RHIZOME DIGEST: 03.05.04

discussion

Posted March 4 2004 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 03.05.04

RHIZOME DIGEST: March 05, 2004 Content: +announcement+ 1. Rasheeqa Ahmad: [Digiplay] Women in Games conference in UK 2. Ars Electronica Center: 2nd International DOM Conference in Linz/Austria +opportunity+ 3. The Sarai Programme: Fwd: [Sarai Newsletter] Positions Available 4. John J.A. Jannone: FW: Rhizome Rare publishing (Interactive Arts program at Brooklyn College) 5. Charlotte Frost: Furthertxt wants your txt! 6. Lev Manovich: New UCSD job +feature+ 7. Alex Galloway: "Protocol"–Excerpt from Chapter 6 "Tactial Media" + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 3.03.04 From: Rasheeqa Ahmad (rasheeqa@broadway.org.uk) Subject: [Digiplay] Women in Games conference in UK ———- From: "Rasheeqa Ahmad" (rasheeqa@broadway.org.uk) Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 13:13:46 -0000 To: (rasheeqa@broadway.org.uk) Subject: FW: [Digiplay] Women in Games conference in UK —–Original Message—– From: Aleks Krotoski [<a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:akrotoski@yahoo.com">mailto:akrotoski@yahoo.com</a>] Sent: 02 March 2004 09:37 To: digiplay@topica.com Subject: [Digiplay] Women in Games conference in UK Hi there, Sorry for the cross-posting, but this is great news. A Women in Games Conference is being held at the University of Portsmouth, UK on 10th and 11th June. Click on the link and the release below, and tell all your UK and European-based friends to come along (as well as anyone else with access to a plane ticket)! This is a first-of-a-kind event and is not to be missed. Aleks Beyond the Sims and Barbie Magic Hair Styler! At last: a conference for women who work in the games industry! Still in a minority, there is a great need for women to work in the games industry. A recent poll by the Entertainment Software Association found that more women were playing games than teenage boys (26% women 18+, 21% boys 6 to 17). On the 10th and 11th June 2004 the Department of Creative Technologies at the University of Portsmouth is holding a Women in Games Conference. The conference is billed as 'Two days of empowerment for women working in the games industry' and offers important continuing professional development. This is believed to be the first conference of its kind anywhere in the world. The full roster of speakers is not finalised yet, but already Sheri Graner-Ray from Sony Online Entertainment in Texas, the author of 'Gender Inclusive Game Design', Helen Kennedy from the Play Research Group at the University of the West of England and Aleksandra Krotoski, presenter of Thumb Bandits and Bits on Channel 4, who is researching into games for her PhD at the University of Surrey, have agreed to talk at the conference. Karl Jeffery, the CEO of Climax, Europe's biggest independent game developer, is giving an opening address and Tara Solesbury from Wired Sussex is talking about her Game Girl initiative, aimed at attracting girls to the games industry. There are both lectures and breakout sessions to give attendees the opportunity to analyse the role of women in the games industry and discuss the future of games that appeal to female gamers. The event also promises to be a great place for networking with a 'networking meal' at a local restaurant on the Thursday night. The Women in Games Conference is a unique opportunity for reflecting on games and the games industry from a feminine perspective. For more information talk to Mark Eyles (mark.eyles@port.ac.uk) or visit www.womeningames.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 3.03.04 From: Ars Electronica Center (announce@evil.aec.at) Subject: 2nd International DOM Conference in Linz/Austria Begin forwarded message: From: Ars Electronica Center (announce@evil.aec.at) Date: March 1, 2004 11:37:34 AM EST Subject: 2nd International DOM Conference in Linz/Austria Reply-To: announcement@aec.at Topographies of Populism: Everyday Life, Media, and the City 2nd International DOM-Conference in Linz March 25th to 27th, 2004 Ars Electronica Center Linz and University of Arts and Industrial Design/Linz Is popular architecture obliged to reflect the clients taste? Has a successful Design to be in line with the popular will? And, what determines trends and expectations of a population? Internationally well known speakers - e.g. Diller+Scofidio(USA), Bill Moggridge/IDEO (UK), Greg van Alstyne/Bruce Mau Design (CDN), Jeffrey Inaba/AMO (USA), Thomas Frank (USA) - from Cultural Theory, Media, Design and Architecture will focus on these questions at the forthcoming DOM Conference. Information and registration: www.dom.ufg.ac.at ————————————————————– Please do not reply to this message. If you want to remove yourself from this mailing list, you can send mail to (majordomo@aec.at) with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe announcement To remove an address other than the one from which you're sending the request, give that address in the command: unsubscribe announcement email@address.xyz ————————————————————– + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering subsidized memberships to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded communities.) Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more information or contact Jessica Ivins at Jessica@Rhizome.org. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 2.26.04 From: The Sarai Programme (dak@sarai.net) Subject: Fwd: [Sarai Newsletter] Positions Available From: The Sarai Programme (dak@sarai.net) Date: February 26, 2004 9:28:53 AM EST To: newsletter@sarai.net Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Positions Available Reply-To: dak@sarai.net The Sarai programme of the CSDS is looking for researchers for its media-city project called Public and Practices in the History of the Present (PPHP). PPHP is an interdisciplinary engagement with the circulation of old and new media forms (film, cable TV, music, print) in cities. It looks at networks and their sites: media markets, film halls and multiplexes, as well as changing forms of distribution and exhibition. It takes the form of sustained field and archival research on media history and media publics in India. An important part of the work includes research on intellectual property law in the media, its practice in courts, enforcement agencies and law firms. The core of our work is in Delhi. All applicants must be resident in Delhi during the research period. Selected applicants will work in collaboration with a team of existing PPHP researchers. We are looking for researchers in three areas: - Cinema: field research and documentation on networks of production, distribution and exhibition in Indian cinema, with a particular focus on Delhi's film trade. We seek applications displaying an interest and familiarity with pertinent academic work in anthropology, film and cultural history. Media Property Regimes: Field based research looking at enforcement agencies (law firms, advocacy, police, investigators) involved with intellectual property and its discourse. Information Politics: Field and secondary research into practices of identification (I.D cards, biometrics), privacy issues, private security agencies, and lobby groups in industry. We expect applicants to have field research experience, and be bi-lingual in Hindi and English. For the legal research post, a critical engagement with intellectual property discourses will be appreciated. These are not permanent positions. Please send an application that includes a one-page statement, and a CV by email to research@sarai.net by April 10th 2004. Send either plain text or rtf files only. The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net Info: dak@sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to newsletter-request@sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. Directions to Sarai: We are ten minutes from Delhi University. Nearest bus stop: IP college or Exchange Stores See Calendar and Newsletter online: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sarai.net/calendar/newsletter.htm">http://www.sarai.net/calendar/newsletter.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 2.27.04 From: John J.A. Jannone (john@ballibay.com) Subject: Rhizome Rare publishing (Interactive Arts program at Brooklyn College) ———- From: "john j.a. jannone" (john@ballibay.com) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:39:26 -0500 To: feisal@rhizome.org Subject: Rhizome Rare publishing Dear Rhizome, I'm pleased to announce that the program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts at Brooklyn College in New York City is currently accepting student applications for the Fall 2004 - Fall 2005 sequence. The first review of applicant portfolios will be held on March 15. Performance and Interactive Media Arts is a graduate program in collaborative, experimental, transdisciplinary artistic production; a three-semester, 18-credit certificate program created cooperatively by the Brooklyn College departments of Art, Computer and Information Science, Film, Television and Radio, Theater, and the Conservatory of Music. For complete information visit the program's website at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.interactivearts.org">http://www.interactivearts.org</a> Interactive programming is a central component of the first two semesters of study, including instruction in the MAX/MSP (+ Jitter & SoftVNS) programming environment, and opportunities for advanced work in interactive sound and image in performance settings. The curriculum consists of courses covering the technology, theory, creation, and production of multimedia and interactive performance artworks. Exploration of the collaborative process within a community context, focusing on the intersection of the creative process and contemporary community and cultural issues, constitutes an important feature of the program. Please contact me off-list. Thank you, John Jannone – john j.a. jannone <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.john.ballibay.com">http://www.john.ballibay.com</a> assistant professor, brooklyn college, cuny director, program in performance and interactive media arts <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.interactivearts.org">http://www.interactivearts.org</a> 718 951 4203 (office) 718 951 4418 (fax) office: 376 Gershwin Hall office hours Spring 2004: Tuesdays 1-4, by appointment. campus mailing address: 304 Whitehead Hall, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210-2889 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 3.03.04 From: Charlotte Frost (charlotte@digitalcritic.org) Subject: Furthertxt wants your txt! Furthertxt is looking for contributors for future issues!!! Please take a look at the January/February Issue of Furthertxt which featured: Caroline Koebel serving up a doggie dinner Christian Nold serving notice to those who wont listen Nick Lambert serving a sample of early computer art history and Barley serving a reminder that the changes we wait for might have even weightier implications……… Writers Featured: Caroline Koebel endeavours through a range of activities to complicate commodity culture and hopefully shrug off its chilling effects. 