INC Winter Drinks and launch
Date: 19 January 2010
Location: Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Interactive Media, Expositieruimte (4th floor), Rhijnspoorplein 1, Amsterdam.
Time: Launch starts at 16:00.
Registration: rsvp (at) networkcultures (dot) org

At the INC winter drinks the Institute of Network Cultures will launch two online projects: the audio archive of Geert Lovink 1987-1995 (including the Bilwet interviews) and the Theory on Demand series.

Geert Lovink’s audio archive contains more than 200 hours of digitized material (transferred from audio cassettes to digital audio files). The archive contains editions from the Bilwet Portrait gallery and various other interviews and lectures from 1987 – 1995. For information about the Bilwet Portrait gallery please visit: http://www.thing.desk.nl/bilwet/

Theory on Demand is a new publication series by the Institute of Network Cultures. The name is derived from Print on Demand, a printing technology by which books (or other documents) are only printed when ordered. Print on Demand publishers includes Lulu, Blurb, and Open Mute. The Theory on Demand series mainly focuses on rare finds: manuscripts that haven’t been published yet and books that are already out of print.

The first books in the series are:
# 1 Dynamics of Critical Internet Culture, by Geert Lovink
# 2 Jahre der Jugend Netzkritik: Essays zu Web 1.0, by Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz
# 3 Victim’s Symptoms, PTSD and Culture, by Ana Peraica (ed.)
# 4 Imagine There Is No Copyright and Cultural Conglomorates Too…, by Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel

The books can be downloaded as pdf files from the INC website (from 19 January onwards). Printed copies can be ordered with one of the listed print-on- demand publishers (Lulu, Blurb, OpenMute, Qoop). http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/theoryondemand/

www.followthemoney.nu (video availabe)

Conference on 14.01.2010 at de Balie

Short summary by Juliana Brunello

First Welcome: Hans Maarten van den Brink welcomes us participants to the conference. He shortly explains that this is the 11^th edition of the circuit of conferences done by Mediafonds, Sandberg Institute and for the first time with Erasmus University. The speaker points out, that the theme of today’s conference, which is actually more of a ritual due to its periodicity, is not data visualization, but about ruling the world.

Introduction:  Annelys de Vet starts her introduction with a funny graphic representation of the efforts put into preparing this conference. She concludes that summing all of the costs involved in it, it is as if each one of the participants was paid 117,65€ to be here today.

She continues by asking some important questions: how do we deal with overload of information and numbers? Do we need data visualization to understand it? “If the database is the new narrative then what is the role of visualization?” (Lev Manovich)

She concludes her intro by asking the participants to continue researching about it after the conference; otherwise if there is no interest in doing so, one should leave the conference, as it does not pay the immense effort to put the conference together. Since no one left, she introduced the first speaker and the actual conference started.

Fist Speaker: Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens. Unfortunately for me it is in Dutch. Therefore I have nothing to report.

Second Speaker: Koert van Mensvoort. Money as a Medium

The speaker made a very entertaining and informative presentation, showing new speculative ideas on how the future system could look like. His presentation involved the themes money, media, data and reality. He stated that money is one of the oldest virtual realities in our culture. This also shows that the virtual has a deep penetration our society. “We are moving from the world of things to the world of information. Virtual economy is booming nowadays, the opposite is to say of the real one.” (Not his exact words, but sort of) As an example he shows one of the new millionaires due to second life.

“Virtual money is a pleonasm. Money has “always” been virtual.”  In the beginning cattle had been used as trade object and it was not virtual. Tools were also used as currency. In China, these tools became smaller, just representing the object itself, and then they became round, becoming virtual. These were made of metal, which was too heavy to carry around, so that paper money was developed. Other places they were made of expansive metal. Later on the credit card found its place in our society: physical and virtual at the same time, “but just plastic”.

