Video Vortex Reader II :: Call for Contributions — DEADLINE: May 10, 2010.

In response to the increasing potential for video as a significant form of personal media on the Internet, the Video Vortex program examines key issues that are emerging around the independent production and distribution of online video content. With the rise of YouTube and alternative platforms, the moving image on the Internet has become expansively more prominent and popular. As a wide range of technologies is now broadly available, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has reached a totally new dimension.

Following the success of the first Video Vortex reader (published late 2008, second edition, 4000 copies in total), recent Video Vortex conferences in Ankara (Oct. 2008), Split (May 2009) and Brussels (Nov. 2009) have sparked a number of new insights, debates and conversations regarding the politics, aesthetics, and artistic possibilities of online video. Since these issues develop with the rapidly changing landscape of online video and its use, we want to open up a space once again for interested people to contribute to this critical conversation in a second issue of the Video Vortex reader.

POSSIBLE TOPICS

Taking its lead from the first Video Vortex reader, and based on the issues raised at the latest three Video Vortex conferences as well as recent developments, possible topics include:

• Theories of online video and Web cinema
• Politics of online video
• YouTube and the state of contemporary visual culture
• Database aesthetics
• Video art meets web aesthetics
• Autonomous participatory culture for art and activism
• Artist engagement with ‘user-generated-content’ sites: content and architecture
• Changing modes of video distribution and what this means for artists and activists
• Open-source and open-content initiatives
• Alternatives to proprietary standards
• Censorship and YouTube
• The ethics and politics of indigenous knowledge and online video
• The use of online video within government practices (election campaigning, censorship etc.)
• Democracy, citizen journalism and online video
• Social Cinema
• Educational practices and online video in the classroom
• New and changing economic models
• Google, YouTube and the economics of online video
• Commercial objectives imposed by mass media on user-generated and video-sharing databases
• Effect of ubiquitous online video practice on cinema, television and video art.

WE INVITE

Internet, visual culture and media scholars, researchers, artists, curators, producers, lawyers, engineers, open-source and open-content advocates, activists, Video Vortex conference participants, and others to submit materials and proposals.

FORMATS

We welcome interviews, dialogues, essays and articles, images (b/w), email exchanges, manifestos, with a max of 8,000 words. For scope and style, take a look at the previous INC readers (Video Vortex Reader, Urban Screens, Incommunicado Reader, MyCreativity Reader) and the style guide here.

This publication is produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and will be launched early 2011.

DEADLINE: May 10, 2010

SEND CONTRIBUTIONS TO: rachel(at)networkcultures(dot)org

ABOUT THE READER SERIES

The INC reader series are derived from conference contributions and produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. They are available (for free) in print and pdf form here.

e-flux journal Issue #14? March 2010: Education Actualized, guest-edited by Irit Rogoff :: Lecture: Participation - A User’s Guide by Irit Rogoff :: March 8, 2010; 6:30 pm :: Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, NYC.

All around us we see a search for other languages and other modalities of knowledge production, a pursuit of other modes of entering the problematics of “education” that defy, in voice and in practice, the limitations being set up by the forces of bureaucratic pragmatism: a decade of increasing control and regulation, of market values imposed on an essential public right, and of middle-brow positivism privileged over any form of criticality — matched by a decade of unprecedented self-organization, of exceptionally creative modes of dissent, of criticality, and of individual ambitions that are challenging people to experiment with how they inhabit the field, how they inhabit knowledge.

Our notion of “Education Actualized” lies in the tension between these antagonistic spheres. If we think of actualization as the incarnation of an idea of “an education” within one particular educational system, we arrive at the duality we inhabit and work with. This issue is teeming with voices — angry and bewildered, critical and speculative, voices of ideas put to the test, producing fictions of impossible encounters — all efforts to grasp and locate, to actualize and inhabit this ongoing process in which we are all immersed.

You will see that almost every one of the contributions here reflects an unease and a recognition of the dangers and limitations wrought by attempts to regulate and homogenize a vast range of education cultures. The marketing of education, which began in the U.S. and followed in Britain, has now taken hold on the European continent. The dangers inherent in education becoming a market economy geared towards profit and revenue, privileging a reductive notion of “outcomes,” “transferable knowledges,” and “entrepreneurship” are clear to all. But the emerging dominance of cognitive capitalism over European education systems and their inscription into capital economies of debt and credit, of self-support, of precarities for both students and professionals, is only one side of these developments. The other is the politicization of “education” to an extent we have not seen since the late 1960s.

Not only are students — whose access and conditions have worsened considerably — being treated as paying clients with no say or part in determining their own education, they are also increasingly organized in effective and insistent ways. But many other spheres and strata of education have also been galvanized and linked up with the proliferation of self-organized structures that have emerged in the past decade of waning public-sphere culture and increasing privatization.

This issue of e-flux journal aims to bring together and extend a series of projects and interactions taking place between 2006 and the present that involved extensive investigations into “education” as a site of knowledge production, alternative modes of questioning, new vocabularies, analyses of the conditions of contemporary education, and negotiations between institutional and self-organized cultures. The voices that make up this issue have all been involved with related projects: A.C.A.D.E.M.Y was a series of exhibitions and publications (Hamburg, Antwerp, Eindhoven) that saw life over the course of 2006–2007; “Summit – Non Aligned Initiatives in Education Culture” was a large-scale meeting held at the HAU theatres in Berlin in 2007; in other formations and in other conjunctions we met and collaborated through the “Dictionary of War” project, the “Edu-factory,” border academies, nomadic universities, committee meetings, conferences, discussions, and dinners. But, rather than document or build directly upon these activities, we wanted to bring about an “actualization” of these originary events—a constant process by which concepts acquire extensions and qualities.

This does not purport to be a representation of this vast field of thought, action, and agitation — the work collected here is in dialogue with many other exponents of this field, part of a network of shared concerns and open collaborations. This might help to explain what could appear to be a fairly arbitrary conjunction of people who do not belong to any particular organization, institution, or profession. Some of us are academics, some activists, and others are artists, curators, or publishers; everyone seems to be turning their hand to forms of activity and articulation outside their typical sphere of operations. Our contact with “education” as a political platform, a polemic, and the site of much of our work seems to have stretched us in unexpected directions, as can be seen through the actual writing that has been produced for this issue.

The focal point of the issue is the specter that haunts European higher education — the Bologna Accord on education, the so-called reforms of the system across the continent of Europe that aim to standardize it with comparable entry points, degrees, outcomes, credits, funding structures, criteria of excellence, and so forth. This has undoubtedly produced a very “Eurocentric” view of the map of education, but so great is the potential upheaval of “Bologna” that we decided to focus on this part of the world, but also to place it in dialogue with colleagues and collaborators in the U.S. There is equally a decisive “geopolitical” drive to Europe’s education policy that fuses the former East and the former West into one knowledge tradition, thereby erasing decades of other models of knowledge in the East and producing an illusion of cohesion through knowledge economies and bureaucracies.

Our thanks to e-flux journal for giving us the space to elaborate the ideas included in this issue and for founding a platform hospitable to expanded discussions around creative practices. Our thanks to the Siemens Art Fund that initiated the A.C.A.D.E.M.Y project and to the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Germany, that funded the “Summit” project, to Van Abbemuseum and MuHKA, which took part in extensive discussions and collaborated on these projects, and to the many other institutions, forums, and funders who have supported this work as it has progressed.