'Dead Dogs, Live Presidents, Interferences' reacts to various communication and information bodies as if together they form a mass congestion that asks to be first observed, then reordered, and finally re-released so that each of the initial bodies can flow simultaneously alongside of and away from the others. Christian Nold is an artist, activist and designer of tools for social change. Having published a book for Book Works about technologies of political control, he is now studying at the Royal College of Art. His work is focused on developing new tangible and conceptual tools that allow groups to create their own representations. Dr Nick Lambert works at the CACHe Project, Birkbeck College, studying the origins of British Computer Art. This article looks at Computer Art's status as an artform, its origins and some unexplored facets of its history. Barley is a writer and generally overdramatic-type. This poem was written when the writer went though a period of life change and was then given a new watch as a reward for academic achievement…and suddenly the world seemed a very different place when measured with this new time. Please also peruse our back issues which feature written work by: Patrick Lichty, The Critical Art Ensemble, Saul Albert, Marc Garrett, Lewis La Cook, Ryan Griffis, Millie Niss, Peter Yeoh, Gayle Wald, Bruce Eves…and more! If you would like to contribute to furthertxt, contact me now!!!! :-) Charlotte Frost - Furthertxt editor. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.furthertxt.org">http://www.furthertxt.org</a> ++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 3.04.04 From: Lev Manovich (lev@manovich.net) Subject: New UCSD job From: Lev Manovich (lev@manovich.net) Date: March 3, 2004 5:32:35 PM EST To: (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: New UCSD job Rachel, Although the deadline is March 10 the committee will be accepting applications after as long as it takes to find the right person -Lev ———————— Faculty Position: Assistant or Associate Professor, New Media Arts University of California San Diego The University of Californa, San Diego Division of Arts and Humanities (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://dah.ucsd.edu">http://dah.ucsd.edu</a>) invites applicants for an assistant or beginning associate professor of new media arts, to begin July 1, 2004. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience and based upon UC pay scales. Candidates should have creative and/or theoretical work that demonstrates a substantial engagement with computing in any field of the arts such as (but not limited to) the visual arts, music, theatre and/or dance. The position will be affiliated with the New Media Arts area of the California Institute of Information Technology and Telecommunications [Cal-(IT)2 - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.calit2.net">http://www.calit2.net</a> ], and with the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.crca.ucsd.edu">http://www.crca.ucsd.edu</a>). The position will involve teaching within the Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major and the development of new digital arts graduate programs. The candidate will join one of the departments of Visual Arts, Music, or Theatre and Dance. PhD, MFA or commensurate professional experience is required. To apply, please send a letter of intent including a statement of qualifications and research interests, curriculum vitae, samples of creative work and/or publications, along with names and addresses (including email addresses) of three references to: Digital Arts Search Committee CRCA 0037 UC San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0037 The application deadline is March 10, 2004, or until the position is filled. Please reference position #4-332-CRCA in all correspondence. Enclose self-addressed postcard for acknowledgment of application and SASE for return of work samples. UCSD is a major research university that promotes and supports creative work and advanced research in all forms of the arts including practice, history and theory. One of the ten campuses in the world-renowned University of California system, UCSD has rapidly achieved the status as one of the top institutions in the nation for higher education and research. Total current campus enrollment is nearly 25,000. Generous research funding and excellent studio facilities are available. Teaching will include both graduate seminars and undergraduate classes and active involvement with a new interdisciplinary graduate program currently in development. UCSD is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer with a strong institutional commitment to excellence through diversity. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + For $65 annually, Rhizome members can put their sites on a Linux server, with a whopping 350MB disk storage space, 1GB data transfer per month, catch-all email forwarding, daily web traffic stats, 1 FTP account, and the capability to host your own domain name (or use <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.net/your_account_name">http://rhizome.net/your_account_name</a>). Details at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/services/1.php">http://rhizome.org/services/1.php</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 3.02.04 From: Alex Galloway (galloway@nyu.edu) Subject: "Protocol"–Excerpt from Chapter 6 "Tactial Media" "Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization" Excerpt from Chapter 6 "Tactial Media": Arquilla and Ronfeldt coined the term netwar, which they define as "an emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age." Throughout the years new diagrams (also called graphs or organizational designs) have appeared as solutions or threats to existing ones. Bureaucracy is a diagram. Hierarchy is one too, as is peer-to-peer. Designs come and go, serving as useful asset managers at one historical moment, then disappearing, or perhaps fading only to reemerge later as useful again. The Cold War was synonymous with a specific military diagram–bilateral symmetry, mutual assured destruction (MAD), massiveness, might, containment, deterrence, negotiation; the war against drugs has a different diagram–multiplicity, specificity, law and criminality, personal fear, public awareness. This book is largely about one specific diagram, or organizational design, called distribution, and its approximate relationship in a larger historical transformation involving digital computers and ultimately the control mechanism called protocol. In this diagramatic narrative it is possible to pick sides and describe one diagram as the protagonist and another as the antagonist. Thus the rhizome is thought to be the solution to the tree, the wildcat strike the solution to the boss's control, Toyotism the solution to institutional bureaucracy, and so on. Alternately, terrorism is thought to be the only real threat to state power, the homeless punk rocker a threat to sedentary domesticity, the guerrilla a threat to the war machine, the temporary autonomous zone a threat to hegemonic culture, and so on. This type of conflict is in fact a conflict between different social structures, for the terrorist threatens not only through fear and violence, but specifically through the use of a cellular organizational structure, a distributed network of secretive combatants, rather than a centralized organizational structure employed by the police and other state institutions. Terrorism is a sign that we are in a transitional moment in history. (Could there ever be anything else?) It signals that historical actors are not in a relationship of equilibrium, but are instead grossly mismatched. It is often observed that, due largely to the original comments of networking pioneer Paul Baran, the Internet was invented to avoid certain vulnerabilities of nuclear attack. In Baran's original vision, the organizational design of the Internet involved a high degree of redundancy, such that destruction of a part of the network would not threaten the viability of the network as a whole. After World War II, strategists called for moving industrial targets outside urban cores in a direct response to fears of nuclear attack. Peter Galison calls this dispersion the "constant vigilance against the re-creation of new centers." These are the same centers that Baran derided as an "Achilles' heel" and that he longed to purge from the telecommunications network. "City by city, country by country, the bomb helped drive dispersion," Galison continues, highlighting the power of the A-bomb to drive the push toward distribution in urban planning. Whereas the destruction of a fleet of Abrams tanks would certainly impinge upon army battlefield maneuvers, the destruction of a rack of Cisco routers would do little to slow down broader network communications. Internet traffic would simply find a new route, thus circumventing the downed machines. (In this way, destruction must be performed absolutely, or not at all. "The only way to stop Gnutella," comments WiredPlanet CEO Thomas Hale on the popular file sharing protocol, "is to turn off the Internet." And this is shown earlier in my examination of protocol's high penalties levied against deviation. One is completely compatible with a protocol, or not at all.) Thus the Internet can survive attacks not because it is stronger than the opposition, but precisely because it is weaker. The Internet has a different diagram than a nuclear attack does; it is in a different shape. And that new shape happens to be immune to the older. All the words used to describe the World Trade Center after the attacks of September 11, 2001, revealed its design vulnerabilities vis-a-vis terrorists: It was a tower, a center, an icon, a pillar, a hub. Conversely, terrorists are always described with a different vocabulary: They are cellular, networked, modular, and nimble. Groups like Al Qaeda specifically promote a modular, distributed structure based on small autonomous groups. They write that new recruits "should not know one another," and that training sessions should be limited to "7?10 individuals." They describe their security strategies as "creative" and "flexible." This is indicative of two conflicting diagrams. The first diagram is based on the strategic massing of power and control, while the second diagram is based on the distribution of power into small, autonomous enclaves. "The architecture of the World Trade Center owed more to the centralized layout of Versailles than the dispersed architecture of the Internet," wrote Jon Ippolito after the attacks. "New York's resilience derives from the interconnections it fosters among its vibrant and heterogeneous inhabitants. It is in decentralized structures that promote such communal networks, rather than in reinforced steel, that we will find the architecture of survival." In the past the war against terrorism resembled the war in Vietnam, or the war against drugs-?conflicts between a central power and an elusive network. It did not resemble the Gulf War, or World War II, or other conflicts between states. "As an environment for military conflict," The New York Times reported, "Afghanistan is virtually impervious to American power." (In addition to the stymied U.S. attempt to rout Al Qaeda post-September 11, the failed