The speaker continued by showing the difference between implicit weather data (as seen from the window) vs. explicit data (as seen in numbers). Financial data is explicit, but how can it be implicit visualized? There are no natural phenomena in this case. An interesting case in Kenya showed how prepaid airtime became a de-facto monetary value in the country. In this case “the signifier becomes the signified”. Will then telecom providers become banks and v.v.? Who will make the money? Government or corporation?

Mensvoort stated then that database has become our reality. Our days were consisted of things, now of databases (“are we already living in the matrix?”). He also spoke of the concept of Noosphere: the sphere of human thought. It transforms other systems, like the biosphere. Is this therefore a natural phenomenon? Are the financial and virtual systems a kind of ecosystem? If one compares two ecologies: rainforest and financial system – one is stable and the other of rapid growth – one is self sustainable and the other feeds on biosphere – however, both are threatened. A proposed solution was to link the financial system to the environmental one. To deal with climate change we need system change. The proposed solution: Environmental value needs to be monetized.  The eco currency (separate currency) should be created. One would earn to preserve and depending on the environmental urgency, the currency would fluctuate. However, there are many problems involving its implementation.

He finishes his presentation by expressing his hopes, that geosphere, atmosphere, biosphere and datasphere will live in harmony. I hope so too.

Third speaker: Christian Nold

The speaker introduced the idea of Bijlmer Euro, an experimental currency that should support the development of local identity. This way, data visualization can change the local. It is a very interesting project and I will no longer discuss the it here, but suggest a visit to the following website:

http://www.bijlmer.softhook.com/

Forth speakers: Floris Douma

In Dutch…

Fifth speaker: Richard Rogers. Mapping for people

Very interesting and entertaining, sometimes ironical, presentation about mapping. He started his presentation by explaining what the use of mapping is: it is to find out things that actually help who are looking for it. Activists, NGOs, IGOs, States, celebrities and the common men can find use in it.

Activists want for instance to know how big is the movement they are involved with. They collect URLs and map it in order to visualize the scope of the movement. However, cluster maps have its pros and cons, sometimes provoking a sense of concurrence, which was not the initial goal. NGOs can with the help of mapping find out important relationships. INGs can for instance visualize “who spoke during which issue?” and “which issues which delegate speaks or stay silent?”. States can recognize who their allies are per issue, by for instance mapping in clusters of terminological blocks. Celebrities can check how popular they are, what kind of issues they should be associated with and therefore which kind they should support: children, mine bombs or organ donation?

Rogers points out that maps can show and at the same time construct reality. They send out an invitation to enter a symbolic world. They prompt people to rethink their strategies, for instance to make one’s position higher in a hierarchy, as it has large impacts on how one thinks about himself.

For more information check www.govcom.org

Sixth speaker: Staffan Landin. Gapminder

Landin is a very enthusiastic speaker and a true believer in Gapminder. He explained that the data brought from the world is in a “strong” way transformed in statistical data. However, when statistical data should be brought back into the world producing knowledge, it is done in a “weak” way. This enforces the prevalence of pre-conceived ideas, which are actually wrong. Gapminder should make it easier for people to understand statistical data and therefore grasp the knowledge they transmit in a better way.

The graphics shown in the presentation were really nice ones, very entertaining. I do recommend a visit to their website. However, one must keep in mind that it is very ease, even with nice techniques of data visualization, to misinterpret data. One can for instance confuse cause with effect, of join two variables that actually have no connection to each other making it looks like it does.

Check it out at www.gapminder.org

Seventh speaker group: Yuri Engelhardt, Martijn de Waal and Raul Nino Zambrano. Data stories

The central question of this presentation is “how can one use database to tell stories?” One of the speakers explains, that all we do today is stored in databases. This opens up a range of opportunities to get data and tell stories with it. But how? Documentary and filmmakers have been doing that. A new genre has emerged, a new discipline. However, this is not completely new. Minard designed a graphic in 1869 that “told the story” of Napoleon’s march. Another example of the early development of storytelling with graphics is e.g. Land of promise; Rotha (1946), a city speaks (1947).