My thanks to Susanne Lang who took on co-editing this issue, to Ashley Whitfield who took on its production, and to the authors who rose to the challenge and explored the numerous facets of “education” as a vital, critical, and communal space. — Irit Rogoff

My latest Fast Company piece is up: Augmented (Fashion) Reality takes a look at what happens when the world of fashion gets ahold of AR technology.

It starts out with a scenario. Here's a bit of it:

I remember the first time I saw an AR outfit. I did a double-take, because I could have sworn that the woman had been wearing a fairly bland dress when I saw her at a distance, but suddenly she was wearing a sparkling gown that I could swear was made of diamonds. A few minutes later, I took off my arglasses to get something out of my eye, and *poof* her dress was back to the simple beige shift. That bland outfit was actually carrying a half-dozen or so specialized smart tags, providing abundant 3D data that my arglasses--and the AR systems of everyone else around her--translated into that diamond dress.

I note late in the essay that fashion may end up being the "killer app" for wearable AR. The more I think about it, the more it rings true -- AR can't just be about finding the nearest Starbucks or getting a read on local environmental conditions. It has to be playful, too.

My latest Fast Company piece is up: Augmented (Fashion) Reality takes a look at what happens when the world of fashion gets ahold of AR technology.

It starts out with a scenario. Here's a bit of it:

I remember the first time I saw an AR outfit. I did a double-take, because I could have sworn that the woman had been wearing a fairly bland dress when I saw her at a distance, but suddenly she was wearing a sparkling gown that I could swear was made of diamonds. A few minutes later, I took off my arglasses to get something out of my eye, and *poof* her dress was back to the simple beige shift. That bland outfit was actually carrying a half-dozen or so specialized smart tags, providing abundant 3D data that my arglasses--and the AR systems of everyone else around her--translated into that diamond dress.

I note late in the essay that fashion may end up being the "killer app" for wearable AR. The more I think about it, the more it rings true -- AR can't just be about finding the nearest Starbucks or getting a read on local environmental conditions. It has to be playful, too.

Picturephoning gives a heads-up on "Recognizr" (you know it's cutting-edge when they leave out the "e"), an iPhone app that will supposedly recognize faces seen by the camera. Here's the promo video:

It's a prototype from the Swedish group The Astonishing Tribe. Apparently, a photo taken in Recognizr (sigh) gets compared to pictures in various social networking platforms, including Flickr (see? no "e"!!!!), Facebook, and the like.

Picturephoning links to a hysterical Daily Mail article, which plays up the STALKRS WILL STEAL UR VIRTUE angle, not really looking at the more interesting -- and potentially more troubling -- aspects. Popular Science is a little more sober, but ultimately not hugely more informative.

Until I see something more than just the one video, I'm going to call this one Plausible, but not at all difficult to hoax. Anybody know better?

Picturephoning gives a heads-up on "Recognizr" (you know it's cutting-edge when they leave out the "e"), an iPhone app that will supposedly recognize faces seen by the camera. Here's the promo video:

It's a prototype from the Swedish group The Astonishing Tribe. Apparently, a photo taken in Recognizr (sigh) gets compared to pictures in various social networking platforms, including Flickr (see? no "e"!!!!), Facebook, and the like.

Picturephoning links to a hysterical Daily Mail article, which plays up the STALKRS WILL STEAL UR VIRTUE angle, not really looking at the more interesting -- and potentially more troubling -- aspects. Popular Science is a little more sober, but ultimately not hugely more informative.

Until I see something more than just the one video, I'm going to call this one Plausible, but not at all difficult to hoax. Anybody know better?

Marta Minujín: MINUCODEs — curated by: Gabriela Rangel and José Luis Blondet:: March 2 – April 30, 2010 :: Opening Reception: March 2; 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue on 68th Street, New York City.

Marta Minujin is a prominent voice of the Argentinean avant-garde art scene in the 1960s and 70s, with a brilliant international career that helped define the discussion about media, performance, and participation. Minujin is often mentioned as one of the pioneers of happenings.

MINUCODEs revisits an early project developed by the artist in 1968 at the Center for Inter-American Relations (CIAR), now Americas Society. For the Minucode, Minujin collected social data through a series of cocktail parties attended by readers who responded to questionnaires she posted in the press.

Drawing from strategies akin to the happening, and cinema verite, Minujin staged an immersive electronic environment in the gallery using footage from the parties, and set a series of “light and sound environments” created by selected guests in an adjacent room. The light environments were a collaboration between Minujin and artist Tony Martin.

Through original footage recently recovered and digitalized and archival documents, MINUCODEs illuminates this early work by a fundamental voice of the neo-avant-garde scene in Latin America in the 1960s. Additional documentation on Circuit (1967) and Simultaneidad en Simultaneidad (1966), collaboration with Allan Kaprow and Wolf Vostel, will also be on display.

UPCOMING PUBLIC PROGRAMS

March 2. 6:00 pm :: Exhibition walk-through with the artist Marta Minujín and curators Gabriela Rangel and José Luis Blondet. Marta Minujín will provide a background and context for Minucode in this exclusive exhibition tour. The program will be introduced by Gabriela Rangel and Jose Luis Blondet who will discuss their curatorial vision and other relevant issues with the artist. This program will be followed by the exhibition opening reception.

March 22, 6:00 pm :: VIS-À-VIS SERIES: Javier Tellez and Doris Salcedo; Dialogues between artists, curators and critics from the Western Hemisphere: Doris Salcedo was born in 1958 in Bogota, Colombia; where she continues to live and work. Salcedo is one of the most internationally reputed contemporary artists, her work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions around the world, including: Tate Gallery, London (2007); Museu Serralves, Porto (2006); 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003); Documenta XI, Kassel (2002); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999) and the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo (1998) amongst many others. Salcedo received a grant from the Penny McCall Foundation in 1993, and a Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Grant in 1995.

Javier Téllez was born in Valencia, Venezuela, in 1969, and currently lives and works in New York. A key and respected figure in the contemporary art world, Téllez’s work has been shown at solo and group exhibitions including: Whitney Biennial, New York (2008); Baltic Art Centre, Visby, Sweden (2007); Aspen Art Museum (2006); The Power Plant Gallery, Toronto (2005); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2005); Bienal Iberoamericana de Lima, Peru (2002); and the 49th Venice Biennale (2001).

March 30. 6:00 pm :: Media a la Minujin: some notes; Lecture by Judi Rodenbeck (Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sarah Lawrence College) and José Luis Blondet (Co-curator): The restaging of Marta Minujin’s Minucode provides the occasion to reconsider some of the ways in which media art and mediation have been thought through since the 1960s. Deeply engaged with thinking about exchange, whether through the light social tinkle of cocktail chatter or through the flutter and tweet of the satellite signal, the radical presentness of MINUCODEs in its contemporary relevance shows the artist also to have been something of a temporal medium, too.

April 13. 6:00 pm :: The World is so Boring: Panel Discussion with Alexander Alberro (Virginia Bloedel Wright Associate Professor of Art History, Barnard College, Columbia University), Carolee Schneemann (artist), Jenni Sorkin (Faculty and Graduate Committee, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College). Moderated by Gabriela Rangel (Co-curator)

Greg J. Smith of Serial Consign writes: Toronto-based Derivative software is teaming up with Richie Hawtin to organize a contest so that fans can design visuals for the Plastikman 2010 tour. Essentially they have bundled a custom version of their TouchDesigner software with four Plastikman tracks and are allowing fans to make visualizations which may be included in his tour dates this year - this collaboration is made possible by a bridge to the Ableton Live. Full info about the contest is here - the endeavour is quite similar to the Nine Inch Nails crowdsourced concert video.

