Christian Nold

http://www.softhook.com/

Christian Nold

Christian Nold is an artist, designer and educator working to develop new participatory models for communal representation. In 2001 he wrote the well received book ‘Mobile Vulgus’, which examined the history of the political crowd and which set the tone for his research into participatory mapping. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2004, Christian has led a number of large scale participatory projects and worked with a team on diverse academic research projects. In particular his ‘Bio Mapping’ project has received large amounts of international publicity and been staged in 16 different countries and over 1500 people have taken part in workshops and exhibitions. These participatory projects have a strong pedagogical basis and grew out of Christian’s formal university teaching. He is currently based at the Bartlett, University College London.

>>>

Concept


Technology is not the neutral, rational instrument that it is portrayed as; instead it appears to be a heady and unstable mix of authoritarian control and anarchic mischief.

My approch is to slip into the gap between these two poles and use it as my medium by combining the freedom offered by the art world with the agency obtainable through design and technology. My aim is to build new tools that reek of possibility and also possible misuse.

The first part of my work is the in-depth research of technological tools in order to unravel their social and political layers. This has so far included the book Mobile Vulgus which scrutinized the mind state and weaponry of the riot policeman. In particular it focused on the futuristic crowd control technologies being developed for use in our streets.

The second part of my practice involves the building of socially constructive, bottom-up tools. These take the form of practical tools such as the Bio Mapping project or the Affect Browser.

I am interested in working with individuals, groups, companies and institutions that are trying to develop new hybrid forms of technology that are socially and economically sustainable.