More presently, the film “an inconvenient truth” (Guggenheim, 2006) provided a kind of prototype to the “powerpoint” cinema. However the graphics don’t do all the work, rhetoric is also needed. (At this point the speakers show the part of the film of an animated data graphic with al gore explaining the development of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.)Other good examples of contemporary films of this genre are “The federal debt” I.O.U.S.A. (Creadon, 2008) and “The crisis of credits” (Jarvis, 2009)

Second genre: Geography data used to tell stories. The example the speakers have chosen is “Britain from Above” (BBC, 2008), which uses for instance GPS data from Londoner taxis and other satellites images to make a film.

Third genre: Database Cinema. The exemple used here is “What a life” (Canada), in which they use several devices, like quizzes, to create a story. One is invited to explore the areas of the website.

Forth genre: Interactive web graphics, with the characteristics of being interactive and online. E.g.: “they rule”, a database that shows the concentration of power. One can upload the maps they created by searching data. Further examples: the “baby name wizard”, “how Americans spend their day” and “we feel fine”

I strongly recommend a visit to the websites they cited for an educational look and good entertainment.

Eight speaker: Judith de Leeuw.

In Dutch.

Ninth speaker: Ian Forrester. BBD Backstage

Missed big part of it…. Sorry…

Tenth speaker: Joris Maltha. Catalogtree

Catalogtree is involved in designing data visualization. At the moment they are doing data visualization mostly to American magazines. However, at the presentation he spoke of their approach to design. He emphasizes the meaning of self organization as design tool.

He showed some projects in which social data of people behaving in a certain way has been used. He presented one in which the theme was cultural norms vs. law enforcement, by using data of a research that showed diplomats parking their car incorrectly and the corruption indexes of the CIA.  The conclusion of this research was that corrupted countries have more diplomats that park their car incorrectly. Biased? Maybe… (flocking diplomats nyc 1999-2002) Using this data they produced different designs in form of posters. You can check them at http://www.catalogtree.net/projects/diplomats

Another example of their work, which also involves social behavior, was a map that became useless because of its continuous use, and the habit of people touching it with the finger where they stood. This part of the map was so worn out, that one could not recognize it anymore.

Further example was “the blue marble”, not done by Catalogtree, but for NASA.. In this case, satellite data should be made understandable to a larger audience. Oceans were painted blue, forests green, etc. It looks like photography, but it is not.

In the end of the presentation there was a weird discussion about the design involving diplomats, if it was biased or not. Fact is, that there were only pictures of their cars, in different sized considering the amount of time they were parked incorrectly. There was no citation to countries or so. Someone pointed out one could still influence something, by changing the color of the poster, that it would make a difference if it were red of white. I don’t see the point… I believe that the speaker also didn’t, as he decided at a certain point to just leave the podium.

Eleventh speaker: Mieke Gerrizen. Infodecodata

In Dutsch, so I left home, as it was the last presentation of the day.

Conclusion:

The conference was very informative and entertaining. I learned a lot just being there and came out with new ideas. I will definitely keep my attention on the subject. I do understand now how data visualization can “control the world” now. One can use it to prove a point, to influence, to convince and not to mention it: to lie. Very tricky thing…

Today is the first day of the Critical Point of View: WikiWars conference in Bangalore!
You can follow the event on Twitter, through #WikiWars, and the CPOV blog: http://www.networkcultures.org/cpov.

The full program of the Bangalore event is online here.

By Rachel O’Reilly

Darren Tofts considered the 1990s history and present plight of media art in Australia,” in terms of individual artists, and access to and curatorial advocacy of media art work”. This presentation could be considered follow up commentary to Toft’s highly accessible and extremely timely book Interzone: Media Arts in Australia which addressed under-documented practices and a large gap in Australian art publishing (not only given the international renown of Australia’s media artists).
Tofts re-visited the 12 year old ‘Other Spaces’ report on emerging media art (Dickson)  which officially registered media art’s “potentiality”, was focused on” media specificity”, attended to pressures on art galleries of the “interactive imperative”, and was yet “curiously cautious” about the acceptance and popularity of interactive art. Tofts suggests in 2009 not much has changed: the curatorial and conceptual place of new media art is “as important and tenuous today as it was then”. New institutions (Fed Square from 1992, Experimedia from 2003) as well as stalwart innovative orgs like ANAT, the Electronic Arts Foundation and DLux, were mentioned alongside specific exhibitions and symposiums of media art (mostly in Sydney and Melbourne), the work of theorists like McKenzie Wark, and publishing outlets e.g. FineArtForum (the work of Linda Carolli) – all of which took media art to exciting places here.

