10 sec. 1 bayt.

About 10 sec. 1 bayt
Many Tajiks are aware that for those cell phone users who have a plan with the Central Asian telecommunications company named Babilon, the first ten seconds of any phone call are free. To take advantage of this freebee, strategic users have developed a new art form – the ten second conversation.

Inspired by this contemporary cultural form and the Tajik tradition of 2-verse poetry (or ‘Bayt’), artist Marisa Jahn and emergent-media artist Connor Dickie launched a 3-day public art projectin 2009 for the best ten second poems. Advertised over the airwaves, on text crawl on Tajikistan's national TV, through posters, and through the marketing channels of the project’s organizational partners (Bactria, CEC Artslink, REV-, Sogd Cultural Center), the competition garnered 55 submissions that recorded the poem and immediately posted it online. The submissions were juried by two Tajik poets and a television anchor woman.

The project’s title, ‘Bayt’ (pronounced ‘bite’ in English), refers to both the Tajik word for the short 2-verse poem popularized to Western audiences by the Rubayat, written in the 12th century by poet Omar Khayyam. ‘Bayt’ also resembles in sound the English noun that means, ‘a small piece’ (as in, “Just a bite”), and the ‘byte’, an internationally recognized unit used to measure quantities of digital data.

About Those Involved
“10 sec. 1 bayt.” is developed as a project to frame the artwork of others. Below is information about those who helped make this possible.

Marisa Jahn, Artistic Director (concept, graphic design, writing)
Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist/writer/activist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes systems. In 2009, with Stephanie Rothenberg and Rachel McIntire, Jahn founded REV-, a non-profit organization that fosters socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy. From 2000-2009, Jahn co-directed “Pond: art, activism, & ideas,” an organization dedicated to experimental public art. Her work has been presented in public spaces and venues such as the The MIT Museum; ICA Philadelphia; ISEA/Zero One; Eyebeam; MOCA North Miami; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, etc. Jahn received a MS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has received awards and grants from UNESCO, Robert & Eileen Haas Foundation, CEC Artslink, Franklin Furnace, Canada Council, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and more. In 2009 Jahn is an artist-in-residence at MIT’s Media Lab, the Headlands Center for the Arts, an artist participating in CEC Artslink/Global Art Lab’s project in Tajikistan, and the inaugural curatorial fellow at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. She is the co-editor of the online journal Where We Are Now: Locating Art & Politics in NYC (www.wherewearenow.org) and two books—‘Recipes for an Encounter’ (Western Front, 2009) and ‘Byproducts: On the Excess of Embedded Art Practices’ (YYZ Books, 2010). www.marisajahn.com, www.rev-it.org

Connor Dickie, Technical Director (engineering, programming)
Connor Dickie is a scientist, artist, inventor and futurist who explores the edge of human-machine communication. He has developed novel computing platforms that augment and share human memory and maximize attention. He also developed a display technology specifically for cyborgs. Many of his artistic and scientific projects have been featured in outlets such as Wired NextFext, Shanghai Biennial, Gadgetoff, BoingBoing, Engadget, Gizmodo, Slashdot, The Guardian, ScienceWorld, BBC and CNN to name a few. Connor received a BA in Film and Media from Queen's Univeristy where he also studied Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at the Human Media Lab in the School of Computing. Connor was a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, and will be continuing his Future Studies at Singularity University at NASA Ames Research Centre.

Interns: Patrick Davenport, Lisa Larson Walker, Merve Unsal

Supporting Organizations
CEC Artslink
CEC ArtsLink is an international arts organization whose programs encourage and support exchange of artists and cultural managers between the United States and Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

“10 sec. 1 bayt” is a project that sprung from CEC Artslink’s new initiative, the Global Arts Lab. The Global Arts Lab seeks to expand global cultural dialogue by engaging with communities that may have been previously marginalized, by presenting their perspectives and understandings to new audiences and expanding an appreciation of these ideas through international collaboration and artistic practice. In Fall 2009, Marisa Jahn and 3 other US-based artists traveled to four cities in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (Khojand, Dushanbe, Osh, and Bishkek) to conduct a project in the local community as well as participate in public programs, such as lectures at universities, workshops with youth, and presentations at arts centers. The projects’ objectives are to provide ways of connecting with community or illustrating social processes that may help organizations or efforts aimed at expanding opportunities, correcting social injustices or generally to foster a greater sense of collective engagement.

REV-
REV- is a non-profit organization that furthers socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy. REV- produces projects that fuse disciplines, foster diversity, and vary in form (workshops, publications, exhibitions, design objects, etc.). Engaged with different communities and groups, REV-‘s projects involve collaborative production, resource-sharing, and a commitment to the process as political gesture.

Sogd Cultural Education Center

Bactria Cultural Centre
Bactria Cultural Centre is an educational and cultural center in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It aims at the development of culture, by offering access to information through seminars and workshops, vocational language and computer training and by organizing artistic events, like exhibitions and concerts. The centre strives to develop contemporary arts as well as to preserve cultural heritage.

BreakArts
Directed by Rachel McIntire and Amanda Lichtenstein, Break Arts aims to inspire young people around the world to co-author the stories of their lives.

Thanks also to Luke Lozier/Bibliopolis and Hiroshi Ishii, MIT Media Lab (Tangible Media Group)

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