RHIZOME DIGEST: 2.04.05

discussion

Posted Feb. 3 2005 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 2.04.05

RHIZOME DIGEST: February 4, 2005 Content: +announcement+ 1. Rhizome.org: Just opened: "VIDEO/AUDIO INTERACTION" curated by Brian Schwab 2. Pall Thayer: [Fwd: crash symposium/sound event london feb 11 2005] 3. Jo-Anne Green: Turbulence Guest Curator: "Pop Up" by Abe Linkoln +opportunity+ 4. joy.garnett@gmail.com: FWD: Two Tenure-Track Faculty Positions in Digital Media (CUNY) 5. Steve Dietz: ISEA2006 Symposium and residency call +work+ 6. Pall Thayer: CNU (Creamedfishsoup'sNotUnix) 7. christopher otto: all time project 8. Curt Cloninger: Synesthetic Bubblegum Cards: Set 5: The Ornamental Pack +comment+ 9. Trebor: The ABC\'s of Conferencing. Experiment, Play, Reflect 10. Edward Picot: Payments for Web Art? +commissioned for rhizome.org+ 11. David Senior: Sharing = Caring + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 1.31.05 From: Rhizome.org <webmaster@rhizome.org> Subject: Just opened: "VIDEO/AUDIO INTERACTION" curated by Brian Schwab Just opened … <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/exhibit.rhiz?100">http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/exhibit.rhiz?100</a> + VIDEO/AUDIO INTERACTION + + Curated by Brian Schwab + INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS CONTAING AUDIO AND VIDEO. + + + Rhizome ArtBase curation allows any Rhizome member to curate an exhibit from works in the ArtBase. Go to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/all_exhibits.rhiz">http://rhizome.org/all_exhibits.rhiz</a> to see a list of all open exhibits. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 2.01.05 From: Pall Thayer <palli@pallit.lhi.is> Subject: [Fwd: crash symposium/sound event london feb 11 2005] ——– Original Message ——– Subject: crash symposium/sound event london feb 11 2005 Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 15:16:30 +0000 From: m@1010.co.uk To: crashingp@1010.co.uk crash feb 11th 2005 london uk crash revelations for holographic binding OS crash forced expanded opening for new post-software-art crash melancholia and fascism crash post humanist ontology crash abstraction + machinic representation crash auto-destructive art relation to the computational crash self-coded post-algorithmic constructivist noise performance crash florian cramer, stewart home, otto e roessler, anthony moore, sunny bains, dick j bierman, lisa jevbratt, martin howse, jonathan kemp crash andy bolus, russell haswell, yves degoyon, erich berger, ap, stillupsteypa, farmers manual, kaffe matthews, pita crash shoreditch town hall london ec1 [on door £3 / online £3,33] 10 am crash ica london sw1 [tickets through ica 02079303647] 8.30 pm crash crashing@1010.co.uk crash.1010.co.uk crash ap project supported by arts council england, smal + mute —————————————————————————- ——————— crash is a unique event exposing a radical new space for post-software art and examining links to theories of endodata, holographic programming and auto-destructive art. crash builds from two components, a one day symposium at shoreditch town hall with speakers including florian cramer, stewart home, dick j bierman, lisa jevbratt and otto roessler. the evening component at the ica collides theory with practice, combining constructivist noise, self-coded applications and self-constructed hardware. participating international artists include pita, farmers manual, yves degoyon, andy bolus, ap, erich berger, stillupsteypa, kaffe matthews and russell haswell. crash necessary apologies for cross-posting / crash please disseminate further + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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 Kevin McGarry at Kevin@Rhizome.org or Rachel Greene at Rachel@Rhizome.org. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 2.04.05 From: Jo-Anne Green <jo@turbulence.org> Subject: Turbulence Guest Curator: "Pop Up" by Abe Linkoln February 4, 2005 Turbulence Guest Curator: "Pop Up" by Abe Linkoln <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org/curators/popup/index.htm">http://turbulence.org/curators/popup/index.htm</a> >From the "Pop Up Manifesto": 1. First click, best click? ?7. Like a ballet mecanique digitales, a pop up window's location and timing is never random?Any appearance of chaos, is?an appearance. It is crucial that we stay calm?do not scare them away?they sense fear and can react either by running away or by stomping you to death? ?9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down? BIOGRAPHY Abe Linkoln is a net artist and net curator. Recent works include "My Boyfriend Came Back From the War (Abe Linkoln's 2004 Blog Mix)" featured in the Last Real Net Art Museum, "Netflix" featured in Altx's HyperX gallery, and he is constantly updating on the multimedia blog Screenfull.net. For more Turbulence Guest Curators, see <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org/curators/index.html">http://turbulence.org/curators/index.html</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 2.01.05 From: <joy.garnett@gmail.com> Subject: FWD: Two Tenure-Track Faculty Positions in Digital Media (CUNY) —–Original Message—– From: Dutton, Sonia Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 12:58 PM To: Garnett, Joy Subject: didya see this? =) THE GRADUATE CENTER THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK. Digital Media Two Tenure-Track Faculty Positions City University of New York Graduate Center The City University of New York, the nation's largest public urban university, is pleased to announce two tenure-track faculty positions in digital media that will be filled as soon as September 2005. CUNY has identified digital media as a Flagship Program within its nineteen-campus system that it intends to enhance and expand over the next two years. Candidates for these positions must demonstrate broad experience in using and creating digital media in artistic and/or academic settings, a strong research agenda in various aspects of digital media production and use, and a commitment to teaching and academic achievement in digital media. A doctorate or a terminal degree in an appropriate field is required. The positions are available at the Assistant, Associate, and Professor levels, commensurate with the experience and qualifications