Lost Expedition

Lost and Found Expedition is a collaboration begun in September 2001 with
artists Milos Vojtechovsky, Douglas Parsons, Petr Oukrepec, Dana Recmanova
and others in Prague.

The Lost & Found Expedition

International Mobile Networking Project for Research in the Transmission of Knowledge, The Future of the Art of Memory, and The Future of the Art of Communication.

The Lost & Found Expedition is a project initiated by artists, artisans, and scientists, whose aim is to search for, explore, uncover, stimulate, promote, reframe and mediate, enduring and cutting-edge cultural, technological and environmental issues and concepts, by means of an interdisciplinary mobile laboratory.  This unifying of art, politics, science, and technology, has as its goal, the exploration and recognition of patterns of knowledge, both ancient and current... such as issues of mobility and nomadism, global conscience, spiritual freedom, humanistic approaches to technology, and the improving of social interactivity.  This mobile laboratory employs new media and communications technologies to create a physical, social, and mental bridge between mainstream and marginalized, urban and rural niches.

Mission

The project mission is to seek out, process, and distill various forms of "data" resulting from innovative documentary projects, and will evaluate, map, analyze and reframe current and emerging cultural networks. It will also trace the historical and contemporary mental landscape of the quickly evolving "New Eurasia" (and other hybrid cultures and continents). This mission of The Lost Expedition project will be realized by a collaborative international, autonomous, interdisciplinary research team, which will operate principally within the geographical area of Eastern and Western Europe in the period between 2001 and 2004, primarily via a mobile laboratory, the MLOK Vehicle.  The vehicle serves as a symbol (and active example) for improving the awareness of synergy, synchronicity, isomorphology, mobility, liberty and the effectiveness of communication channels between many regional, independent, cultural, biological, medial and social phenomena among cultural organizations, NGOs and individuals. In this way it will contribute to a new recognition  (as well as a re-animation) of existing frameworks, and contextual thinking and meaning. New links, channels and contacts will be drawn between a variety of niches of Europe, particularly those endangered by the ongoing and evolving process of a new form of industrialization--the standardizing and homogenizing effects of globalization.  The reports from the vehicle will be mediated by various means such as web-sites, documentary video, streaming media, on-line journals, installations, events, and performances in different sites and contexts.

Technical specifications

The mobile communication unit (MLOK) is a specially constructed vehicle/interface/lab/stage/kitchen designed and equipped to provide simple living accommodations and working conditions for several people, and houses a compact and high/low-tech media and research field laboratory. It will be operated to move quietly and at a slow speed, to facilitate ideal conditions for its inhabitants to observe and to "scan" the physical and cultural landscape. The vehicle is designed so that it can operate from remote areas with a degree of connectivity and accessibility to new communication technologies. It is adapted for collecting, recording, archiving and transmitting a wide range of information, data, and samples. It is equipped with the technical means, coupled with the skills and knowledge of the "crew", for mediating and archiving useful images, ideas, sounds, patterns, and experiences. The vehicle functions as a mobile museum, archive and communication facility for existing pre-electronic as well as emerging digital/analogue networks and infrastructures within Europe and especially it’s marginalized and isolated areas.

 
Data

The data will be acquired by direct contact with a variety of specific social, cultural, professional, artistic, religious, and minority groups. The vehicle will be extended with a two-way communication radio network, and will be thus connected with the electronic network through Internet gateways. In this way the public can follow and interact with the plans, strategies and the itinerary of the people in the MLOK Vehicle. The information and knowledge acquired will be compiled and implemented in the on-line catalogue/database. This mode of operation enables the crew to have feedback directly from the general public, while the public can follow--and even participate and influence--the on-going voyage, throughout its duration.

The Argonauts

The project is supervised and directed by The Lost Expedition Brother/Sisterhood, an international, not-for-profit body consisting of artists, social activists, journalist, scientists, and other researchers, and a group of individuals who are responsible for constructing, maintaining and operating the content and the technology. The crew  or "Argonauts" consists of a continuously changing group of "phenomenologists" (artists, historians, scientists, biologists, ecologists...etc.) and a team of "designers/producers/engineers"--all from diverse nationalities and backgrounds. As a whole, it realizes a much-needed mutual dialogue between utopists and realists.  It is thus a group of people sharing and exchanging different skills--those who study history, the mind, and processes in natural and social systems, and those who are devoted to the design of new tools and the "engineering" of living creatures and natural systems, technicians/constructors/fabricators. The work of this group is geared and directed to the next generations, made into archival artifacts--protected "seedpods"-as-archives.  Its activities are engaged with the past, but are concerned for the future: for the preservation of positive traditions of different cultures, and of sustainability of knowledge. In this respect The Lost Expedition is a symbol of a mental seed/data-bank, like a motorized Ark of the post-industrial times.

WEBSITE

The Web-site is designed as a visionary and navigable database, BBS, or textbook of the collected data, for interested members of the public, theorists, and teachers, exploring subjects such as anomalous geophysics, archaeology, astronomy, robotics, architecture, biology, morphology, psychology, social ecology, etc. etc.  The web-site will have different mirror-sites in different languages, to contribute to the mutual exchange of information and ideas among the broadest possible public.

Timeline

Part 1

Spring 2005–      Investigation/designing/fundraising/developing of strategies/functional tactics/networking & negotiating tools/appropriate methods for research/technology/content/initial meeting/founding of The Lost Expedition Brother/Sisterhood.

Summer 2005-    Construction of the MLOK Vehicle/purchasing of equipment/training camp for the members (in the hidden base located in the mountains of Central Slovakia).

Phase I.

Fall 2006 -          Pilot journey/checking out of the premises/setting up the database/collecting data/social performance/investigations.

Winter 2007–       Development of the new tools/revision/reworking of the collected materials.

Phase II.

Spring – Fall 2007 -     Central European Mission.

Winter 2007                   South European Mission

Spring 2008                  North European Mission

Fall 2008                                East European Mission

Winter 2008                   Near East Asian Mission I.

Whole year 2009            African Mission

Note: Parallel activity conduced in bot Americas, Australia and wherever possible.

PART 2

KEYWORDS

Partners

Center for Contemporary Art in Prague

Academy of Sciences of The Czech Republic

Technical Faculty of Charles University, Prague

Technical University Brno

Potential Patners contact Project coordinator

Milos Vojtechovsky
Center for Contemporary Art Prague
Jeleni 9
118.00 Praha 1, Czech Republic

www.fcca.cz
Center for Metamedia
milos@fcca.cz

Petr Oukropec,

farmer and idea developer,
petr@negativ.cz
Negativ Production Prague

Martin Marecek
film and video director
marema@volny.cz

Lizbeth Rymland
poet and field researcher, The Earth, New York
rymland@hotmail.com

Douglas Parsons
Imaginologist, Switzerland
douglasdoregon@hotmail.com

(The project was designed as the result of activities of The Center for Metamedia, Cafe9.net, The Pantograph Project and others).

Draft: Prague January 2001