Between 6 and 15 october, I participated in a residency organised by LCD lab in Guimarães Portugal focussing on the theme Creative Politics. The participating hackers, artists, theoreticians, developers, designers tackled many ideas in small groups, and some more ideas were being discussed over diners and after hours.

A few axis that dominated our work during the residency:
– Much work was done on the development of digital works and platform. A scenario and demo of an online game was developed in which the player is attributed points helping him or her to succeed as a ‘political manager’
– Thought was dedicated to how to set up strategies to ‘market’ political engagement; how to involve people in the somewhat unsexy work of politics? What about songifying your messages ? (or Rapify if that is your preferred Android app)
– Some people investigated citizen journalism and alternative ways to use information resources. Comparitive News looked at how trustworthy journalistic sources are by comparing news on the same subjects from different resources. Some paperware systematics were drawn for a method to harvest and publish spoken gossip from public places where citizens gather.
– The work on available resources extended to urban space: what basic needs can be provided for when using the city creatively ? Where to find free food and housing ? How can people appropriate hack and shortcut political decision making processes that determine hat can and can not be done in public space? This page served as a collection of interventions and test.
– Yet another related angle was to investigate open data in Portugal. A blog was set up to gather links and report on developments concerning open data.

A much more elaborate version of the above can be found on this etherpad page: http://meetingwords.com/pOAGlGlpEU