of the candidates. Hunter College Digital Media Maker with emphasis on using media to enhance public awareness, in the M.F.A. Program in Integrated Media Arts offering Advanced Studies in Nonfiction Media Making Individual must have related teaching experience and demonstrate competence in two or more areas of digital and electronic forms of creative investigation and public expression, including: experimental imaging/interaction systems, robotics, mobile computing, networked spaces, web applications, animation, video, interactive/machine interfaces, programming, performance, installation and 3-D. Applicant should be familiar with electronic media theory and contemporary art practice. We seek an individual whose creative research demonstrates a deep understanding of the relationship between emerging technologies and contemporary media art, experimental and hybrid media practices and models, and theoretical, socio-cultural, and historical discourse. NYC College of Technology The Entertainment Technology Department of the School of Technology and Design The successful candidate will be an innovative entertainment technology practitioner and educator with practical and teaching experience in one or more of the following areas: Scenic Automation, Motion Control, and Mechanisms Design/Development; Physical computing applied to real-time systems of distributed devices; Animatronics and Robotics; Interactive Installation and Virtual Environment Technology; or Video/Visual Media Presentation Systems. Related experience in digital audio/video, software engineering, computer-aided design, or electromechanical devices is an asset as is experience in artistic and cultural presentation. Academic/teaching experience is advantageous and will be a major part of this position. A minimum of three years professional experience is expected. The position offers an opportunity to play a key role in curriculum development for multidisciplinary courses and program-level projects. The position will be housed within the Entertainment Technology Department, and be cross-disciplinary with the Computer Systems Technology, Computer Engineering Technology and/or Mechanical Engineering Technology departments, including possible teaching assignments in these departments. Applicants must state which position(s) they are applying for. Send a letter describing qualifications, experience and research agenda with vita and names of three references to: Dr. Stephen Brier, Associate Provost for Instructional Technology and Chair Digital Media Cluster Hiring Initiative * The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave., Rm. 8111 * New York, NY 10016 Applicants for more than one position should include duplicate materials. Applications will be forwarded to the search committee at the appropriate college(s); review of applications will begin immediately. The searches will continue until the positions are filled. GUNY is an AA/EO employer M/F/D/V + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Member-curated Exhibits <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/">http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/</a> View online exhibits Rhizome members have curated from works in the ArtBase, or learn how to create your own exhibit. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 2.02.05 From: Steve Dietz <mediachef@earthlink.net> Subject: ISEA2006 Symposium and residency call ISEA2006 SYMPOSIUM The ISEA2006 Symposium is being held in conjunction with the first biennial ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival for Art on the Edge in San Jose, California, August 5-13, 2006. The themes for the Symposium and Festival are: Interactive City, Community Domain, Pacific Rim, and Transvergence. See <a rel="nofollow" href="http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/index.html">http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/index.html</a> for more details. OPEN CALL FOR RESIDENCY PROJECT We are announcing an open call for an airport residency project in conjunction with the Symposium. Future calls will be announced over the next 6 weeks. See <a rel="nofollow" href="http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./calls.html">http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./calls.html</a> for more information. <announcement> The City of San Jose Public Art Program, in collaboration with the San Jose Airport Department is pleased to announce an artist residency program as part of the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge being held in August 2006. The outcome of the residency is to create a project that activates the Airport as a gateway to the community–local, global, and festival. The primary presentation of this residency project will be on the San Jose International Airport property. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./mineta.html">http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./mineta.html</a> </announcement> SUBSCRIBE TO ISEA2006 LIST To sign up for future announcements and to receive periodic updates about the Symposium and Festival, subscribe to the ISEA2006 list at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006">http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006</a>. Save the dates: August 5-13, 2006. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/index.html">http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/index.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./mineta.html">http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./mineta.