Tofts wants to know “what went wrong” after the 90s. Partly, he argued, the “diminution of attention is to be expected of any emerging art movement”, but Tofts also noted specific problems of flagrant relegation to the background.  Mainstream and hugely influential old media art critics remained dismissive (e.g. Sebastian Smee); audiences had “interactivity fatigue”; artists couldn’t compete with “ifart mobile” (the commercial games and apps culture that formed around portable devices?) as well as other forms of” pedestrian cultural distraction” theorised by Wark; the dissolution of support from the Australia  Council for the Arts significantly impacted…; and in “curatorial politics” there was a shift away from certain technological works now considered (and critiqued) “as a subgenre of the moving image”. (This final comment perhaps touches on not only the recent conversion of ACMI exhibition spaces, but also the work that video installation does in contemporary art museums and galleries to signify and translate a much more variegated contemporary media landscape).

The Melbourne-centric focus and computer-interactive specificity of media art in the Interzone publication has been already noted by some reviewers. While ineluctable partiality (and definitional restraint) is no gripe in itself (not here), I did want to consider that inevitable perspectivalism in the context of the passionately and articulately rendered national – or art historical – crisis presented. An acknowledgement of the transformation of the media landscape itself was missing (the under-participated explosion of online video, the expansion of software culture etc – media art exists here, and can’t do away with the screen incidentally). So were numerous practitioners and major events of ‘media art’ that have gone or stayed regional. Emergent experimental media/electronic art practices and platforms, such as those critically showcased at This Is Not Art (which has incidentally always mixed established and emerging artists to do away with some of these analytic fallacies of crisis and forgetting) continue, and characteristically (problematically, depending on the view) move on from making heritage claims. Curiously omitted too  was the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane’s inauguration of an extremely lucrative Australian media art prize in 2009, offering significant opportunities and contemporary art-historical salience to both established and emerging ‘media art’ practitioners in a longer art and technology discourse.

Most at issue here was the use made of a 12 year old report of strategy and potentiality (‘Other Spaces’) to evidence present historical oversight; the trial of ‘now’ against the (genuine) rhetorics, optimism and desire of an emergent not yet?  In Tofts’ own words elsewhere: “Interzone was designed to be a kind of policy speech to the Australian body politic to embrace media art as part of its national culture and not have it fade ignominiously into a minor footnote in the history of art in this country”. If policy doesn’t/can’t focalize or translate into history over time, then ‘policy speech’ (which might also be Tofts own modesty about criticality) will dialogue just as complexly with ‘what happens next’ as ‘Other Spaces’ did with the recent history that Tofts has documented.  It is worth considering, politically that is, that cultures of potentiality deemed historically “over” may have also just done their first round of work, or shape-shifted. The fact that no actual artists, works or platforms generated after 2003 were mentioned during the querying of ‘what happens now’ fostered the suspicion of inattention. De-privileging this something that is always happening risks shutting off documented histories from critically productive dialogue about the ‘what’ of practice and support, criticism and historicization that happens now and next. Tofts’ temporal politics and historiographic instinct might perhaps be furthered opened out to these issues, and perhaps somewhat relieved by them. Or not. Regardless, despite a veritable downturn of a certain kind of media art practice, knowledge, and funding, I suspect that it’s far too early to be anxious about the continuity (perhaps transformation, variegation is better) of media and technology-interested practice, exhibition, criticism, in Australia. At risk of complacency, this view has precisely to do with the attentional work of people like Tofts and the agents, works and spaces of recent practice that he has documented as that precursor to a future present.

