We're sorry to announce that 'Text to the Paratext' with Sean Dockray has been canceled

Wir leben in einer Welt, in der sich digitale Netzwerke rasant entwickeln. In der Medientheorie, die den Einfluss dieser kulturellen Formationen untersucht, wurde die Bedeutung der Ästhetik dabei bislang vernachlässigt. Diese Lücke schließt Vito Campanelli mit seiner Arbeit als Forscher, Journalist und Kurator im Bereich der digitalen Kultur.

In seinem Vortrag am 24. Mai um 19 Uhr bei General Public (Sprache: Englisch) kontextualisiert Campanelli so unterschiedliche Phänomene wie soziale Netzwerke, Peer-to-Peer-Netze und Remix-Kultur. Er legt ihre historischen Voraussetzungen frei und entwickelt Ansätze für eine ästhetische Theorie digitaler Medien.

Campanellis Untersuchungen, kürzlich in seinem Buch Web Aesthetics gebündelt, laden nicht zuletzt dazu ein, jene Beschränkungen zu überwinden, welche der aktuellen Diskussion über digitale Kultur zu Grunde liegen. Seine Arbeit steht somit ganz im Zeichen des Web – als Medium, das zwischen den neuen Medien und der Gesellschaft steht, das die weltweite Verbreitung von Ideen und Verhaltensweisen antreibt, ästhetische Formen hervorbringt und die zeitgenössische Kultur und Gesellschaft modelliert.

Die von mir moderierte Veranstaltung ist ein Projekt der Berliner Gazette in Zusammenarbeit mit General Public. Wir danken für die Unterstütztung durch das Institute for Network Cultures und NAi Publishers.

Vito Campanelli ist Medientheoretiker und lehrt Theorie und Technik der Massenkommunikation an der Universität Neapel – L’Orientale. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen über Medienkunst in internationalen Zeitschriften wie „Neural”. Er arbeitet als freier Kurator im Feld der digitalen Kultur. Er ist Mitbegründer der Non-Profit-Organisation MAO (Media & Arts Office).
Er ist Autor der Berliner Gazette.

Ort:
General Public
Schönhauser Allee 167c, Berlin
U-Bahnhof Senefelder Platz (U2)

A conference on literacy and publishing in the digital age from 19-21 May.

Download the program here.
The conventional notion of the book, based on centuries of print, has rapidly grown outdated. Meanwhile the capacity to create digital book-like functions and forms is endless. in a double sense the book is coming unbound, both from the bindings of the printed volume and also the boundaries between multimedia content and modes of authorship in a vast, interconnected electronic space. These possibilities may be exciting, but the digital book is left without obvious contours. the entire concept of ‘bookness’ needs reinvention. to do this well, we must go back to the basics. this means not only questioning the future of the book and its institutional and intellectual infrastructures, but also asking what we should retain of the familiar printed volume, even as we embrace the digital future.

Those developing these (sometimes competing) technologies and standards too often ignore perspectives outside of immediate, market-driven concerns. it is therefore critical that cultural forces step in to affect how we design, utilize, and disseminate the book’s future forms. What new models can advance writing, collaborating, distributing, reading and interpreting knowledge? What affordances can affect the formatting and designing of dynamic content? through panel discussions, presentations, and workshops, the unbound book conference brings together academics, designers, writers, librarians, software and hardware developers, and publishers who want to take part in defining their roles within this transformative landscape.
The Unbound Book is an initiative of the CREATE-IT Applied research centre at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, the Book and Digital Media Studies at the University of Leiden, and the Institute of Network Cultures.

By: By jussi.parikka at 27/04/2011 - 06:30

Jussi Parikka's blog

Amsterdam based journalist and critic Josephine Bosma’s just published book Nettitudes. Let’s Talk Net Art (2011) tackles the themes of net.art, aesthetics, politics and network culture practices in a great way. Bosma, herself very much an insider to the net art scene since its emergence in the early 1990s, is able to both give insights to the emergence of this specific way of addressing the internet cultures as a catalyzer for art, as well as critical commentary. In other words, it is not only a celebration of the phenomena but involves good analytical comments.

