Kinetica Museum at Bishopsgate Institute: A Cultural Institute for London presents Man & Machine: The Convergence :: November 11, 2008; 7:30 pm :: Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London.

This visionary panel will discuss the advancing potential of the human body and explore how science fiction has lead the way forward in creating today’s robotic and technologically integrated society.

Ghislaine Boddington (Director, Body>Data>Space); Rich Walker (Director, Shadow Robot Company); Dianne Harris (artist); Brian R Duffy (Senior Researcher, Anthropos Project, Media Lab Europe & Smartlab Digital Media Institute); Stelarc (performance artist).

(curating) interference (annette finnsdottir, carlos katastrofsky) :: Exhibition Announcement & Call for Participation :: October - December, 2008 :: Spanien 19C, Aarhus; Mikrogalleriet, Copenhagen; and netfilmmakers (online).

The aim of the project is to discuss the working methods and the task of a curator within a networked environment. Curating on the internet is a working process that wants to be visible in the same way as the processes frequently hidden behind internet-based art. The curator acts not only as an intermediary in the presentation of art but also according to his own filtering processes, choices and decisions. Continue reading

The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media.

After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives? Continue reading

Fibreculture Journal Issue 13: After convergence: what connects? :: Edited by Caroline Bassett (University of Sussex, UK), Maren Hartmann (University of the Arts Berlin, Germany), Kate O’Riordan (University of Sussex, UK)

After convergence: what connects? Making this question the subject of this special issue we set out to address two questions at once. The first was: ‘Are we after convergence?’ and by this we meant to invite explorations of the exhaustion of the original convergence model. The second was: ‘What kind of convergence are we after?’ Which is to say what kind of convergence do we want? These were at heart of our concerns in developing this issue, and, in posing them we also asked a series of subsidiary questions: Continue reading

Lately, a number of institutions, based on more or less conventional models, seem to be focusing on fomenting art and culture created with digital, networked and portable devices. This is not a new phenomenon, but there seem to be different approaches, and a variety of unfoldings that shift away from the classic MediaLAB models, as the convergence of art, science and technology no longer seems to be dominant on a field nowadays diverse enough to range from social and educational perspectives to artistic experimentation of all kinds.

There are mixed scenarios, on this context, in which digital culture reaches places such as China and India, while mobile and wireless networks adds layers of complexity to our connected society. Continue reading

[ ... ] New Media - New Networks [1]

If you mention the term new media in the presence of one of the most prominent artists of the extremely popular virtual world of Second Life, Gazira Barbelli, you will automatically activate a programme script, which will blow away your avatar to a completely different, unwanted location. The script entitled Don’t Say Tornado is her artwork, created to draw attention to inappropriate use of some terms of traditional new media theory in the context of a completely artificial world in which the artist herself (avatar) is nothing but a set of binary data.

Although the Croatian new media art is far from being thoroughly virtual, the example of Second Life indicates the current process of redefining the new media culture in relation to the increase in the number of the Internet users, changes in the ways it is used, faster introduction of new media theory in traditional scientific fields etc. Continue reading

transmediale.09 - DEEP NORTH - festival for art and digital culture berlin :: 27 January - 1 February 2009 :: club transmediale.09 - STRUCTURES - festival for adventurous music and related visual arts :: 23 - 31 January 2009 :: Call for Entries - Deadline: September 5, 2008.

As leading international festivals for art and digital culture as well as adventurous music and related visual arts, respectively, transmediale and club transmediale are calling for submissions to the transmediale Award competition and the Vilem Flusser Theory Award.

transmediale presents and pursues the advancement of artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural, political and economic impact of new technologies. Continue reading

‘Structures of Participation in Digital Culture‘ — free download scholarly essay. From Cory Doctorow’s May 22, 2008 post on Boing Boing:

“Danah sez, “The Social Science Research Council has made Structures of Participation in Digital Culture available for free download. This is a collection of fabulous scholarly articles on topics like gaming, DRM and filters, digital commodities, social network sites, contagious media, media remix, etc. It’s a fabulous book.”

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, edited by SSRC Program Director Joe Karaganis, explores digital technologies that are engines of cultural innovation, from the virtualization of group networks and social identities to the digital convergence of textural and audio-visual media. Continue reading

First Monday: Volume 13, Number 3 :: Preface: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 by Michael Zimmer; Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0Web 2.0: An argument against convergence by Trebor Scholz; by Matthew Allen; Interactivity is Evil! A critical investigation of Web 2.0 by Kylie Jarrett; Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation by Søren Mørk Petersen; The Externalities of Search 2.0: The Emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets Web 2.0 by Michael Zimmer; Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance by Anders Albrechtslund; History, Hype, and Hope: An Afterward by David Silver. Continue reading

Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation; The ICA 2007 San Francisco Conference Theme Book; edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen - In an era when (especially new) media are celebrated for their participatory potential, questions about the nature and intensity of these participatory processes seem to be superfluous. But raising these questions pushes us into a critical mode towards the changes that have lead to the present-day media landscape. This volume’s authors aim to activate this critical mode and reflect on the participatory nature of contemporary media organizations and products.

In order to stand even a remote chance to realize this objective, and to critically unravel the societal role of participation, we need to acknowledge that participation is a complex and contested notion, covering a wide variety of meanings and practices that are converging into a hybrid of technologies, genres, and formats. Continue reading