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006">http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006</a> Steve Dietz Director ISEA2006 Symposium ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge Joel Slayton Chair ISEA2006 Symposium ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge Beau Takahara Coordinator ISEA2006 Symposium ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 2.01.05 From: Pall Thayer <palli@pallit.lhi.is> Subject: CNU (Creamedfishsoup'sNotUnix) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://pallit.lhi.is/CNU/">http://pallit.lhi.is/CNU/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 2.03.05 From: christopher otto <thisisfresh@gmail.com> Subject: all time project reading the thread about color clocks made me want to experiment with something ive had lying around for awhile - Ive been interested in time compression and kind of outrageous layering. so this morning I made a quick sketch in javascript of it: ALL TIME(2004) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.geocities.com/thisisfresh/all_time.html">http://www.geocities.com/thisisfresh/all_time.html</a> IE ONLY - it's the only browser with css filters i think:( (i put an explanation of what it does in the source) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 2.04.05 From: Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com> Subject: Synesthetic Bubblegum Cards: Set 5: The Ornamental Pack New Work: The fifth set of Synesthetic Bubble Gum Cards is now available: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/ornamental/">http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/ornamental/</a> Source visuals by: anonymous Celtic scribes various outsider artists various Islamic artists various graffiti writers various Maori tatau artists and Walter Inglis Anderson Source audio by: Devendra Banhart Joanna Newsom Sufjan Stevens Clouddead Previous sets may be gotten at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/">http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/</a> enjoy, curt + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 9. Date: 2.02.05 From: Trebor <trebor@buffalo.edu> Subject: The ABC\'s of Conferencing. Experiment, Play, Reflect The ABC's of Conferencing. Experiment, Play, Reflect by Trebor Scholz & Geert Lovink People love conferences. They can't get enough of all the offline events on offer. Like festivals, conferences are venues where you can meet future collaborators, debate ideas and artworks, party intensely, get inspired, provoked, learn, make new friends, and then occasionally carry on the dialogue in the sauna. These days, the event industry is an integral part of the shopping-driven locative spectacle. Conferences are also an opportunity for people who can't meet otherwise, to spend a few days together away from their obligations, zooming in on ideas. Whereas, socially speaking, conferences may be exciting, most events use conventional, unreflected formats. In this essay we investigate why this is the case and what alternative models are available to disrupt the everyday consensus machine. Beyond good or evil, conferences are here to stay, so they better be good. Critique of Panelism For a moment let's not focus on what people like or do not like. We were always looking for conferences free of keynote speeches and panels. It's a relief to see speakers argue freely, be brief - leaving ample time for questions from the audience, and focus on the points raised by the chair of a session. Formats and the vocabulary used lock us not only into structures but also impact the way we develop content. In the age of the Internet 'rhetoric', we can feel free to move on, away from reading a 'paper' to more distributed and collaborative forms of discourse production, discussion and dispute. The ritualized academic structure of panels and the non-communicative form of the keynote speaker feed into the celebrity system reinforcing hegemonic paradigms that get in the way of genuine dialogue and of diverse, emerging voices being heard. Some will read this criticism as an attack on the scientific community as a whole. We disagree. Academics are not a species in danger of extinction and it is time to get out of the defensive mode. Panelism is part of the dark side of 'academism' and needs to be addressed, exactly because it is spilling over to other contexts such as the arts, culture, new media and even activism. A good example of well meant but misplaced panelism is the Intersociety for Electronic Arts (ISEA), a bi-annual conference, a somewhat tragic event in which artists have to participate in scientific formats in order to contribute. In part this is an effect of the forced 'edufication' of the arts, particularly in the United States, but increasingly also in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Within the American 'university of excellence' (1) language and research formats in the arts are modeled increasingly after the business logic of the sciences. People who decide about grants in turn are looking at the military-industrial complex that supports them to an ever-growing extent. The possibility of failure, even in the sciences becomes almost impossible due to an all-powerful result imperative. Instead of addressing this topic directly, a culture of academic simulation is being introduced in which a wide range, from designers, programmers and activists to net artists are persuaded to respond to 'call for papers,' motivate each other to submit a 'proposal for a panel' and even have to buy into the dirty business of (blind) peer reviewing, enforcing lengthy citations, in order to get something 'published' on a website. Increasingly, dull formats of the sciences are imposed on the arts. Mind you, these are mostly unnecessary, 'alien' formats that no one would come up with on their own. There is by no means a 'natural' desire amongst artists to sit in panels and write 'papers.' In fact, these formats are despised– but nonetheless hard to resist. We do not suggest that artists cannot speak for themselves or should not be involved in practices embracing theory and production, or arts and sciences. But we do question the forced adaptation of scientific formats and argue that it is high time to start public awareness, openly talk about it and label the occurring tendency by its proper names: paperism and panelism. What's so bad about three or four people, each sitting on their individual hobby horses, introduced by an ill-informed chair of the session far distant from the divulged audience? The fact that the panelists do not know each other and have not seen let alone read each other's 'papers'? The fact that there was hardly time for questions? Who cares? Exactly. Who cares? We do. We, the audience, are those who care. We have to say no to the supermarket mentality in which both audience and presenters are merely shopping around, not showing up on panels, are clearly programmed in the wrong section of the program or have no ability, or even wish, to addressing the handful of people in the hall in a clear manner. The source of 