There is some video of TouchDesigner in action here:

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Alva Noto @ CTM 09 from isabelle rousset on Vimeo.

There is also a series of videos demonstrating how the custom interface for the contest works:

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Plastikman / Derivative Visuals Contest Kit - part 1/4 from Greg Hermanovic on Vimeo.

[Image: Usman Haque's Natural Fuse] ZER01, xClinic and Pachube.com call for Out of the Garage, Into the World :: September 4 - 20, 2010 :: South Hall, San Jose, California :: Open Call for Projects — Deadline: March 29, 2010 (application).

ZER01: the Art and Technology Network, in collaboration with xClinic and Pachube.com is soliciting proposals from artists to create environmental health projects and lifestyle experiments that make use of Pachube (a web-based sensor data storage and brokerage system that makes it easy to publish geolocated time-series data in real-time and to couple local and remote sensors and actuators). We are looking for truly innovative projects that push the boundaries of both environmental analysis and action, projects that don’t just “make data public” but help the “public make data,” projects that consider very carefully the relationship between all sorts of systems, human and non-human alike, technological and cultural. You will need to do a lot more than just plug a sensor into a tree and get it to tweet!

One project will be selected for funding in the amount of $5,000 and will be featured as part of the Out of the Garage, Into the World program at the 2010 01SJ Biennial. Once selected, during project development, Environmental Health Clinic Director, Natalie Jeremijenko, and the founder of Pachube.com, Usman Haque, will be on hand to provide advice, guidance and consultation on projects.

The 2010 01SJ Biennial is about how powerful ideas and innovative individuals from around the world can make a difference and come together to build a unique, citywide platform for creative solutions and public engagement. Under the theme “Build Your Own World,” the 3rd 01SJ Biennial will take place September 16-19, 2010 in San Jose, CA, with significant public programming beginning September 4th.

Collaborators

xClinic, the Environmental Health Clinic + Lab, facilitates lifestyle experiments to improve environmental health. The clinic approaches health from an understanding of its dependence on external local environments, rather than on the internal biology and genetic predispositions of an individual. The idea is that by ameliorating your own local environmental health, or by more consciously coupling human and non-human systems, you improve the health of humans (and nonhumans) around you. The more people who participate, the greater the cascading effects. Pachube.com is a web-based sensor data storage and brokerage system. It makes it easy to publish geolocated time-series data in real-time and to couple local and remote sensors and actuators. Access to Pachube is available via a wide variety of hardware and software platforms, including open source tools like Arduino and Processing and the generalized Data Logger iPhone application. Pachube members contribute thousands of datastreams from around the world consisting of energy, weather, building control and a whole host of other data.

Out of the Garage, Into the World

Out of the Garage, Into the World takes as its overarching theme “Build Your Own World.” Its methodology is rooted in the ethos of garage hacking and “neighborhood science”—creating and inventing for the common good. Prior to the Biennial, from September 4-14, ZER01 is inviting a range of independent artists, designers, architects, engineers, programmers, and corporate and academic research programs to publicly work in San Jose’s “South Hall” to create projects which build on the dynamic histories of garage hacking and citizen science to imagine not just what’s next but to ensure that what’s next matters. The 01SJ Biennial, through Out of the Garage, Into the World, strives to build a place where the general public can observe and even participate in the process. Additional information is available here: http://zero1.org/01sj/out-of-the-garage

Project Criteria

Your project should make use of simple passive strategies that can scale. Identify an area of concern in your local community or neighbourhood and propose a plan for improving that situation. Describe the phenomenon that you want to evaluate over time and think about the systems that phenomenon is part of, and how it can be coupled to or modulated by others (either locally or remotely) for mutual benefit. Think about what you might want to ‘measure,’ what constitutes good ‘measurement’ and how you might evaluate that which you are ‘measuring.’

Remember that sensors and actuators are not necessarily bits of technology: a human, a tadpole and a houseplant can all be considered sensors and actuators too. You might use Pachube for data collection, to monitor (and share) improvement or measurement data, or to compare results from different locations in realtime. The aim is to develop a project that you can implement locally, but which others can take forward and contribute to in their own communities and neighborhoods, using Pachube to aggregate, compare and trigger effects.

Projects must:

• Involve some aspect of local environment and its effect on human and/or non-human health.
• Be situated in more than one location (multiple rooms within a house; apartments within a building; streets within a neighborhood; neighborhoods within a city; or cities within a country).
• Enable both within and between comparisons of some kind.
• Be capable of evaluation according to criteria that you provide: i.e. success is not required, but you must be able to show that you have either succeeded or failed in what you set out to achieve.
• Have some public/performative/participative aspect that involves people (or non-humans) that you don’t already know.
• Be replicable relatively easily by others, i.e. it shouldn’t require high investments in technology or education to carry out.
• Be explicit about the portion of work that will be carried out before the Biennial, especially the September 4-14 ”garage” time, and the portion of work that will be presented in an interactive manner during the core Biennial dates of September 16 - 19, 2010.
• Consider the overarching theme of the 01SJ Biennial, “Build Your Own World,” as well as the goals of Out of the Garage, Into the World.

Timeframe

Artist must make arrangements to begin installation on September 4, 2010 and have some activity going on inside the space from September 4-14, 2010. During this time South Hall will be open to the public during the day. Then the South Hall project space will transition into one of the main 01SJ Biennial venues from September 16-19, 2010. Deinstallation must be completed on September 20.

Venue

Projects will have a designated space in South Hall of the San Jose Convention Center on Market Street at San Salvador in downtown San Jose, CA. South Hall is an 80,000 square foot tent structure directly adjacent to the San Jose Convention Center. In 2006, the ISEA Symposium exhibition at the 1st 01SJ Biennial was held in South Hall. For more information about South Hall see http://sanjose.org/meetings/facilities/southhall.php

Budget

The budget for the project is $5,000 and must cover all costs including production, materials, presentation, travel, and lodging. Eligibility and Selection Process:

All artists and artist groups are eligible and encouraged to apply. One project will be selected by a jury composed of members of the ZER01 programming team, Natalie Jeremijenko and Usman Haque.
You should be prepared to provide the follow pdf files via our online application (2MB limit per file): http://zero1.org/01sj/out-of-the-garage/pachube/application

1. An up to three page conceptual proposal that should include project title and description, and “success criteria” – we are asking you to tell us how the success of your project, if it gets selected, should be evaluated.

2. An up to two page technical proposal, which outlines the basic parameters of how you imagine the project to be produced including the schedule over the September 4-14 “garage” time as well as Biennial dates, number of participants, materials procurement, space or equipment requirements, layout etc.

3. A proposed budget. The budget should indicate any confirmed or likely additional funding, if costs exceed the commission funding.

4. A list of key collaborators, describing their role, and a brief (no more than a one paragraph) narrative biography of each person.

