Article

Enter: A Friendly and Experimental Digital Space

Hybridity
Fully online
 Setup
Pushing some boundaries
 Participation
Take some breaks
 Tech
Nothing fancy
 Privacy
Very privacy aware

MAIN TAKEAWAYS

  • Try to be critical about big tech platforms if you have the infrastructure and resources, big institutions have an obligation to work on providing different solutions, and to work together with other organisations that need the same solutions.
  • An artist’s perspective on everyday, formal things like video conferencing can prove beneficial or even vital, to design other ways of interaction.
  • Be responsive to changes that happen in your field, experiment if you can, or learn from others’ experimentation, for example by facilitating as a bigger institution.
  • Be inspired by and also use other existing platforms and softwares, and combine them into something that works for you.
  • Always ask yourself: How do you design these spaces to be accessible (for example with a weaker CPU or a slow or splotchy internet connection)? Don’t let accessibility be an afterthought.

In 2020, because of the pandemic, most cultural events took place online via Big Tech platforms such as Zoom or YouTube. The fact that these platforms are made for business – not for culture – influenced our event experience in many new ways. Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) is a cultural centre in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, focused on architecture, design, and digital culture. HNI is often a central hub at the intersection of these different fields. When the pandemic hit, they felt it was important to continue to fulfil this role online. The result is Enter—a digital art-inspired platform where you can meet with people about research projects, organise public events or simply hang around. 

In 2021, we met Florian van Zandwijk, project manager of Enter, at Enter’s Coffee Room to talk about the development and ambitions of the platform. Watch our conversation here: 

Read more about Enter and their residencies here: https://nieuweinstituut.nl/projects/enter and discover the platform for yourself here: https://enter.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/ 

Examples of inspiring websites, softwares or events mentioned in the video:

* This article was originally published as part of The Hmm’s Alternative Platforms dossier here: https://thehmm.nl/enter/