Bosma discusses both the wider art theory implications of the field of “net art” and the difficulties it has had with its critics (either from the too established ones in art institutions or art history, or the ones too easily taking the forms of technological art to techno-determinist and capitalist directions). From such discussions she is continues to address the wider “technology” question in terms of theoretical positions: how to think “materially”, which for her comes from such directions as Massumi , Deleuze, Simondon and the emphasis on material change, becoming and movement – hence, immanently already “political”. Sounds like “new materialism.”

A very good intro is also the categorization she offers: the five levels of code, flow, screen, matter and context, which illuminate her particular approach that has to do with the practices of net art intimately tied to the network culture. In other words, it’s not the technology which is the determining factor but the wider social field in which they are articulated. This is what she calls “net cultures” of a heterogeneous mix of significant contexts: “various academic communities, news sites, financial trading, gaming communities, hacker groups, online shops, web logs (blogs), software and hardware developers, social network sites, dating sites, porn producers and porn audiences, media activists, institutional and independent cultural platforms and anything else happening that could be disseminated via the Net.” (25). Needless to say, that is a lot.

In the projects and approaches introduced, Nettitudes is able to carve out the specific aesthetic-political attitudes that net art brings forth. It has been a testing ground for practice and theory involving the various new roles, or subject positions, emerging in network culture relating to creative (“fun”) work, active audiences, “trans-subjectivities” (Brian Holmes’ term), gender and more; it has tackled with politics of institutions and organizations in its need to also rethink the existing art and cultural ones; bodies that the various projects touch upon are hybrids and as such already border-crossings, as with Critical Art Ensemble's bioartpolitics, or Michael Mandiberg selling his identity as part of his e-commerce project. Besides as a framework to think about cognitive capitalism, or global brand capitalism mocked by performances of Yes Men, such art projects working through the net as a context were ideal to think of cultural identities and boundaries – of access and lack of it in relation to South-America, Africa, Asia and so forth, and the intensive, imaginative ideas coming from such directions.

There is a lot of writing about these fields which overlap with for instance “software art”, but still Bosma’s book feels fresh. I was left thinking again of such notions as “speculative software”  (I/O/D) as something that feels inspiring and has a funny ring when thought in the context of later speculative realist philosophies. Such critique is involvement as execution – epistemology becoming effective, involved, as computers are: “Computers are embodied culture, hardwired epistemology” (Simon Pope and Matthew Fuller).

More info on Josephine Bosma’s book Nettitudes here.

Nettitudes is published by the Institute of Network Cultures and NAi Publishers.
Amsterdam/Rotterdam, 2011.

Bron: http://www.networkpolitics.org/blogs/jussiparikka

April 27,  4:00pm, Rogers Communication Centre, Room 202
Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario

More information about the seminar you can find here: http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/news/WikiLeaks_The_Politics_of_Exposure.html

The purpose of this series of events is to encourage critical dialogue on the phenomena of Wikileaks. We aim to explore the theoretical and discursive tensions inherent in representations of Wikileaks, as well as possibilities for praxis both within "the academy" and outside, in relation to questions about security, international relations, and the reconfiguration of public and private space. By bringing together scholars who work in the area(s) of media theory, radical democracy and the state, we hope to provoke future conversation about the broader ethical, legal and socio-political effects of Wikileaks.

Theory on Demand #7 
Image, Time and Motion: New Media Critique fromTurkey, Ankara (2003 - 2010)
Edited by: Andreas Treske, Ufuk Onen, Bestem Büyüm and I. Alev Degim.
Design: Katja van Stiphout
DTP: Margreet Riphagen
Printer: ‘Print on Demand’
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2011
ISBN: 978-90-816021-5-0
Download the  TOD#7 reader here.

About the reader: This reader is a collection of essays written by Turkish graduate students between 2003 and 2010 for Andreas Treske’s seminar ‘Image, Time and Motion’ at Bilkent University in Ankara, revised and actualized in 2010. Coming from a wide range of disciplines they had studied before, very rarely media or cultural studies, these students brought in their various viewpoints and methods, and tried to integrate their observations and understandings in a seminar related to cinema and new media to discuss and sometimes just to describe the influences of digital media technologies for themselves and their colleagues. Starting from the premise that digital technology redefines our moving image culture, the authors reflect in their essays various kind of approaches and methods, experiences and practices, descriptive, critical and interdisciplinary.

