Distributed Aesthetics

“Today, the field of distributed aesthetics is falsely associated with exaggerated rumors of net art’s demise. The entire landscape is severely under-studied. In Berlin, last week, a small group of people met for an intensive workshop to respond to this situation. Just returned back to New York what follows is an academic/journalistic quick-response and a follow-up on some strings of the discussion that branched out like a tree.

Many of the exchanges were based on the growth of the Internet from nothing to everything, with the mobile telecommunication technologies and all their “swarming” or “rendezvous” devices. The terrain of the debate embraced issues concerning variously scaled social group formations, mapping and other visualization techniques including sonification, the revenge of the backend algorithm, the vengeance of geography, folkloristic participation in alternative sociable web media, and the re-thinking of affective media. This was quite a bit for a start but a more specific focus was hard to imagine in the early days of what may become a field in its own right. Continue reading

CREATION, SUBVERSION, AND RESISTENCE!

Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication- born in Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide- is proud to announce its fifth annual competition. Once again, Memefest is encouraging students, professionals, writers, artists, designers, thinkers, philosophers, and counter-culturalists to submit their work to our panel of renowned judges. This year, jury members will include Richard Barbrook, esteemed author, research pioneer, radio vigilante, and critic of neo-liberalism, along with radical designers and activists Sandy Kaltenborn, Kernow Craig, Paul Shoebridge and Jason Grant, Clinical Psychologist and “Bag news” blog author Dr. Michael Shaw and design critic Kenneth Fitzgerald. Continue reading

Look, Listen, Interact, Play, Contribute

Opsound is pleased to announce an exciting line-up for the closing party of Opsound’s Open Sound Exchange and Glowlab’s Open Lab to take place Sunday, December 11 at Art Interactive Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 4-8pm.

Performances in the gallery will include a live video and audio stream by LoVid, an interactive audio piece for mobile phone handsets by RZ-1 Mobil Tek, plus experimental ambient live music by Eric Raz, Brad Bordine, and Weapons of Mass Destruction, additional sounds from Opsound’s collaborative internet radio stream.

Directions and Information: Sunday, December 11, 4-8pm; Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, Cambridge, MA; 617-498-0100, info[at]artinteractive.org; Subway: Central Square [Directions/map] Continue reading

Opsound and Whereyouare

Last night at Upgrade! Boston, Sal Randolph presented two projects, Opsound and Whereyouare. Opsound is a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine. Opsound is currently installed in the Glowlab: Open Lab exhibition at Art Interactive.

Whereyouare is an experiment in the collective documentation of neighborhoods. Randolph began the project with the idea of documenting her own neighborhood, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, whose quirky and ephemeral beauties are currently endangered by a wave of new development. Everyone is invited to participate by documenting any neighborhood they love. Those with material from neighborhoods which have now been damaged or destroyed by Katrina are especially encouraged to contribute. Continue reading

The Truth About Networks

The Truth About Networks: Between the total hell of networked, salaried labor and the promises of the commons by Trebor Scholz

In short succession the first two in a series of publications called DATA Browser were just released. Both start out with historical texts to search for effective contemporary models of cultural production that merge socio-technological with artistic critique. ‘DATA browser 01′ takes Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s notion of the culture industry (1944) as a departing point. ‘DATA browser 02′ links to Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Author as Producer’ (1934). Let’s start with Brian Holmes’ essay ‘The Flexible Personality,’ which contributes a rare meditation on today’s network society and sketches out an intellectual history of anti-systemic movements that becomes the critical backdrop for both volumes of ‘DATA browser.’ Continue reading