5. Complete resume(s)—length not exceeding 2 pages each—of key personnel.

6. A document containing links to examples of past work related to your proposal.

Deadline

Submissions must be received by digitally by 11pm Pacific Standard Time on March 29, 2010. There is no entry fee. Artists will be notified of decision in mid-April. Apply here.

Policies

Once selected, the artist must agree and comply with the contract terms presented by ZER01 until the project is complete and presented at the 2010 01SJ Biennial.

• Artist may only submit one proposal for each posted open call (but additional submissions to workshop and micro-grant open calls are acceptable). Artists who are submitting as a team may also submit a personal application as long as they are not the lead artists for that team.

• ZER01 has the right to reject or accept any responses received

About ZER01: The Art and Technology Network

San Jose-based ZER01 has served as a catalyst and platform for the world‘s most innovative artists since 2000. The nonprofit focuses on inspiring creativity at the intersection of art, technology and digital culture. As producer of the 01SJ Biennial, a multidisciplinary, multi-venue event of visual and performing arts, the moving image, public art and interactive digital media, ZER01 has showcased the work of 350 artists from more than 40 countries—using such media as GPS-equipped pigeons, interactive platform shoe devices, mobile phone and surveillance technologies.

Critical Point of View: Second international conference of the CPOV Wikipedia Research Initiative :: March 26-27, 2010 :: OBA (Public Library Amsterdam, next to Amsterdam central station), Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam.

Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference of dynamic knowledge. The heated debates over its accuracy, anonymity, trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of Wikipedia and its user base. Apart from leaving its modern counterparts Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and breadth places Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty’s Wen-hsien ta- ch’ eng, and the key work of French Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie. The multilingual Wikipedia as digital collaborative and fluid knowledge production platform might be said to be the most visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS (Free/ Libre/ Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture. However, such celebration should contain critical insights, informed by the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia project in particular.

The CPOV Research Initiative was founded from the urge to stimulate critical Wikipedia research: quantitative and qualitative research that could benefit both the wide user-base and the active Wikipedia community itself. On top of this, Wikipedia offers critical insights into the contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles, function, and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict resolution and power (re-)constitution. The overarching research agenda is at once a philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of knowledge artifacts, cultural production and social relations, and an empirical investigation of the specific phenomenon of the Wikipedia.

Conference Themes: Wiki Theory, Encyclopedia Histories, Wiki Art, Wikipedia Analytics, Designing Debate and Global Issues and Outlooks.

Confirmed speakers: Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Andrew Famiglietti (UK), Stuart Geiger (USA), Hendrik-Jan Grievink (NL), Charles van den Heuvel (NL), Jeanette Hofmann (DE), Athina Karatzogianni (UK), Scott Kildall (USA), Patrick Lichty (USA), Hans Varghese Mathews (IN), Teemu Mikkonen (FI), Mayo Fuster Morell (IT), Mathieu O’Neil (AU), Felipe Ortega (ES), Dan O’Sullivan (UK), Joseph Reagle (USA), Ramón Reichert (AU), Richard Rogers (USA/NL), Alan Shapiro (USA/DE), Maja van der Velden (NL/NO), Gérard Wormser (FR).

Editorial team: Sabine Niederer and Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne). Project manager CPOV Amsterdam: Margreet Riphagen. Research intern: Juliana Brunello. Production intern: Serena Westra.

The CPOV conference in Amsterdam will be the second conference of the CPOV Wikipedia Research Initiative. The launch of the initiative took place in Bangalore India, with the conference WikiWars in January 2010. After the first two events, the CPOV organization will work on producing a reader, to be launched early 2011. For more information or submitting a reader contribution.

Buy your ticket online (with iDeal), or register by sending an email to: info (at) networkcultures.org. One day ticket: €25, students and OBA members: €12,50. Full conference pass (2 days): €40, students and OBA members: 25.

Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures Amsterdam, in cooperation with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

Open Up — an advanced project development workshop for the digital facade of Medialab-Prado :: February 9-23, 2010 :: Lecture by Jennifer Steimkamp: February 16; 7:00 pm (streamed live) :: Medialab Prado, Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 Madrid.

Open Up is a project production workshop for the digital facade of Medialab-Prado, that aims to explore the relationship with the urban space by opening production processes through different citizen participation strategies. Tutors: Jordi Claramonte, Chandler McWilliams, Casey Reas and Víctor Viña. Directed by Nerea Calvillo. Technical assistants: Massimo Avvisati and Chris Sugrue.

Aion Experiments — with the Morris/Trasov Archive, Sam Keogh, Pádraic E. Moore, Takeshi Murata, Ulf Rollof, Ciarán Walsh, Robin Watkins and the Foundation for Aion Research :: February 12 – April 10, 2010 :: Closing Event: The Luminiferous Aether :: April 9; 7:00 pm :: Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 Ireland.

This experiment differs from some of the more intensive previous Aion Experiments in which volunteers remained under close observation for prolonged periods. Throughout the duration of this exhibition several devices will be installed in the exhibition space, which will in turn become highly charged with energy that fosters cell regeneration and cerebral stimulation. The organisers request that all members of the public who plan to attend this experiment prepare physically and mentally in advance, as the Gallery will be charged with biofield energy. The organisers also wish to notify visitors that effects of this Aion Experiment may only become apparent in the weeks following the event.

To mark the closing of Aion Experiments an event will take place at 7:00 pm on April 9. Entitled The Luminiferous Aether, it comprises of documentation made by Robin Watkins of low frequency audio signals which originate from the streams of charged particles that reach the Earth’s atmosphere through the Solar Wind, giving rise to the Aurora Borealis and other magnetic storms. With temperatures dropping to minus 50° C, the field recordings of Solar radiation were made during three consecutive days and nights outside of a small village in the remote Yukon-Koyukuk region (the Arctic Circle, Alaska). For the Project Arts Centre sound screening, listeners will collectively experience the work through individual radio headphones and receivers, grouped in front of a central transmitter.

The first Aion Experiment took place in Northern Europe in the 1930s, instigated by a team of practitioners from diverse disciplines including physics, chemistry, psychology and sociology. Since its inception the Foundation has stated that one central aim unifying its diverse members and affiliates is the desire to develop a greater understanding of the phenomena of body-oriented energy. To this end, numerous experiments have been undertaken, involving countless participants. In an attempt to heighten the results of the experiments, they often take place in temporary laboratories, erected upon sites identified – at some point in history – as charged with naturally occurring biofield energy.

One of the many motives driving the ongoing work of the organisation is a conviction that the human species is unaware of its own true potential. Another unifying belief is that humans have, for the most part, become detached from certain fundamental truths and blind instinctive necessities. Statements issued by the Foundation propose that unless the current situation is rectified radically and promptly, the human species is headed inexorably toward untimely self-destruction.

Like the Aion Experiments themselves – which can assume limitless permutations – the international foundation is distinguished by its quiet public profile. Although numerous respected and admired scientists and practitioners – including Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Wilhem Reich and Alfred Kinsey – openly associated with Aion Experiments for a time all information pertaining to work carried out by, and individuals involved with, the Foundation, has become strictly confidential in the past decade. It is known that practitioners working in the realm of visual artists have, on several occasions, been invited to contribute in an advisory capacity to Aion investigation. This is perhaps an indication that the visual arts remain a potent source of untapped potential in terms of maximising human capabilities. The practitioner whose involvement with the Foundation is most renowned is the Swiss artist Emma Kunz (1892 - 1963) who collaborated with the foundation in the momentous discovery of Aion A, a rock crystal with potent healing potential.