Soviet occupation in the years following the 1978 coup is a perfect example of grossly mismatched organizational designs.) Being "impervious" to American power today is no small feat. The category shift that defines the difference between state power and guerilla force shows that through a new diagram, guerillas, terrorists, and the like can gain a foothold against their opposition. But as Ippolito points out, this should be our category shift too, for anti-terror survival strategies will arise not from a renewed massing of power on the American side, but precisely from a distributed (or to use his less precise term, decentralized) diagram. Heterogeneity, distribution, and communalism are all features of this new diagrammatic solution. In short, the current global crisis is one between centralized, hierarchical powers and distributed, horizontal networks. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, two researchers at the Rand Corporation who have written extensively on the hierarchy-network conflict, offer a few propositions for thinking about future policy: + Hierarchies have a difficult time fighting networks. + It takes networks to fight networks. + Whoever masters the network form first and best will gain major advantages. These comments are incredibly helpful for thinking about tactical media and the role of today's political actor. It gives subcultures reason to rethink their strategies vis-a-vis the mainstream. It forces one to rethink the techniques of the terrorist. It also raises many questions, including what happens when "the powers that be" actually evolve into networked power (which is already the case in many sectors). In recent decades the primary conflict between organizational designs has been between hierarchies and networks, an asymmetrical war. However, in the future the world is likely to experience a general shift downward into a new bilateral organizational conflict–networks fighting networks. "Bureaucracy lies at the root of our military weakness," wrote advocates of military reform in the mid-eighties. "The bureaucratic model is inherently contradictory to the nature of war, and no military that is a bureaucracy can produce military excellence." While the change to a new unbureaucratic military is on the drawing board, the future network-centric military–an unsettling notion to say the least–is still a ways away. Nevertheless networks of control have invaded our life in other ways, in the form of the ubiquitous surveillance, biological informatization, and other techniques discussed in chapter 3 [on "Power"]. The dilemma, then, is that while hierarchy and centralization are almost certainly politically tainted due to their historical association with fascism and other abuses, networks are both bad and good. Drug cartels, terror groups, black hat hacker crews, and other denizens of the underworld all take advantage of networked organizational designs because they offer effective mobility and disguise. But more and more one witnesses the advent of networked organizational design in corporate management techniques, manufacturing supply chains, advertisement campaigns, and other novelties of the ruling class, as well as all the familiar grassroots activist groups who have long used network structures to their advantage. In a sense, networks have been vilified simply because the terrorists, pirates, and anarchists made them notorious, not because of any negative quality of the organizational diagram itself. In fact, positive libratory movements have been capitalizing on network design protocols for decades if not centuries. The section on the rhizome in A Thousand Plateaus is one of literature's most poignant adorations of the network diagram. It has been the goal of this [section] to illuminate a few of these networked designs and how they manifest themselves as tactical effects within the media's various network-based struggles. […] These tactical effects are allegorical indices that point out the flaws in protocological and proprietary command and control. The goal is not to destroy technology in some neo-Luddite delusion, but to push it into a state of hypertrophy, further than it is meant to go. Then, in its injured, sore, and unguarded condition, technology may be sculpted anew into something better, something in closer agreement with the real wants and desires of its users. This is the goal of tactical media. [Excerpt reprinted with the permission of The MIT Press.] —- "Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization" by Alexander R. Galloway The MIT Press (March, 2004), 248 pages, ISBN 0262072475 book homepage: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/protocol">http://mitpress.mit.edu/protocol</a> table of contents: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ag111/Protocol-contents.doc">http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ag111/Protocol-contents.doc</a> amazon page: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262072475">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262072475</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Feisal Ahmad (feisal@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 9, number 10. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>. Subscribers to Rhizome Digest are subject to the terms set out in the Member Agreement available online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/29.php">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php</a>. Please invite your friends to visit Rhizome.org on Fridays, when the site is open to members and non-members alike. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +