoughtful answer given by Jeffrey Hardison to our question “How is Portland poised to lead the new wave of design-driven startups?” As we work on editing Early Stage we have to admit that it’s perspectives like Jeffrey’s which resonate more strongly with the sentiments we’d encountered in Portland’s startup community.

But whether your personal stance on Portland leans more in the sarcastic or sincere direction, from our view back in Berlin both stances seem equally acceptable compared to the cynicism we often encounter here at home. Compared to the friendliness and openness of Portland, Berlin has an energy which at times feels very heavy. A combination of Berlin’s history and it’s own acute sense of that history can make this town a tough place to try something new. I realize this outlook may contradict the experience of many fellow Berliners as well as visitors to the city who perceive Berlin as a bohemian refuge. And certainly it does live up to its reputation as that sort of place.

However, if we who live in Berlin consider ourselves creative refugees – escapees from more hostile (commercial) environments where our creative expression is less appreciated or viable – we must accept that the tolerance and permissiveness of this bohemia simultaneously can have the function of neutralizing our intensity and our passions. That a certain degree of laisse faire attitude sometimes can slip into cynical inaction.

And if there’s one take-away from Portland that we’ve brought back with us to Berlin it’s to keep our passion at the forefront of what we do.

On October 5, 2012, we will join the 2012 class of Wieden + Kennedy’s Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) in sharing our companies’ visions with investors, the media and the larger startup community at PIE Demo Day.

In a uniquely self-reflexive moment, Demo Day will also mark the public launch of our new process Video Sprint.

As participants in this year’s PIE class, we’ve had the chance to learn and grow alongside the other PIE companies. Our firsthand experience of the incubator has given us intimate access to the ups and downs of accelerating an early stage startup company. We’ve become embedded in the vibrant ecosystem of investors, entrepreneurs, developers, designers, mentors, advisors and community members which make up the Portland startup scene, and we’re excited to share the story.

At the same time that we’ve become insiders at PIE, we’ve remained aliens in Portland. We’ve fallen in love with this city over the last couple months. The friendly people, tasty food, bike-friendly streets, well-designed signage, and direct access to nature – these have all been a welcome contrast to the day-to-day we’re used to in Berlin. While we’re looking forward to returning home in a couple weeks, we’ll be leaving a little piece of ourselves behind in Portland.

Early Stage

Why is Portland an interesting place to create a startup? How can we understand entrepreneurs and software engineers to be a new creative class? What roles do story and performance play in the creation of an enterprise? Following the true story of a group of aspiring startups in the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE), in the context of Portland’s creative and technology ecosystem, KS12 introduces Early Stage, a Video Sprint in collaboration with PIE which starts a conversation on these topics and invites your participation.

Participate on Quora

We are working with questions from our interview process on Quora. You are invited to join the process by providing answers for these questions. We will be incorporating answers to these and other questions into the Video Sprint. Here are the questions:

Why is Portland an interesting place to create a startup?
How can we understand entrepreneurs and software engineers to be a new creative class?
What roles do story and performance play in the creation of an enterprise?
What can startups learn from an advertising agency about storytelling?
What can startup culture teach us about creativity?
How do crazy ideas grow into real businesses?

Participate on Twitter

You can also participate by sharing your thoughts as the project progresses on Twitter using the hashtag #earlystage and make sure to follow @ks12 and @piepdx as the story continues. We’ll be blogging the project here: www.earlystage.videosprint.net.