Aion Experiments has been organised by Pádraic E. Moore, who wishes to acknowledge the research and production of Morris/Trasov Archive (Canada), Sam Keogh (Ireland), Takeshi Murata (U.S.A.), Ulf Rollof (Sweden) Ciarán Walsh (Ireland) and of course the Foundation for Aion Research, without whom this project could never have taken place

Project Arts Centre is a multidisciplinary arts centre, with a gallery and two theatre spaces, located at the heart of artistic activity in Dublin. For the archive of exhibition and events from the visual arts programme, go here.

City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community :: June 11–13 & 19, 2010 :: Invitation to Submit Proposals — Deadline: March 1, 2010 [Application Form]

Recent exhibitions, festivals and conferences across the US and in Europe have taken wireless networks, public space, locative media and urban environments as sites of intervention, creativity, and critique. Formulated within the emerging context of networked urbanism and mobile media, City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community will focus upon dynamics of the shifting, locative, cartographic and social space of the city. It is organized by educational, arts, community-based and civic organizations and asks how locative media can act as a platform and venue for community-led expression.

From within San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, this festival will celebrate the rich possibilities that art and technology offer for urban communication of place and place-based media. City Centered focuses on the use of locative media and wireless technologies for site-specific and neighborhood-based interventions. Artists, designers, architects, community and cultural workers — people, places, and devices — will meet for four days of street-side celebration, public exhibitions, a symposium, and workshops. The festival seeks new work aligned with the themes of creative mapping, urban storytelling, sentient space, body awareness, local history, contested spaces and gaming.

The festival’s main goals are:

• to promote creative public use of free wi fi and open networks in the city of San Francisco
• to encourage meaningful collaboration between artists and local organizations in connection with wireless networks
• to introduce site-specific locative media art to urban places

Logistics and creative goals

Proposals are invited around projects involving creative mapping, urban storytelling, body awareness, local history, contested spaces and gaming. We seek projects of the greatest interest and highest quality. That said, proposals should be created for or be highly relevant to urban communities such as those found in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Neighborhood, mapping or community-based projects adaptable to the district are desirable. All proposed projects should address the theme of ‘urban community’ and utilize wireless technologies in some relation to ‘location’ and ‘place.’ Imaginative responses to the district and critical interpretations of place are strongly desired. Proposals which include or seek to include collaboration with Tenderloin/Civic Center organizations will receive greater consideration than projects which do not.

Projects using locative media to explore unique histories in the Tenderloin and/or address the festival’s aims of fostering creative civic engagement are also sought. Members of local community-based organizations will review all submissions and identify proposals that they wish to support.

In addition, creative work is encouraged to engage with the following questions:

• What does neighborhood mean?
• How might urban communities speak effectively about their cities through use of wireless networks?
• Where do wireless creative practices intersect with and/or enhance citizen roles in civic engagement?

Themes

Creative mapping

Location based media has so far involved much discussion of the role of maps, both their local and geopolitical importance, their history within political structures and the potentials of self-made or self-informed maps in terms of the production of and shaping of urban space. GPS and other applications enable the making of highly personal and information laden online spaces. What is cartography? What is mapped identity? How can groups and populations better see themselves, their history and their futures in the realm of maps?

Urban storytelling

Stories of the distant past or recent memory help hold groups together. Community groups and cultural critiques often address whose stories are told, and how. In San Francisco, the mural is a traditional form of commemorative media, making communities’ histories and concerns visible on the walls of their buildings. What remains invisible? Can wireless technologies enable understandings of the past — both accepted and controversial?

Sentient space

Surveillance cameras, motion sensors, and electronic forms of payment have moved substantially into public space. Computational means of tracking and responding to human actions increasingly pervade the urban infrastructure. San Francisco has recently deployed a test run of networked, sensor-based parking meters. Other cities have introduced wireless, networked monitoring of water systems, electrical grids and so forth. Is this the emergence of new ’sentient cities’ or an extension of automated modernity started a century ago? How might we imagine and make debatable the ways in which networked information processing animates, invades, enables or undermines urban places?

Body awareness

Often seen as places of strangers and strangeness, modern cities are places where, unlike villages, one can find both welcome anonymity and undesirable alienation. Ambivalence about relations between self and others experience has been a feature of urban life since the 19th century: we want to fade into the crowd, but also feel connected. What kinds of awareness of other humans — or non-humans such as animals, plants and trees — remind us of liminal and subliminal arenas of urban growth and transformation?  How do embodied experiences — of crowds and solitude, of comfort and anxiety — relate to awareness of self and others?

Local history

Locative media can be used to express specific attributes of place through local history, connecting us to and with histories of architecture, urban space, the changing city and the combinations of news, folklore, and data flows which allow us to interpret and understand where we live. How can local history be mapped? Is it collaborative or authorial? What kinds of stories constitute the history of a place? What kinds of data are place-based?

Contested spaces

Art projects are never neutral. Even in evading explicit discussion of politics or controversies they take a stand with respect to a community of makers and audience of participants, listeners, or seers. In particular, projects of civic engagement rely upon (often unstated) aspirations about urban life. This is so especially when situated within specific communities and drawing upon their hopes, desires and dreams. We invite projects framed as interventions in contested spaces; that work with intervention as an art practice and that introduce new forms or contestation or expand upon the already established path of community-based art in San Francisco.

Gaming

Gaming takes on many unusual forms in today’s media-saturated culture. Moreover, young people constitute one of the most prolific and literate groups of wireless users—and many enjoy gaming. Implementing simple urban games can sometimes tell participants much about themselves and their awareness of and connection to fictional and emotional aspects of place. What kinds of narratives are appropriate in challenging neighborhoods? How can games be used to deal with social ills or help inhabitants navigate through periods of urban change?

Technical forms

Locative media involves an emerging cluster of technologies that include mobile phones, Global positioning satellite systems (GPS), geospatial databases and wireless networks. These technologies enable inter-connectivity between locations, determine locations and mapping and enable participation in storytelling and games. They have become increasingly ubiquitous in our daily lives and public spaces, and are radically changing how people work and live. In addition, these technologies raise complex questions about public/private rights, laws and responsibilities. The festival encourages submissions in four areas of creative technical practice:

Data visualizations

What data is relevant to Tenderloin inhabitants? How can visualization expose previously unrecognized patterns of exchange and which change the experience of familiar locations?

Mapping and cartography

Maps produce and represent information about the meaning of place. Locative practices often engage the location-aware/context aware aspects of tools/networks, pinpointing and demarcating places according to creative interpretation.

Participatory media

How can projects weave diverse groups and foster conditions for increased civic engagement, learning, and questioning? What barriers to civic engagement and participation are there and how might they be overcome?

Location tracking

Tracking the movement of people and objects can also record and augment experiences often unrecognized or culturally invisible. What kinds of movements of people and goods combine to form the economies and exchanges of a neighborhood? What kinds of human movement alters the way we might think or conceive of a place and its changing milieus?

Games and playful interventions Introducing ideas of competition, speed, and fantasy into city streets may help engage local inhabitants, young people, kids and onlookers in experiences they see as new, surprising or special.