Contributors: Pelin Aytemiz, Bestem Büyüm, I. Alev Degim, Bilge Demirtas, Fulya Ertem, Deniz Hasirci, Cagri Baris Kasap, Zeynep Kocer, Rifat Süha Kocoglu, Leyla Önal, Ufuk Önen, Didem Özkul, Segah Sak, Ayda Sevin, Umut Sumnu, Andreas Treske and Funda Senova Tunali.

Theory on Demand is a series of the Institute of Network Cultures that has derived its name from Print on Demand, a process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received. Print on Demand publishers are for example; Lulu, Blurb, and OpenMute.
From all the editions in the Theory on Demand series you can download a free pdf of the publication or decide to order the publication with one of the previously mentioned printing services.

More information about other issues: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/theory-on-demand/

Josephine Bosma's, Nettitudes
, Let's Talk Net Art will be launched 14th of April at De Balie in Amsterdam at 20:30 hrs.

Supperted by Fonds BKVB and NAiPublishers

Design: Studio Léon & Loes, Paperback, 272 pages, 14 x 21 cm
, English edition, ISBN 978-90-5662-800-0, € 23.50. In association with the NAi Publsihers, available from April 2011

Sarah Cook and Bart Rutten are known for their thoughtful reflections on the role of new media in contemporary art. Both will comment on Nettitudes from their expertise as curator and/or conservator, and they will place the work of Josephine Bosma in a broader perspective.

About the book: During the 1990s, net art burst onto the scene as a radical reflection on the role of technology in contemporary art. In Nettitudes, Dutch art critic Josephine Bosma catalogues the tumultuous history of art as it became situated in the material dimensions of the Internet, from the spectacular interventions of the first decade to today’s dispersed practices, including online acoustics, poetry and archiving.
Never the darling of the media art institutions and ignored by many curators and critics since its emergence, net art still persists as a ‘non-movement’, residing in the cracks of contemporary media culture. Nettitudes provides an analytical foundation and an insider’s view on net art’s many expressions as it grapples with the aesthetic, conceptual and social issues of our times.
About the author: Josephine Bosma is an Amsterdam-based journalist and critic who has commented on the fields of art and new media since 1993. One of the first to probe into and engage with the domain of net art, her pioneering work is published internationally in books, periodicals and catalogues.

Door: Henk Verbooy

www.ikmagazine.nl

Zonder cloud computing en social media zou Het Nieuwe Werken (HNW) niet of nauwelijks mogelijk zijn. Maar moeten we er blij mee zijn? Gewapend met die stelling en die vraag ging IK (Intellectueel Kapitaal) naar de Hogeschool van Amsterdam voor een interview met mediatheoreticus, netcriticus annex activist Geert Lovink.

Zonder internet zou onze maatschappij er anders uitzien. Beter? Slechter? Wie zal het zeggen. Maar zonder twijfel anders. Het Nieuwe Werken (HNW) is zo’n verandering. Maar HNW is nog niet uitontwikkeld, het bevindt zich nog in het hype-stadium; wat dat betreft is het nog te vroeg onze zegeningen te tellen. Kritisch blijven kijken is dus de boodschap. Vooral naar cloud computing, want daarmee geven we heel veel uit handen. Te veel?
Ik ben geen marxist maar ik ben wel erg verwant aan het techno-determinisme. Zonder cloud computing en social media zou HNW dan misschien niet mogelijk zijn geweest, maar belangrijker is de laag eronder: de overgang van telefoonnetwerk via breedband naar glasvezel plus mobiele infrastructuur. Dáár ligt de basis. Zonder die infrastructuur zou HNW niet kunnen bestaan. In de laag erboven, waar we cloud computing en social media vinden, hebben we keuzes waarover we kunnen discussiëren. In de laag eronder is niet zo heel veel te kiezen, behalve welke provider je neemt, wat voor pakket.

Download hier het volledige artikel Internet als stofzuiger

A lecture by Geert Lovink about the Aesthetics and Politics of Online Video at the Universitatea Nationala de Arte Bucuresti (Romania) on Thursday the 21st of March, 17.00.

The UNA gallery, Street no. 10 Budisteanu General.

Check for more information:

http://unagaleria.blogspot.com/2011/03/geert-lovink-aesthetics-and-politics-of.html