Free Geek will be a presenter and provocateur in good company in this year's Interactive Screen at the Banff Centre in Alberta. Ifny will bring hearty geek tidings to the mountain people.

Interactive Screen 0.8 - Sustain is the thirteenth installment of the Banff New Media Institute's acclaimed new media summit, where media makers from Canada and the world gather to reflect on the current state of new media and the shape of things to come.

At the end of each summer, producers, investors, and policymakers convene with artists, technologists, and cultural researchers of diverse horizons in the majestic mountain setting of Banff. They are joined by scholarship participants from Canada, who are invited to pitch and develop projects inspired by the event's theme.

Sustain

How do we manage, in the current context, to evolve fitter patterns for practice and participation? Sustain looks at strategies and ideas that allow those working with new media to better reflect and act upon the economic, social, cultural, natural and technological synergies and dichotomies of our changing world.

Our guest participants have been chosen because their current practice or discourse raises critical, sometimes crucial, questions about the practice, theory, and meaning of new media.

Confirmed artists include: Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men, Stephanie Rothenberg, Rick Prelinger of the Internet Archive, Ken Gregory, Ifny Lachance of Free Geek Vancouver, Christine Nadir of EcoArtTech, Michael Mandiberg of the Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group, Jack Dingo Ryan, Reisa Levine, Gary James Joynes, Jackson 2Bears, Kay Burns.

Themes include:

E-sustainability - The concept of sustainability is first and foremost taken as an ecological notion, related to the economic use of natural resources. How does a field predicated on the widespread use of technological devices place itself? And where does new media meet natural conservation and eco-art?

Greening art - Does art change its nature when it becomes green? And can it really impact nature?

Memories of new media - Memory carries over the wisdom and weight of the past into the future. What are the current challenges of media memory? How and why does it partake of our society's unconscious, and of its future idioms?

Serious gaming - What does the emergence of "serious games" with deep ecological, health or social themes signify for our way of knowing the world and relating to it? And what's not serious about gaming to start with?

Fieldwork - What do the connections between practices of collaboration, social networking, the public domain, open source practices and interaction design mean for individuals and companies interested in developing sustainable economies around their work?

Design environments - The environment can be seen as an open interface. Do new media environments enhance or impede natural experience? And can new media truly contribute to the daily creation of a creative commons?

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