Project criteria

Proposed art must have some place-based and/or locative aspect such as utilizing GPS or GPS and the web; utilizing cellphones or other mobile media and address site specifics or place-making. Projects which address sites or cultures of the Tenderloin and/or collaborate with Tenderloin based constituents, populations or organizations are encouraged. The festival seeks project proposals which specifically contend with and/or engage with the multiple languages, communities, and interests of the Tenderloin, and which utilize the variety of public urban sites available in some meaningful and site specific form. Playgrounds, schools, public lobbies, gallery space, community centers, sidewalk areas, the street, parking lots, rooftops, and open plazas all provide excellent inspiration for wireless public projects and locative media works.

Other criteria and creative/artistic priorities:

Projects must be designed for or adapted to locations in or in close proximity to the Tenderloin. Existing projects that can be adapted to the Tenderloin are welcomed. Priority will be given to submissions by those who have community art experience or have worked with populations in urban neighborhoods.

About the Tenderloin and Civic Center

San Francisco’s Tenderloin district is a densely populated, rapidly changing, loosely defined district with apartment buildings, single- room occupancy hotels, nightclubs, bars, galleries and restaurants. Located near San Francisco’s cable car tourist attractions, downtown convention center hotel district and Union Square, it is a flourishing, multilingual and multiethnic neighborhood home to many artists and galleries. Yet the Tenderloin is also notorious as a concentrated site of misery, known for violent crime, prostitution, drug addiction, and homelessness. Recently, the city has devoted considerable attention and resources to redevelopment in the Tenderloin, making engagement with locally led organizations a priority. There are numerous multilingual, multicultural organizations with substantial art programs –Glide Memorial Church, Hospitality House, the YMCA and The Boys and Girls Club. It is also site of the Main Library, the center of San Francisco’s public library system. The festival’s close proximity to San Francisco’s administrative buildings and historic Market Street make it an especially intriguing arena for urban artmaking and location based creative practice.

Free wi fi exists in the library system and wireless is found throughout the Tenderloin. More specific technical questions can be addressed once proposals are selected.

The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts at 55 Taylor Street in the Tenderloin and will operate as base for the festival and will assist artists to work with the neighborhood in the installation of their projects. In addition Gray Area has a window installation venue Tendorama to which proposals can be specifically made, and will offer information about organizations with which to partner. The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (http://www.gaffta.org/) is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. Guided by the principles of openness, collaboration, and resource sharing, our programs promote creativity at the intersection of art, design, sound, and technology. Its goal is to make digital culture accessible, substantive and inspiring from the physical neighborhood of the Tenderloin to extended digital communities. GAFFTA is committed to outreach both online and in the city.

Selection process

Proposals will be reviewed and selected by a panel of artists, curators, arts and community organizations.

Timeline
Proposals due: March 1, 2010
Participants notified: on or before April 1, 2010
June 11–12: Opening and art exhibition
June 13: Symposium
Community Workshops: June 19
Friday, June 11: Art opening and introduction to the symposium at GAFFTA
Saturday, June 12: All-day art festival of interactive, locative works in the Tenderloin sponsored by Gray Area.

Sunday, June 13: City-Centered Symposium at KQED, hosted by KQED and SFSU.

Saturday, June 20: Community education workshops at KQED in the Mission District

Please direct questions and other correspondence to citycentered [at] gaffta.org

Invitation to submit proposals : APPLICATION PDF
Submission deadline: March 1, 2010

Participating Organizations
KQED: http://www.kqed.org/
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts: http://www.gaffta.org/
Center for Locative Media: http://www.locative-media.org/
Conceptual Information Arts/Art Department/SFSU: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/
The Berkeley Center for New Media: http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/

The Public School presents Ambivalence as part of Actions, Conversations, Intersections an exhibition of participatory projects :: Sundays in February 2010, 3:00 - 5:00 pm.

Our course on Ambivalence will be meeting simultaneously in two places - the Municipal Art Gallery (the site of the Actions, Conversations, and Intersections exhibition until April 18, 2010) and Telic Arts Exchange (where The Public School regularly holds classes). Each group will be able to see and hear the other through a commonplace video conference call (Skype, iChat, etc.). Teachers, speakers, and other guest presenters will go to whichever location seems more appealing that day and no one will be informed of their decision until the last minute.

We often wonder what happens when participatory art projects are brought into the gallery, particularly when they already regularly function without an exhibition space. This question is amplified when the project and exhibition are in the same city. Does the project migrate to the exhibition, leaving its “normal” site closed? Does it announce itself as nomadic, settling temporarily in exhibition space after residency after biennial? Does it produce an exhibitable double of itself to accommodate the requirements of the gallery? Does it refuse any mutation or compromise in order to preserve its singular authenticity?

ambivalence:

This course will (maybe) explore different concepts and theories of ambivalence, typically defined as “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action;” “continual fluctuation (as between one thing and its opposite);” and “uncertainty as to which approach to follow.”

In addition to researching and reading what various contemporary thinkers have to say about ambivalence, we will also attempt to debate the relative pros and cons of ambivalence as a state/ position/ strategy. What is dangerous, or, alternately, enchanting, about ambivalence? How might we theorize an ethics of uncertainty?

Readings will include excerpts from USC professor Karen Pinkus’ new book on alchemy and ambivalence, as well as selections from psychoanalytic, queer, trans and other works relevant to the topic. Suggestions encouraged!

This class will be led by Sarah Kessler and others.

the first class:

- How might we define ambivalence (what does ambivalence seem to signify)?
- Is ambivalence an affect? An intellectual state? An ambiance? A process?
- In what ways is ambivalence represented?

Reading: Karen Pinkus, “Excursus: Ambivalence,” from Alchemical Mercury: A Theory of Ambivalence. Possible second reading: Judith Butler, “Ethical Ambivalence,” in The Turn to Ethics.

Also: Please, if you like, bring various definitions/representations of ambivalence to class (textual excerpts, images, video clips, etc.) for group discussion.

http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/1765
http://www.actionsconversationsintersections.com/
http://la.thepublicschool.org/node/1765/aaaarg

Telic Arts Exchange
951 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, CA 90012
http://telic.info
tel: 213.229.8907

Representing Labor: Ten Thousand Cents and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk by Madeleine Clare Elish, Furtherfield.org:

Arriving at the homepage of Ten Thousand Cents, an Internet artwork by Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima, a mottled image of a one hundred dollar bill slowly fades into view. Ben Franklin looks out sedately. Mousing over the large image, the cursor is replaced with a small red rectangle. And here lays the beauty of the project; with the click of each rectangle, a zoomed in portion of the one hundred dollar bill is revealed. On the left side is a high-resolution photograph of that tiny portion of the bill. On the right side, a real-time moving image plays, revealing how the image was drawn by a human hand in a drawing program created by Koblin and Kawashima. There are, in fact, 10,000 such rectangles and each was created by a Turker through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace.

Over the course of five months (from November 2007 to March 2008) Koblin and Kawashima posted tasks, known as HITs, Human Intelligence Tasks, on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site. Having broken down an image of a one hundred dollar bill into 10,000 sections, Turkers were tasked with redrawing their assigned section. Each Turker was paid $.01 for the task, making the total payment of drawing a one hundred dollar bill one hundred dollars. (Prints of the project can also be bought for one hundred dollars. All proceeds are donated to the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project) Each Turker worked anonymously, unaware that what they were drawing was a section of a bill or that their work would eventually be combined with other Turkers’ work to create an art project. The variability is endless. Some Turkers methodically draw in the lines and painstakingly shade in boxes. Some quickly slash the paint tool across the page; one imagines they felt they had better things to do with their time. Some are cheeky, using the space for digital graffiti or messages like “I love U.” Most copy the image exactly. Yet, with the differing movements and tempos, every one suggests a different story and different person behind the tool. I suggest you take a few minutes and watch the unfolding scenes. They are oddly, satisfyingly banal and beautiful.