On 12-13 January 2010, Critical Point of View: WikiWars will take place in Bangalore, India. WikiWars is a conference on critical Wikipedia research, organized by CIS India, in a collaboration with the INC. Registration is now open here.

Critical Point of View (CPOV): WikiWars Conference Bangalore, India
Date: 12-13 January 2010
Location: The Bangalore International Centre, The Energy and Resources Institute, 4th Main, Domlur II Stage, Bangalore – 560 071 Karnataka.
Speakers: Geert Lovink, Rut Jesus, Anne Goldenberg, Shunling Chen, Stuart Geiger, Beatriz Martins, Dipti Kulkarni, Mark Graham, Phillip Schmidt, Alok Nandi, Dror Kamir, Asha Achuthan, Linda Gross, Heather Ford, Elad Wieder, Nathaniel Tkacz, Sunil Abraham, Usha Raman, Roy Krovel, Ivan Martinez, Nupoor Rawal, Srikiet Tadepalli, Tejaswini Niranjana, Nishant Shah, William Buetler, Eric Ilya Lee, Anas Tawileh, Yi-Ping Tsou, Amie Parry, Johanna Niesyto, Eric Zimmerman, Stian Haklev, Anja Kovacs, Isaac Mao, Scott Kildall, Nathaniel Stern, Rut Jesus, Anne Goldenberg, Shai Herdia.
View the WikiWars timetable here.
Registration: http://www.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wikwarsreg
More information: http://www.cis-india.org/events/wikiwars

For those of you who can’t make it to Bangalore, it will be filmed and videos will be available on the CPOV weblog by the beginning of February. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/

On March 26-27, the Institute of Network Cultures will organize the second CPOV conference, in the public library.
Event: Critical Point of View Conference Amsterdam
Date: 26-27 March 2010
Location: Public Library Amsterdam (OBA), Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Confirmed speakers include: Ramon Reichert, Jeanette Hofman, Mathieu O’Neil, Joseph Reagle, Charles van den Heuvel, Dan O’Sullivan, Alan Shaprio, Scott Kildall, Patrick Lichty, Richard Rogers, Andrew Famigletti, Teemu Mikkonen, Mayo Fuster, Athina Karatzogianni.
More information and CPOV news: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/

By Rachel O’Reilly

Douglas Kahn, founding Director of Technocultures Studies at University of California (Davis) spoke on the final leg of his ANAT tour across Australia, organised by Sarah Last.

Kahn opened with a recording of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Chuck Berry, and David Rosenboom “performing” live brain wave tunes on CBS’s Mike Douglas Show in 1972. It’s entertaining footage: Rosenbaum’s keyboard solos smother out any precise comprehension of what is actually going on, while numerous shots capture Mike in blissy listening mode. Kahn traces this mainstreamed countercultural interest in brainwaves back to physicist and US Air Force researcher Edmond M. Dewan, who demonstrated in 1964 he could manipulate technology (a light bulb, later a computer) through simple mind control – essentially managing the output and transduction of his brain’s alpha waves. It was Dewan that had sought the company of composers, and Lucier was one of few to take him seriously. Dewan suggested to Lucier the idea for Music for solo performance, yet today receives the credit of technical support. Kahn gave a rich “immanent” reading of this Dewan/Lucier work of ‘outer’ expression beyond the bounds of the body itself, in which the resulting sound triggers not sound, but the intention to continue performing making a sound, by essentially absenting any intentionality or visual imagery from the brain.

Alvin Lucier, Music for Solo Performance

Kahn links the spatial, EM, and systems thinking of Lucier, Cage, Paik, Dewan and also Wiener, who studied with Dewan, historically, and considers their interest in brainwaves as only one aspect of an “audible and naturally-occurring electromagnetic spatiality, the other being on a geophysical scale, with the intervening space caught somewhere between the Cold War and counter-culture”. EM (except for visible light) needs technology to be experienced (via “transduction-in-degree” or “transduction in kind”) yet art and media historians often don’t know how to talk about this sort of work except in terms of ICT devices; there is no antiquity to electromagnetism. Kahn focuses on a materialism of forces that sees artists take up different positions at different levels of the electromagnetic spectrum. So how do you write a natural history of the media, or theorise ICTs in terms of nature? Kahn suggests four periods in the historical engagement with the electromagnetic spectrum in the arts.