'panelism' has to be located at conference organizers, not speakers, let alone the audience. What panelism expresses is laziness and a lack of creative thinking as to which format in what (discursive) situation will work best. Panelism is often an indication that too many people have been involved in the decision making process. The panel structure is the flipside of justified attempts to be more inclusive and have as many speakers as possible. But that doesn't always result in interesting events. The best conferences are being produced by a small team of both researchers and producers that closely collaborate. Events curated by one individual, such as Ars Electronica, have the tendency to become narrow and repetitive and develop an informal circuit of guessing and gossiping around the intentions of this one person, much like Documenta and the biennial system with its small group of circulating curators. The worst panels are those when speakers really have no clue why they are in the same session. Or take this situation: a competitive, slightly irritated atmosphere arises when the first speaker goes over her time limit, then the second as well, leaving no time for the last one. A variation of this would be the case in which the last speaker 'eats up' all the remaining time for questions. Another general pattern is the fact that the last speaker gets most of the questions as the audience has forgotten what the previous panelists had to say. These problems can only partially be solved by a good moderator. The key issue here is not the all too human qualities of certain subjects but the deep liberal, unfocused approach in which the topics might, at best, be described as a cloud of question marks. The audience in response develops a liberal, 'surfing' attitude towards the 'collage' of information that is presented, a mechanism so precisely described by Marshall McLuhan. There is no compelling reason why panel members would have to discuss with each other. Usually they have been introduced minutes before they start and can barely remember each other's name. And while all this happens the audience sits as a silent block in the dark. Maybe we missed something and only have been at events where there was nothing at stake. Perhaps there is a universal human right to present one's paper in public. We are being told that in this democratic idea science should be seen as a bazaar full of mediocre but necessary products in which it is up to diehards to find the precious gems. Noise to signal ratios are varying greatly and one has to learn to filter in order to get through. Keynote speakers do not make up for the tragedy of panelism. They only mirror the problem and try to compensate for the middle of the road methodology that creates artificial celebrity. Reputation does not exist, it has to be made, and the keynote system is an ideal vehicle to do so. The Search for Alternatives Before we slide into radical negativism, let's focus on alternatives. The FreeCooperation conference that we recently organized (2) took place on a campus of the State University of New York, late April 2004. The topic of the event was the art of (online) collaboration. From cell phones to email, and multiplayer online games, mailing lists, weblogs (3), and wikis (4) our everyday lives are increasingly enmeshed with technology. This at least is true for societies benefiting from the globalization of the information order. The necessity to examine what happens when we collaborate in these technological channels through which we communicate will soon become more apparent. How can we find independence and more freedom in a context of networked collaboration? To this conference we invited the Bremen-based media critic Christoph Spehr who coined the term 'free cooperation' in his essay "Gleicher als andere" (More Equal Than the Other). Most of Spehr's writings are not translated into English and this event was an opportunity to introduce his ideas into anglophone media discourses. Spehr's writings use references to 1960s Sci-Fi movies to think about contemporary cooperation insisting on the option of refusal, independence, negotiation and re-negotiation with alien corporate or state monsters. Focusing on these ideas of equality and freedom the conference asked how they can be made useful for alternative networks of learning and the university. We designed the FreeCooperation conference scenario after the dramaturgical structure of a Brechtian play. The somewhat staged environments of the event were rather theatrical. In order to make way for new structures there it was a crucial need to crush all hope amongst possible followers of panelism. The mantra 'no lectures, no panels' took a long time to sink in. Yet, at the same time the event had to be as open and participatory as possible. There is a wide range of alternative formats one can choose from nowadays. To state that keynotes plus panels is the only possible way of doing a conference is pure nonsense. All it takes is the willingness to experiment, undaunted by the prospect of failure. At FreeCooperation, in a talk show-style session participants impersonated sci-fi filmmakers, scientists, and "flexible personalities" and were accompanied by musical intermezzos on Tony Conradâ??s "phonarmonica."(5) Remote guests commented on the debate via Internet Relay Chat. In the staging process we included an intimate talkathon (four hours, one room, two speakers, eight people in the audience at a time), a few dialogues, performances, a conference radio, a video conference in tandem with remote desktop, a game about games, streamed net radio discussions, brainstorming sessions, film screenings, a small exhibition, several workshops, a turntabilist collaboration, and one monologue. There were no keynote speakers and, obviously, no panels, which worked well in particular because the topic was collaboration. We explicitly asked participants not to deliver long lectures aiming at a more dialogical format. This approach caused concerns for participants who usually walk on red carpets but was perfect for those who were willing to contribute to an event, the success of a debate as a whole, for those who could briefly present a summation of their thoughts and are then open enough to engage in debate responding to others. Venues at the FreeCooperation