The project and its presentation on the website are undoubtedly elegant. Yet, the conceptual work behind the piece is a bit murkier. The project description states, “The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, ‘crowdsourcing,’ ‘virtual economies,’ and digital reproduction.” Big and important themes. What are the implications of crowd-sourcing for creative work? For any kind of paid work? Where is the distinction between work and play? Creativity and re-presentation? In this deeply networked age, what are the evolving relations between individual and collective action? More >>

(Well, "new" in the sense of it's the most recent; it actually went up earlier this week, I just didn't get around to linking to it here. Ahem.)

"iWorry" is my foray into the iPad discussion, focusing less on the product and more on its support infrastructure:

But the iPad isn't a phone; it is a general purpose computer. It does email and Web and documents and presentations and games and all of the other kinds of things we do with our "regular" computers. Yet it will suffer under the same restrictions as the iPhone--prohibition of any application that Apple doesn't like, for whatever reason. Sometimes that means the application uses undocumented features, but startlingly often it just means "duplication of features"--the application does something that Apple's own software does, but does it differently. (This raises the uncomfortable question as to whether the Kindle app for the iPhone--which works quite nicely, actually--will run on the iPad.)

These restrictions aren't going to hurt Apple's bottom line, and admittedly will probably make for a more comfortable user experience on the device itself. But the risk -- and the source of my worry -- is that the locked-down app model moves from these kind of appliance systems to the kinds of devices that have historically been open. If the next version of the MacOS insists that you use a "MacOS App Store" to get the software you want, I'll be moving to another platform.

I brought up a similar point in a conversation with Annalee Newitz, who wrote about her own concerns about the iPad for io9.com, Why the iPad is Crap Futurism. I think her summary of my point following the quote gets it exactly right.

As futurist Jamais Cascio told io9:

This is Apple's big push of its top-down control over applications into the general-purpose computing world. The only applications that will work with the iPad are those approved by Apple, under very opaque conditions. On a phone, that's borderline acceptable, but it's not for something that is positioned to overlap with regular computers.

The iPad has all the problems of television, with none of the benefits of computers.

If I get one, it will be for the hands-on experience of seeing what kinds of uses I would have for a device that sits between a smart pocket device and a notebook computer. But I promise not to like it.

(Well, "new" in the sense of it's the most recent; it actually went up earlier this week, I just didn't get around to linking to it here. Ahem.)

"iWorry" is my foray into the iPad discussion, focusing less on the product and more on its support infrastructure:

But the iPad isn't a phone; it is a general purpose computer. It does email and Web and documents and presentations and games and all of the other kinds of things we do with our "regular" computers. Yet it will suffer under the same restrictions as the iPhone--prohibition of any application that Apple doesn't like, for whatever reason. Sometimes that means the application uses undocumented features, but startlingly often it just means "duplication of features"--the application does something that Apple's own software does, but does it differently. (This raises the uncomfortable question as to whether the Kindle app for the iPhone--which works quite nicely, actually--will run on the iPad.)

These restrictions aren't going to hurt Apple's bottom line, and admittedly will probably make for a more comfortable user experience on the device itself. But the risk -- and the source of my worry -- is that the locked-down app model moves from these kind of appliance systems to the kinds of devices that have historically been open. If the next version of the MacOS insists that you use a "MacOS App Store" to get the software you want, I'll be moving to another platform.

I brought up a similar point in a conversation with Annalee Newitz, who wrote about her own concerns about the iPad for io9.com, Why the iPad is Crap Futurism. I think her summary of my point following the quote gets it exactly right.

As futurist Jamais Cascio told io9:

This is Apple's big push of its top-down control over applications into the general-purpose computing world. The only applications that will work with the iPad are those approved by Apple, under very opaque conditions. On a phone, that's borderline acceptable, but it's not for something that is positioned to overlap with regular computers.

The iPad has all the problems of television, with none of the benefits of computers.

If I get one, it will be for the hands-on experience of seeing what kinds of uses I would have for a device that sits between a smart pocket device and a notebook computer. But I promise not to like it.

Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory presents If You Lived Here Still… An archive project by Martha Rosler :: January 17 – March 14, 2010 :: Opening: January 16; 5:00 pm :: Open forum: January 17; 2:00 - 5:00 pm :: Nieuwekade 213-215, 3511RW Utrecht, The Netherlands.

In 1989-1991, artist Martha Rosler organized her project ‘If You Lived Here…’ at the Dia Art Foundation in New York City. ‘If You Lived Here…’ was a seminal group project on housing, homelessness and the systems and conditions underlying them such as gentrification, bureaucratic complicity or non-compliance and increasing privatisation of the public sector. It took a radical approach toward art and institutions of that time, in a mode that might be called cross-disciplinary and “participatory”. The archive project by Martha Rosler at Casco, initiated by Anton Vidokle and first presented at e-flux’s New York space last autumn, provides an opportunity to revisit Rosler’s undertaking and interrogate its legacy. Besides the archival materials that expose the organisational and research processes behind the project, more research documents that Rosler has assembled or solicited others to contribute over the last 20 years are installed for close reading at Casco. These also include new materials gathered in Utrecht.

Martha Rosler and her practice since the late 60’s have become essential references for socially engaged art practice and critical feminist positions. Through her numerous works and projects, traversing diverse working methods from documentary to performative, literary to organisational, Rosler has progressively sought ways to reconnect the private and public spheres, domestic space and media culture and the urban environment in confrontation with shifting political and economic realities. ‘If You Lived Here…’ forms part of this practice but stands out for its complex array of activities, consisting of a cycle of three exhibitions, a book, open forums and public events such as film screenings and poetry readings.

The project was remarkable in involving diverse groups of people — artists, advocacy and activist groups, homeless people, community groups, schoolchildren, architects, urban planners and journalists — many of whom were already dealing with the questions the project raised. In defiance of the territorial question of art versus non-art, a number of visual materials, ranging from painting, photography, videos, newspapers, advertisements and data graphs to architectural models and temporary offices and library spaces, filled the exhibition hall. The exhibition programme went beyond the usual “art gallery pattern.” Rather than it being a contemplative field for a set of objects and documentary representations, ‘If You Lived Here…’ transformed the gallery into a terrain that supported participation and intervention and thus created a new situation of collective empowerment, no matter how fleeting.

How could such a thing [homelessness, displacement] be happening – particularly now, as the Western mass media are gloating over the collapse of the Soviet model of communism and victory of “our way of life”? … And what can be done? - from the introductory essay by Martha Rosler in the book If You Lived Here: The City in Art, Theory and Social Activism (1991)

After two decades, now that this victory is not self-evident any longer and new articulations of “communism” are called for, these questions resonate more strongly than ever. It is a good moment to take another careful look at ‘If You Lived Here…’.