1. The media archaeological moment of aelectrosonic media: Thomas Watson’s pleasurable listening in on the Whistler’s (VLF sounds of EM waves hitting the earth) picked up by Bell’s telephone wires, long before Luigi Russolo’s Art of Noises Manifesto, and 20yrs before the ‘discovery’ of radio.

2. Avant gard contexts: visual art’s avant gard discourses present discursive and imaginary contexts for the EM work that Kahn considers a kind of chapter 9 to the critically enamoured Duchamp in Context.

3. Experimentalism – relationships of artistic research to ex-cold war science and technology in the US. e.g. Lucier, James Turrell, Carl Burgerblombel?? (Composed tv), John Cage variation 7.

4. 1990s practices incorporating cyberspatial and art/science/environment practices e.g. Joyce Hinterding’s working beyond invisible light.

This was a highlight presentation of Re:Live and great deep-space media theory. The talk ended with ANAT’s thank you drinks for Kahn which was a nice moment to actually catch up and meet other conference attendees.

By Rachel O’Reilly

Francesco Franco’s research at Birkbeck College London focuses on art, technology and politics at the Venice Biennale between 1966 and 1986. Venice is the oldest festival of contemporary art worldwide, and an interesting case study for many of the changes occurring in Europe during this time. From the early 60s the organisation was plagued by shifting demands for democratization of art and the expansion and dissolution of categories. Action on these issues, Franco argued, was somewhat muted in 1966 by the space given to kinetic work including that of Julio le Parc who contentiously won the painting prize. Demonstrations at the 68 Milan Triennale and the June 68 Venice Biennale by students and prominent intellectuals massively impacted; the charter abandoned artwork prizes and medium specific categories as well as the Grand Prix, deemed irrelevant to contemporary practice. (The Golden Lion was instated in 1994).

Franco suggests that the presence of computer-based works in 1970 under the banner of ‘experimentation’ must be understood as a means to engage audiences in this context. The main pavilion uniquely housed a display of actual documentation proposals for the experimental exhibition. Focus was given to the active and conscious spectator; to art without categories; and to computer-based experimentation (Russian constructivists, Comptuer Technique Group, “the new technique” movement, Herbert W. Franke Aurro Lecci, Freider Nake). The Nuremburg Biennale in 69 precursored the inclusion of computer work in the Venice show (Max Bil, Josef Albers, Georg Nees). Franco considers the “new tendencies” group and exhibition in Zagreb was as much concerned with a burgeoning computer aesthetic as it was with direct political disillusionment with the Venice Biennale.

Nake image, Frieder Nake,”Klee”

According to Franco, computer art at Venice was not necessarily a “radical gesture” but an answer (recuperation) to the instability of the institution, and an unusual case in Biennale history. The computer technique group had already commenced a timely critique of its own relevance  (see “Goodbye Computer art” letter, 1970).

‘Radical acts’ remained a floating signifier in this talk. In question time Franco suggested Krzysztof Wodiczko “Guests” work in 2009 was a lone recent example. It would have been great to match this rigorous institutional research with closer readings of contested works, and more transparent political-aesthetic criteria. An audience member queried the positivity of achievement rendered for kinetic work (as radical today) over computer media-based work (lost to corporate commerce and the art market etc) in the history presented, essentially pointing to the trouble with post-media or post-category art history, criticism, curation.

Krzysztof Wodiczko “Guests” 2009, Venice Biennale

By Rachel O’Reilly

Considering that spectators’ active involvement with moving images in public was happening long before the computer (Andreas Broekmann), Kekou considers historical analysis in this area as a history of “activation” – of new and creative forms of public projections becoming visible.

Citing Abel Gance’s 1927 cubist film Napoleon as a key early film for urban projection theory, Eva Kakou’s paper (presented by a colleague) first addressed cinematic and videographic pre-histories of urban screen projection as a means to appraise contemporary work in the city. Other film history mentioned included expanded cinema, John Cage and Ronald Nameth’s hpschd (1969) Robert Whitman, Happenings, and Jeffrey shaw’s Movie Movie (1969) which multiplied and mobilized the screen. Video practice from the 70’s onwards was brought in to parallel, especially “closed circuit” installation (e.g. Bruce Naumann) linking subjectivity to public screen experience, and video installation experiences to dissipated or dispersed observers.

Kakou then drew on Rokeby’s digital aesthetics (“creating relationships rather than finished objects”), Bourriard on the sociality of contemporary art’s spatial practices and Manovich on public and ubiquitous computing to argue that today’s landscape of public projection practices and experiences are even richer. The taxonomy Kakou suggests, includes:

1. ephemeral cinematic projections within the urban fabric ( e.g. London’s Secret Cinema group for which viewers are electronically informed about the new location of each new projection screen – this in opposition to the stability of the contemporary movie house);
2. alternative uses of urban information screens [and networks?] (e.g. Michelle Teran’s “Frilufts kino” – querying the public’s depiction and presentation of itself through migratory and economic imageries of surveillance);
3. the appropriation of existing [commercial?] projections within the urban fabric – promoting new audiences and different engagements (e.g. Jenny holzer’s appropriation of “historically large screens” – normally relays for public events or flat worlds of advertising -  in Truisms, re-negotiating the city as an apparatus of spectacle.)
4. urban screens and telematic displacement – eg. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole in space (1980)

Other urban projection works discussed included Stefhan Caddick’s Storyboard 2005, Rafael Loazono-Hammer, Under Scan, 2008; the Chaos Computer Club’s…..Blinkenlights; and Paul Sermon’s – Liberate You’re Avatar.

The paper gave close attention to the complexity of urban projection practice to consider the work that projection artists do critiquing technology in public domains, impacting upon the performance and interpretation of the city, and querying decorum and public space (Virillio).

The Urban Screens Reader is the first book to focus entirely on the topic of urban screens. In assembling contributions from a range of leading theorists, in conjunction with a series of case studies dealing with artists’ projects and screen operators’ and curators’ experiences, the reader offers a rich resource for those interested in the intersections between digital media, cultural practices and urban space.

Urban Screens have emerged as a key site in contemporary struggles over public culture and public space. They form a strategic junction in debates over the relation between technological innovation, the digital economy, and the formation of new cultural practices in contemporary cities. How should we conceptualize public participation in relation to urban screens? Are ‘the public’ citizens, consumers, producers, or something else? Where is the public located? When a screen is erected in public space, who has access to it and control over it? What are the appropriate forms of urban planning, design and governance? How do urban screens affect cultural experiences?

Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Urban Screens Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009. ISBN: 978-90-78146-10-0.

contributors: Simone Arcagni, Alice Arnold, Giselle Beiguelman, Liliana Bounegru, Kate Brennan, Andreas Broeckmann, Uta Caspary, Sean Cubitt, Annet Dekker, Jason Eppink, Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Mike Gibbons, M. Hank Haeusler, Bart Hoeve, Erkki Huhtamo, Karen Lancel, Hermen Maat, Meredith Martin, Scott McQuire, Julia Nevárez, Sabine Niederer, Shirley Niemans, Nikos Papastergiadis, Soh Yeong Roh, Saskia Sassen, Leon van Schaik, Jan Schuijren, Audrey Yue.

Order now!
Order a copy of the Urban Screens Reader by sending an email to: books (at) networkcultures.org, download a pdf here or go to the Urban Screens Reader page for more information.

colophon: Editors: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer. Editorial Assistance: Geert Lovink and Elena Tiis. Copy Editing: Michael Dieter and Isabelle de Solier. Design: Katja van Stiphout, Printer: Raamwerken Printing & Design, Enkhuizen, Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2009. Supported by: the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in collaboration with Virtueel Platform, the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, the School for Communication and Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, MediaLAB Amsterdam and the International Urban Screens Association. The editors would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the Australian Research Council LP0989302 in supporting this research.