event were organized with seating in circular shapes, no top-down auditoriums. Large gatherings like this are good opportunities for students and other locals to create their own networks– relationships that may become fruitful for them in the future. Here, encounters with other students, artist friends or cultural critics may in the end even turn out to be more formative than regimented course work. On the outset of the organization of an event the question needs to be asked if this is a half-day, one day, two day or week-long event or if it can better be realized as networked program, for example on the AccessGrid (6). Don't underestimate the amount of work that it will take: you will need help. It's pertinent to be very clear about the pay-off for all involved– the host institution, volunteers, participants and organizers. For us, this event-based cultural practice was rewarding as it gave the opportunity to highlight urgent issues, play with formats, to create discourse and resources about online collaboration. How can you avoid overloading individuals with work and maintain a sense of more-or-less free cooperation in a context of next to no funding for culture in the United States (7)? In the enthusiasm of organizing one can get carried away and might make promises that will cause disappointments later. Event planning needs to start early. But how early? Discussions and fund raising should start at least one year before a large-scale event. We began by carefully deciding on a date, cross-checking with university calendars and public holidays. Often in US academia the planning time for big conferences takes up to two years. The problem with organizing a new media event in this manner is that the topics may not be as current this far ahead. When deciding on a city for the event location does not always matter. People are willing to travel to off-the-map places to have good discussions. At the crux of the success of an event, however, is that all parts of the conference take place in one location. That is not always possible but organizers should be aware that splitting event venues gets disorienting especially for jet-lagged international participants. They will find it tiring to take costly taxis to get around, see which sessions start up at what time. In addition, many sessions may be on at the same time, which makes it hard to see what one came for and to meet other participants. Arriving at events with hundreds or thousands of speakers, it's a challenging task to connect with those attendees with whom one wanted to talk for a long time. Nametags are half-concealed by bags or coats making for a strange detective game. A simple piece of software could help here. A Twiki (8) or proximity area network could be a space in which people can read each others' texts before they attend the event, then being able to jump right into the discussion after a short summation of their argument. People would also have an easier time finding each other as photos in the wiki, one could see where others are at a particular time during the conference, and allow for brief exchanges to arrange meetings. This requires attendees to prepare the conference and take part in pre-conference exchanges still leaving things to debate for the event itself. Some conferences use commercial social software platforms such as ORKUT (9) to meet in. Using wireless networks one could also adapt software such as ActiveCampus (10) or "Wifi Bedouin" (11) for personal data assistants (PDAs) or wireless enabled laptops. Best, we should write a free/ open source application that serves the described conference needs. When organizing the FreeCooperation conference we were overwhelmed by the large numbers of proposals that we received in response to our call. We read the submissions deciding based on their relevance to what we set out to organize. Like Phil Agre, media critic at The University of California Los Angeles, who remarks this in a text about the organization of conferences (12), we were uncomfortable selecting on the basis of already established reputations in the field or nepotism because this simply re-inscribes the circulation of a virtual class, the same voices are heard over and over. We decided based on proposals which led us to program undergraduate students next to established media artists and critics. We also choose participants whom we got to know on the preparatory mailing list. The main question was if the proposed presentation would fit into the thematic framework of the conference. We emphasized that we look for reflection on collaboration rather than mere descriptions of projects. Our advice: be careful when you consider and re-consider whom to invite. Which format suits the personality of the participant best– a more intimate setting of a workshop or rather the polemic format of the roundtable? Try to imagine the best number of people for each workshop or session. This is a difficult task when you don't know how many people will attend the overall event. It is administratively difficult to invite international speakers in the current political climate in the United States. We focused our finances mainly on participants who are not employed in American academia. When drawing a chart of the dramaturgical flow of the conference, we oriented ourselves on the structure of Brechtian plays. A big concentration of energy (talk show, debate-intensive sessions) was planned for the first day, and again towards the end of the second. When setting up a list try to have full control over it, and also to secure the list archive. Don't use list services offered by commercial enterprises as this has the potential for disaster (ie. unbearable amounts of advertisement are suddenly added to posts). Shortly after we initiated the mailing list we announced that we'll close it down a month or two after the event not intending to run this as a mailing list beyond the conference preparation. Seven months prior to the event the mailing list became a useful tool to enter into debate. People briefly introduced themselves, posted texts, pointed to collaboration theory, and collective art projects. Short posts containing one argument seemed to best start up discussion. But, even one or two critical or hostile voices on a mailing list can taint the overall perception of an entire event– a problem of list culture in general. Funding. Ask yourself if your event really can get (or needs) outside sponsorship. We wrote countless letters to local businesses. As a trade show or any other corporate presence at the conference was not an option because of the politics of the event we could have saved the energy that we put into those applications. In US academia one has to first demonstrate that one is dedicated and already in full gears working on the organization of an event to get funding for it. You should consider the costs of your event carefully and make contingency plans in case you'll get less money. Alternate plans are also important all throughout the organizing process. Another pivotal question in the organization of a conference or other event is that of outcomes. What do you want the participants to take away from the event beyond the participation experience? Positive networking and the exchange of ideas always take place but what can you do to go beyond that? For the FreeCooperation conference we edited a theory newspaper, simply designed, that was launched on the first night of the event. We printed a large number of copies, some of which participants took home with them and the rest was distributed locally and throughout new media institutions. We also created a DVD that besides short video impressions of the conference sessions also included interviews with conference participants, and a video by Christoph Spehr and JÃ¶rg Windszus. The conference website, created with the helpful free software package Open Conference Systems (OCS) (13) simplified some of the registration issues but was also limiting as too many non-customizable features were based on the needs of traditional academic conferences. The conference Wiki became a rich repository for ideas, and a growing archive about (online) collaboration. Out of the conference emerged the Institute for Distributed Creativity (14) and the Institute for Network Cultures (15). We are currently editing a book on the art of (online) collaboration that will be published by oe/b_books by the end of spring 2005. We can't wait for the moment that complex, stable, and powerful open source tools for presentation become available. How many times have we tried to replace proprietary software such as 'Powerpoint' or 'Keynote' but had to surrender as packages such as OpenOffice (16) did not have the necessary features or were not reliable enough? Many conference organizers, based on a few topics start to invite a range of participants. They make sure that they are good speakers with engaging presentations, and that they are geographically diverse (local vs. inter/national) to avoid an isolated alien landing of a conference crew star ship. In this balancing act between ideas, equal representation of gender, minorities and available finances the focus on a few specific topics easily gets lost and events become unfocused. The challenge is to avoid the tokenism of the multicultural spectacle while still achieving the much-needed balance. Globalization has yet to arrive in many cultural/new media arts events. One of the ways to speed up diversity is to question dominant organization formats and introduce basic forms of interactivity and dialogue. October 2004 References: (1) Readings, B. (1999). The University in Ruins. 4th ed. United States: Harvard University Press. (2) The "networks, art, and collaboration" conference, a.k.a. FreeCooperation, took place in April 2004 at the Department of MediaStudy, The State University of New York at Buffalo. The conference was organized by Trebor Scholz (New York/ Buffalo) and Geert Lovink (Brisbane/Amsterdam), assisted (in more or less free cooperation) by Dorothee Gestrich (now Banff Centre) and Orkan Telhan (Ankara/ Buffalo), Tom Leonhardt (Toronto/ Buffalo) and Arzu Telhan (Ankara/ Buffalo). Trebor Scholz. (2004). networks, art, & collaboration. Freecooperation. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://freecooperation.org">http://freecooperation.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (3) 'A weblog, or simply a blog, is a web application which contains periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts on a common webpage. Such a web site would typically be accessible to any Internet user. Part of the reason "blog" was coined and commonly accepted into use is the fact that in saying "blog", confusion with server log is avoided.' (2004). weblog. Wikipedia. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://wikipedia.org">http://wikipedia.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (4) 'A Wiki or wiki (pronounced "wicky" or "weeky" or "viki") is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows any user to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by any other user.' (2004). weblog. Wikipedia. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://wikipedia.org">http://wikipedia.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (5) Tony Conrad's Phonarmonica is an update of Benjamin Franklin glass armonica- an instrument that spun glass bowls and was played with finger tips. Conrad's DJ version uses a power drill to spin a stack of 78 RPM records at incrwsing velocity while they are played by a manual contact with a pair of phonograph tone arms. (6) Access Grid The Access Gridâ?¢ is an ensemble of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to support group-to-group interactions across the Grid. The AccessGrid Project. AccessGrid (accessgrid.org). Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://accessgrid.org">http://accessgrid.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (7) "While France pays an average of $17 per capita on international cultural programs, the United States spends 65 cents." The Globalist. The Globalist| Global Diplomacy– Europe's Soft Power. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=3886">http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=3886</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (8) Twiki "TWiki is a WikiWiki TWiki also enables simple form-based web applications, without programming, and granular access control (though it can also operate in classic 'no authentication' mode). Other enhancements include configuration variables, embedded searches, server side includes, file attachments and a plugin API that has spawned over 130 plugins to link into databases, create charts, sort tables, write spreadsheets, make drawings, track Extreme Programming projects and so on." (2004). weblog. Wikipedia. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://wikipedia.org">http://wikipedia.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (9) Orkut is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends. We are committed to providing an online meeting place where people can socialize, make new acquaintances and find others who share their interests. Orkut. Orkut. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.orkut.com/">http://www.orkut.com/</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (10) ActiveCampus The ActiveCampus project aims to provide location-based services for educational networks and understand how such systems are used. activeclass enables collaboration between students and professors by serving as a visual moderator for classroom interaction. ActiveCampus Explorer uses a person's context, like location, to help engage them in campus life. (2004). ActiveCampus. explorations in community-oriented ubiquitous computing. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://activecampus.ucsd.edu/">http://activecampus.ucsd.edu/</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (11) WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. (2004). TechKwonDo. TechKwonDo__WiFiBedouin. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.techkwondo.com/projects/bedouin/">http://www.techkwondo.com/projects/bedouin/</a>. Last accessed October 05, 2005. (12) Phil Agre. (1996). Notes on organizing conferences. Phil Agre's Home Page. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/">http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. See also: Geert Lovink (2002). Dark Fiber. 1st Edition Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. On Conferences and Temporary Media Labs(13) Open Conference Systems (OCS) is a free Web publishing tool that will create a complete Web presence for your scholarly conference. (2004). Open Conference Systems. Open Conference Systems (OCS). Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/ocs/">http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/ocs/</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (14) Institute for Distributed Creativity (IDC) The research of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (IDC) focuses on collaboration in media art, technology, and theory with an emphasis on social contexts. The IDC, founded by Trebor Scholz in May 2004, is an international network with a participatory and flexible institutional structure that combines advanced creative production, research, events, and documentation. While the IDC makes appropriate use of emerging low-cost and free social software it balances these activities with regular face-to-face meetings. (2004). Institute for Distributed Creativity. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://distributedcreativity.org">http://distributedcreativity.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (15) Founded mid 2004 by Geert Lovink, this research institute, based at Polytechnic/University of Amsterdam (UvA/HvA), will look into the (internal) dynamics of online networks by organizing lectures, conferences, reseach progams and, most of all, both offline and online collaborations. (2004). Institute for Network Cultures. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://networkcultures.org">http://networkcultures.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. (16) OpenOffice OpenOffice's mission is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://OpenOffice.org">http://OpenOffice.org</a> : Homepage. Open Office. Available: URL <a rel="nofollow" href="http://openoffice.org">http://openoffice.org</a>. Last accessed October 5, 2004. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 10. Date: 2.02.05 From: Edward Picot <edwardpicot@beeb.net> Subject: Payments for Web Art? New on The Hyperliterature Exchange/trAce for February 2005 - Should web art be free or should it be paid for? Many new media writers and artists regard asking for payment as philosophically objectionable and a good way to lose audience numbers. Others believe that it's just as reasonable to ask payment for web art as to ask it for a book or a painting. To read the views of a number of web artists on this subject, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://hyperex.co.uk/reviewpayments.php">http://hyperex.co.uk/reviewpayments.php</a>; or to read an article about it, written by Edward Picot for the trAce organistion, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/Opinion/index.cfm?article=129">http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/Opinion/index.cfm?article=129</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 11. Date: 2.04.05 From: David Senior <David_Senior@moma.org> Subject: Sharing = Caring Sharing = Caring Me+++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. by William J. Mitchell The reiterated themes of William J. Mitchell¹s work Me+++ identify the overarching trend in digital technology of shrinking objects that compose our capability of receiving and dispersing information, of a capacity within communication techniques to blur former boundaries of movement and vision. The book presents an impressive list of new horizons in the development of techniques of communication, mobility and information storage. The pattern is replayed for the reader in various fields: of academic networks of digital reference, digital accessories like cellular phones and wireless laptops, universal access to GPS services and the compression of all these tools into single handheld devices. The tone reflects an insurmountable tide towards the merging of our tool set and the individual into an easily accessible node within a comprehensive network architecture. Within this architecture, the body and the techniques reflect an ambiguous figure, one without former distinctions between where the line is drawn between the tool and its user. This is a point however that has been reached and reiterated consistently within the deluge of critical writing on and around the philosophy of technology and our cyborg condition. Me+++ simply attaches some more anecdotes on this narrative of the contemporary person and the limitless personas of the body and thought. What Mitchell, academic director of MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences, provides for the reader, is a consideration of the technological world at the moment and also, allusions to the trajectories of possible developments in the future. As he states, he writes from the perspective ³of a critically engaged designer whose business it is to reflect, imagine and invent.