Open forum 17 January, 14.00-17.00

In the spirit of continuation of the form of public discussion in ‘If You Lived Here…’, an open forum will take place after the opening to share the history of the project as well as to develop a comparative view between past and present, between the US context and Utrecht and elsewhere in the post-welfare conditions of Europe. Participants include Martha Rosler, Anton Vidokle and Binna Choi, with guests including artist Marion von Osten, architect Andreas Muller, artist Graziela Kunsch and Friso Wiersum & Margot Ellenbruk, organizers of the Hidden City project in Utrecht.

About Casco

Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, established in 1990 in Utrecht, is committed to the production and presentation of cross-disciplinary projects and “participatory” activities initiated with artists, designers and writers. Its primary focus is on the areas where art, design and theory intersect to form critical, imaginative and collaborative inquiries into our social and physical environment.

The Casco programme is generously supported by the Mondriaan Foundation and the Utrecht City Council. ‘If You Lived Here Still…’ at Casco is made possible with kind support from the K.F. Hein Fund, Utrecht Manifest and Utrecht Consortium.

Please note that on Sunday 10 January, the last day of ‘Shapes, Dimensions, Possibilities’, a project by Mirjam Thomann, Casco is organizing ‘A Day of Colour: The Infinite Attribute’ whereby our contributors, including Mirjam Thomann, graphic designer James Goggin and writer and artist Kristina Lee Podesva, present their investigation into the modes in which colour functions in the contemporary visual cultural realm—its culturalization, commodification or any other adoption—as inspiration for the process of selecting the new colour for ‘Shack and Fence’, Casco’s interior structure.

Treefingers is a social web experiment that allows anybody to “plant” a thought anonymously — and vote on the thoughts of others in an interesting manner. Bad plants get weeded out and good ones are watered, creating an abstract forest with thoughts of varying colors.

Using Treefingers is easy: simply click the “water” button on thoughts you like, and the “weed” button on thoughts you don’t. You can submit your own thought to the site by clicking “Plant a Thought” in the upper-right corner. Treefingers requires no registration and is completely anonymous. Your thought will appear instantly on the site for other visitors to water and weed!

Treefingers empowers advanced web technologies to provide a website that continuously updates. This means you can track the activities of other Treefingers users in real-time! Plants change colors before your eyes as people water and weed them, and new plants show up instantly. The result is a living, breathing website that is constantly changing! [via Christina Coleman]

Nick Knouf wrote: This past Saturday DARPA sponsored a challenge to find 10 red weather balloons spread across the United States. Working in teams, the first team to find all of the balloons would receive the reward, $40,000, and distribute it amongst the team in whatever manner they see fit. The winner, as you might expect, was a team from MIT and lead by a post-doc at the MIT Media Lab, a not-insignificant fact for me personally (and something I will return to in a moment). The Washington Post article on the event provides a good background.

The title of the hunt was the “Network Challenge“, and was announced to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the first transmission of packets across ARPANET. According to DARPA, the purpose of the challenge was to “explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems”. According to Norman Whitaker of DARPA, “It’s a huge game-theory simulation.”

While we might be used to corporations preying on our leisure time for their own profit, this is one of the first times that I can remember — at least in recent years — where there was a mobilization of a broad range of individuals and non-engineers in order to enrich an agency of the Defense Department. Yes, DARPA has run other “grand challenges” in the past, but those were limited to students with extensive engineering skills. This challenge, however, was open to any member of the public, something that the MIT team exploited to win the prize. So, let me be clear: people _willingly_ chose to participate, to sign up their friends, in a simulation of war or state of emergency in order to potentially “win” a small amount of money. The data that DARPA collected is worth much more to them than any payout they had to make to the victors. This is participation different in kind from those who choose to take part in disaster preparedness exercises run by the Department of Homeland Security or Defense: this is the collection of social networking data (were Twitter and Facebook partners in this challenge?) in a war game with willing civilian participants.

There is something profoundly troubling to me about this, something that troubles me much more than our ongoing consternation about the role of corporations in exploiting labor. If I may explain some of the background, I will get to what this incident has suggested to me as someone who is engaged in trying to work against the corporatization and militarization of everyday life. As I mentioned earlier the winning team was led by a post-doc from the MIT Media Lab. I happen to have received a Master’s degree from them a couple of years ago, and thus I still remain on their internal mailing list. When they announced their formation of a team to the list, I immediately sent a message denouncing it, reminding them of the recent arrests of the activists using Twitter during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh, the CIA investment in social networking firms, the potential for this sort of research to be used for all sorts of unintended consequences, and the profound implications of willingly choosing to work for a Defense Department agency. While MIT itself is indeed fully embedded within DARPA funding networks, the Media Lab has never been that way; their funding is overwhelmingly from corporate sponsors first, governmental agencies like NSF and NIH second, and DARPA and ONR a much, much more distant third. There had been a sense, while I was there, that taking money from DARPA was just Something You Did Not Do.

My polemic turned into a private conversation with a friend there who is engaged in social network research himself, but on a level that is more aligned with corporate interests rather than military. Because I don’t want to directly implicate him in this e-mail I cannot give too many details. But the gist of the conversation-cum-argument was the following: To automatically dismiss this challenge is to be naive to the potential benefits of it. Dismissing the military does a disservice to those who are involved (he has a friend in the service) and ignores the complexity of things on the ground. Suggesting that one might be able to categorically deny the usefulness of military funding — or the military in general — is something that can only occur if one is in the ivory tower.

Following the announcement that the MIT Media Lab team won the challenge, another message by a different student was posted to the list saying that “understanding how networks such as these mobilize is not necessarily such a terribly evil thing.”

Now, we have of course heard these arguments regularly during this past decade, arguments designed to counter the opponents of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We read them if we venture into the comment areas of mainstream newspapers and blogs. We witness them if we turn on our TV to Fox News. What is more insidious here, to me, is that these arguments are being made _by computer science students who are training to become the next workers at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, and elsewhere_. I fully expected that the students would take part in such a challenge if it had been supported by one of the aforementioned companies. Yet here they were working with an agency that develops technologies for _state-sanctioned lethal violence_. There thus seems to be a new acceptance of working for the military on the part of the budding techno-elite. And if this is so, we have a much more difficult problem on our hands — namely, how to work against the acceptance of _state-sanctioned lethal violence_.

To me this is as much a question of pedagogy as it is of theory. And it suggests the challenges are vast. Not only do we have to work to disclose the relationships between corporations and the exploitation of labor, we have to additionally (and perhaps primarily) denounce violence. Yes, engineering students often get jobs with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and others. But the extension of this to a place primarily known as a design school is something new — or if not entirely new, then something that should at least cause us to think carefully about its implications.

The response also speaks to a failure of idealism — not of the German Romantic kind, of course, but the kind that would suggest that alternative worlds are possible and able to be brought into being. And this is a failure of idealism amongst those most able to make a change in the technocratic system, the _technocrats themselves_. What is the meaning of this dejection? How can it be countered? What is the role of our own discourse here? For me, engaging with someone who supports _state-sanctioned lethal violence_ is a non-starter; if so, whither conversation? What does it mean for our rhetoric when there is that boundary that is seemingly impossible to cross?

My post is probably as much about me trying to make sense of the rationales of my (former) colleagues as it is suggesting that the incident has wider implications. Yet I keep on tripping over the phrase _state-sanctioned lethal violence_, and ruing the fact that amongst academics in design and social networking we cannot even take the denunciation of such activities as given anymore.

nick knouf

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