The Urban Screens reader was launched at the Urban Screens 09: The City as Interface event on 4 December 2009. Urban Screens 09 was organized in Amsterdam by the Institute of Network Cultures and MediaLAB Amsterdam in collaboration with the International Urban Screens Association, and curated by Sabine Niederer (INC). www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens/09/

The INC reader series are derived from conference contributions and produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. For more information about this publication series, please go to www.networkcultures.org/readers.

By Rachel O’Reilly

Re:live 09, the third international conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology was held in Melbourne from 26 – 29 of November this year, alongside a cluster of parallel programmed events across the city including the Superhuman Exhibition, Symposium and Curatorial Masterclass run by the Australian Network for Art and technology; a SymbioticA Workshop [Also ANAT]; and the Re: Live Leonardo Education Forum. Select reports from Re:live and the Superhuman Curatorial Masterclass follow.

–

Lisa Gitelman, Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Media Culture and Communication at NYU and author of Always Already New: Media History, and the Data of Culture, opened Re:live with a great media archaeological paper. Beginning with a theorization of the paper-based ‘blank’ within the larger analogue industry of modern jobprinting, she considered “the work that paper does” as a neglected aspect of media and labour theory, and as an antecedent mainframing industrial culture precursory to softwarized information culture.

“Jobprinting” includes bank-books, bankers’ cases, bill-books, blotters, cash-books, check-books, collection-books, exercise and manuscript books, diaries, drawing-books, engineers’ field-books, fern and moss albums etc. It represented 30% of the value of the print culture economy at the turn of the century but has escaped media history. While media studies takes up with the impact and historical linkages of authored texts, jobprinting asks questions about the material role of local desubjectifying acts of knowledge-ordering by “users” of blanks in public sphere formation – not dissimilar to digital “users” working with today’s blanks under the influence of metadata. Deeply wrought into modern print culture (Gitelman gave a wonderful taxonomy of printed blanks prior to a close reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s materialist appreciation of paper in The Purloined Letter), the blank requires instead a sort of inverse method of analysis from affective labour studies:

“One doesn’t identify with the bank to write a check or with the insurance company to file a claim. Chat with a teller and commiserate with your agent—by all means—but that’s precisely what you don’t do on paper, filling in the blanks. The game of “I know you know I know you know” played or gestured toward by the authors, publishers, and readers of nominal blanks cannot happen here, because the bank and the insurance company do not know what you know. They are “they,” endowed with agency in part according to the bureaucratic processes of collecting and managing what you know.”

Gitelman cites historical “limit cases” challenged the bureaucratising/rationalizing force of the blank. The public trial and hanging of a “blank” in Boston – a piece of official embossed paper newly arrived from Britain in February 1766 – following the imposition of a Stamp Tax by Great Britain which sought to officiate the use of paper throughout its colonies. An unsuccessful challenge in the US Supreme Court during the 19th century of the legality of the (first) fine print pre-printed upon Western Union telegram “blanks” (upon which senders wrote messages for transmission) which indemnified the company from liability for “garbled messages” – this being precursory to today’s end user licence agreements. The third example, Baker v. Selden (1872), was a key moment in American copyright law distinguishing between ‘idea/expression’ in the copyright of two rival bookkeeping methodologies and their printed forms, and which defined the blank’s formal and legal identity: blanks don’t carry authorship.

This was great materialist public sphere theory and history attending to commerce and the credit economy, specific bureaucratic authorities, and workplaces, rather than, or in parallel to the “subjectivities of reading” analyses and assumptions of literary cultural theory. Gitelman’s site is here: https://files.nyu.edu/lg91/public/

Credits pictures: Adinda van ‘t Klooster and Re:Live, 2009