² The very nature of this type of writing achieves its essential point by just attempting to codify the moment in terms of the trends and trajectories of our digital world. Already, this book, which was originally published in 2003, evokes an awkwardness that any projection in regards to the future holds in the history of technology. The danger of writing prognostications of a future present is the pace of change that already has outstripped the writer¹s reflections of the state of the art. The already obsolete condition mimics that of the objects themselves, the constant production of debris in development of new and better products, and also reflects the condition of the unexpected in the function and dysfunction of our technology. Inevitably, the approach to an object is flipped on its head by an innovative gesture, an accidental move or a stubborn user. In fact, the most dynamic condition of an object is in its role in events or practices that are completely detached from any intention of a designer, by destabilizing former configurations of orientation and function. Consistently, there are depictions in the text of the body without decisive limit, extended by the conditions of small and mobile networked communication techniques. This is a decisive point that should be understood in today¹s discourse on the body, and in philosophical discourse in relation to technology and communication. Users of these new techniques have begun to recognize the how deeply these new spaces participate in our reflection of ourselves and the map of our complicated contemporary environment. So, as Mitchell writes emphatically of these networks, ³Not only are these networks essential to my physical survival, they also constitute and structure my channels of perception and agency-my means of knowing and acting upon the world?And they are as crucial to me as my neurons.²[ii] Such a strong admission of one¹s dependency on our mediatized setting certainly stirs reflection on the degree to which Mitchell is correct in his summation of this dependency. What is more alarming given such statements is Mitchell¹s lack of a more decisive advocacy against the forces of control in our digital milieu. Considering such an essential relation to this architecture, it would seem fairly important to seriously assert the dangers that are bound to the political and economical control of access to these spaces. Often, Mitchell positively references the figure of the nomad as the new condition of our contemporary circumstances. This reference has been articulated often enough to have become cliché, especially in regards to the extent that Deleuze and Guttari¹s original work in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus has been pasted on a whole menagerie of critical thought and cultural studies discourses. In terms of Mitchell¹s use, the figure of the nomad has no resonance as a persona of resistance. The general characterization of a contemporary or future individual empowered by the ability to gain quick information or access to larger communication networks fits best with the desired qualities of contemporary business models. This model of the mobile worker has surfaced now in the advertising and promotion of business tools and wireless technology as the fundamental necessity for success in the global market. Also, the accessories of mobility highlighted in Me+++ could easily be connected to an extension of surveillance and integration in a specific fixed order. Here perhaps we see a more rigorous relation to the stakes of contemporary techniques of mobility. Is it more that we are designing an increased order of surveillance and control through the technology of communication, imaging and identification? It simply takes a responsible look at certain militaristic origins of technologies to relate these new techniques to various methodologies of control and security. Central to any discussion in this regard is the current research in biometrics and the implications of this new horizon of biopolitical space. The consequences seem to be less an instituted freedom of movement but more of hyper-mobilized condition of security and zones of contained communication. The space of the network extends out, but less in a capacity to surpass understood borders, in a condition where we are all more intrinsically subject to the biopolitics of contemporary society. What then is the role of the designer in such a condition? Despite some of his omissions in terms of the challenges which the designer faces in the contemporary milieu, the effective message of Mitchell¹s book is his interest in an ethic of cooperation in the production of new network environments. The persistence of cooperation in this environment directly opens the possibility of an innovative output of creativity and an extension of ourselves in endless ways. The ethic enforces an ambiguity of authorship as well as ceaseless plane of collaboration. Such a method also makes obsolete the contemporary phenomenon of intellectual property and the ability to own ideas. In such a scenario, the possibility exists, in its most u-topic sense, for unexpected openings and encounters that further complicate and dislocate, permitting a particular kind of listening to our surroundings and the potential for strange messengers to pronounce themselves. In this way, the space of our networked surroundings truly becomes a frontier space in which curiosity and questioning take precedence over any obsession with security and the precise articulation of our coordinates. - David Senior + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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 Kevin McGarry (kevin@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 10, number 6. 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. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +