The conference Follow the Money took place on January 14, 2010 in De Balie in Amsterdam. New media professional and MA student at the UvA Margarida Fonseca chose to visualize this event on datavisualization:

When I went to Picnic this year here in Amsterdam, they had a huge screen showing all the tweets people were posting about the conference and one presenter even mentioned something like: “Wow, there is a lot of conversation going on about Picnic over the Internet, even more that it’s actually going here”. That got me curious and prompt me to follow “Follow the money” conference from another angle, the angle of who’s watching and that has obviously something to say. The attendee becomes also a broadcaster.

Margarida Fonseca is currently a Project Manager working mostly on Web related projects: websites, intranets, web advertising and usability projects at a Portuguese Telecom Company. This year, she decided to take a year off work to learn new approaches and to gain insights, and that’s why she moved to Amsterdam to study new media at the UvA. Recently, Margarida became more and more interested in information visualization.

Download Margarida’s report (as a PDF) that doubles as a datavisualization of the Follow the Money event (on Datavisualisation).

Also, read a short summary of the conference by CPOV research intern Juliana Brunello.

On the 19th of February, 2010, the INC launched two new online projects: the Theory on Demand Publication series and Geert Lovink’s online radio archive. The Theory on Demand series, produced by Margreet Riphagen and designed by Katja van Stiphout, is a print-on-demand publication series that kicks of with four books. After an introduction by Geert Lovink, editor of the series, authors Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel were present to talk about their book on (the abolition of) copyright. For more information, ordering and downloading the books, please visit: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/theoryondemand/

The second festive event was the launch of Geert’s audio archive. He explained how in the activist movement of the 80s, a lot was considered elitist, and so was theory. The Bilwet Agentur was launched as a place for theory, not to explain it to a broader public, but to let it flourish. In that spirit, Geert produced 200 hours of interviews with theorists from his own generation, most of which are in Dutch, some in German, others in English. Below please find Geert’s introduction to this inspiring collection (in Dutch). Listen to the audio files on: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/bilwet/
For more information about Bilwet please visit: http://www.thing.desk.nl/bilwet/

Welkom bij het audio archief (1987-2000)
Introductie door Geert Lovink

In de zomer van 2009 heb ik een bananendoos met audiocassettes tevoorschijn getoverd uit de berging en is Margreet (Riphagen) van het INC, met hulp van anderen, begonnen met het digitaliseren van het materiaal. Beetje bij beetje wordt dit materiaal opgeladen naar archive.org tot het archief van ongeveer 200 banden à 1 uur compleet is.

Het archief bestaat uit een aantal categorieën:
1. Het grootste gedeelte, ongeveer 120 programma’s, bestaat uit een uur durende theorie vertelsessies, de Bilwet Portrettengalerij zoals die werd uitgezonden van 1987 tot 1993 op Radio 100 en Radio Patapoe (Amsterdam) en Radio Rataplan (Nijmegen). Het zijn geen interviews in de zin van vragen en antwoorden. De bedoeling was om een ruimte te creëren voor compromisloze theorie in de vorm van verhalen. Veel van de programma’s hebben een geschiedenis achtergrond met een nadruk op het 18e- tot 20e-eeuwse Westerse denken. Natuurlijk volgde ik mijn eigen belangstelling en vandaar dat er een zekere nadruk ligt op Duitse geschiedenis, het fascisme en de periode rond de Tweede Wereldoorlog.

Dit is de post-bewegingsfase, de periode van pril postmodernisme en opleving van Theorie in het algemeen–zelfs in het kille en door crisis geplaagde Nederland. Ook toen al bestond een brede opvatting van theorie als een rijke praktijk van oneigentijdse ideeënvorming. Voor de Bilwet Portrettengalerij hoefde niets uitgelegd te worden aan het brede publiek. Het was ‘extramuraal denken’, aan gene zijde van de universiteit, ook al hadden sommigen wel een bepaalde relatie tot de academie. Het ging om het ‘hekken zitten’ zoals Hans-Peter Duerr het ooit noemde: met een been aan de rationele, formele kant van de filosofie en het andere been aan zijde van het wilde denken, de verbeelding en de droomwereld. De keuze voor de personen en onderwerpen kwam voort uit mijn milieu uit die tijd: post-weekblad Bluf!, Uitgeverij Ravijn, de redactieraad van de uitgeverij SUA, het jaarboek Arcade, de redactie van het tijdschrift Mediamatic en de underground scene van de vrije radio’s zelf. Toch ging het niet om een politiek-correcte radicale theorie. Mijn radio was bedoeld als een positieve bijdrage aan het openen van de vastgelopen, introverte activistentaal en zocht de grenzen op van het ‘bewust irrelevante’ in vergelijking met de rigide mix van cultureel elitisme en populisme, toen al, in de officiële Nederlandse media. In biografische zin is dit voor mij een periode van freischwebende Intelligenz, professionele werkloosheid, post-kraakbeweging, in de overgang van theorie in de brede zin naar een speficieke, historisch georiënteerde (Duitse) mediatheorie.

2. Door mijn betrokkenheid bij Berlijn, Duitsland en Oost-Europa had ‘1989′ en de val van de Muur een belangrijke invloed op mijn radio activiteiten. Vanaf herfst 1990 verhuisde ik voor een tweede keer naar Berlijn en bracht ik steeds meer tijd door in Hongarije en Roemenie. Tegelijkertijd bezocht ik Californië, India en Japan voor de eerste keer. Het begon vanaf 1990 moeilijker te worden om een wekelijkse uitzending te produceren voor de Portrettengalerij. In de winter van 90/91 nam ik een serie persoonlijke radioverslagen op vanuit Berlijn, geheten Germanofobisch Programma. Ook deed ik verslag uit Boekarest en Calcutta. Ook de oorlog in Joegoslavië ging een rol spelen (92).

3. Voor mijn werk als redacteur van Mediamatic, en het verschijnen van het boek Bilwet- Media Archief (begin 1992) kwam ik steeds vaker in contact met collega mediatheoretici. Dit hield ook verband met de aanschaf van een computer (in 1987), een modem (in 1990) en mijn groeiende betrokkenheid bij computer netwerken en cybercultuur. Dit zijn de hoogtijdagen van multimedia, cyberspace en virtual reality. De onderwerpen verschuiven naar het maken van interviews die ik niet alleen uitzond maar ook ging uittypen. Vanaf midden 1993 was ik niet langer bij de sociale dienst en kon als ‘zelfstandige mediatheoreticus’ radio bijdrages maken voor VPRO radio, in nauwe samenwerking met Bart Schut. Dit viel samen met de mijn eerste internet account bij Hacktic (later xs4all), en de oprichting van de Digitale Stad, Desk.nl en nettime. De rest is geschiedenis, zoals men wel zegt. De zaak kwam in een versnelling terecht. Mijn radioactiviteiten gaan steeds meer in het teken staan van internet, tactische media (N5M) en nieuwe media (kunst). Deze fase culmineert waarschijnlijk in het grote interview-radio archief dat ik maakte tijdens de Documenta X in Kassel tijdens het Hybrid Workspace project. De interviews uit deze periode zijn bijeengebracht in mijn boek Uncanny Networks (MIT Press, 2002). Eind jaren 90 verbleef ik steeds minder in Amsterdam, stopte met bijdrages te maken voor de VPRO en Radio Patapoe, reisde steeds meer in Azie en verhuisde uiteindelijk naar Australie. De laatste interviews, opgenomen op cassette, dateren uit 2000.

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…

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/

On December 4, the INC organized the Urban Screens conference, in Trouw Amsterdam. Thanks to all the speakers and participants for their great contributions to this event! The videos will be online soon, and the conference bloggers Liliana Bounegru and Chris Castiglione have already put up all their reports, see all links below.

Reports Session 1: Urban Screens as Architecture
Matthijs ten Berge, Illuminate (NL)
Mettina Veenstra, Novay Research (NL)
Paul Klotz, Led-art (NL)

Reports Session 2: The Mobile Screen

Martijn de Waal, The Mobile City (NL)
Nanna Verhoeff, Utrecht University (NL) 

Annet Dekker, Goldsmiths and Virtueel Platform (NL)

Auke Touwslager (NL) & Ursula Lavrencic (Slovenia), Cell Phone Disco

Reports Session 3: The Mediatized City

Theodore Watson (UK/NL) – Graffiti Research Lab

Juha Van ‘t Zelfde, VURB.eu (NL)

Gijs Gootjes, MediaLAB Amsterdam (NL)
Nanette Hoogslag, Visual Foreign Correspondents (NL)

Report Book launch: Urban Screens Reader

Introduction to the Reader by Sabine Niederer

On the fourth of December, Trouw Amsterdam hosts the Urban Screens 09 seminar, about the City as Interface, or: from urban screens to media architecture in the city. At 1 pm, the Urban Screens Reader will arrive at the venue, which will be launched at 3.45 pm.

Follow us on Twitter: #urbanscreens, and Flickr (tag: urbanscreens). A report will be available on this blog soon.
See you at Trouw!

More information is online at www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens/09/

At the INC, everyone is busy working on the upcoming Winter Camp event. This event is dedicated to supporting networks that need to gather in real life, to work together, conspire, discuss and make the necessary steps forward. When a network settles down, and is suddenly not so new anymore, it can be quite a challenge to maintain the level of initial activity. The Institute of Network Cultures invited twelve networks to join Winter Camp, an event that merges a workspace for networks, an exploration of how networks work, and a meet-up for creative collaborators all over the world. We are looking forward to meeting all the participating networks on March 3, 2009. Non-participants can benefit from the documentation, for we have a meta group of bloggers, video interviewers and researchers keeping you posted. Winter Camp website: www.networkcultures.org/wintercamp
Here’s a little taste of the design, made by Lava Graphic Design: a combination of watercolor and ASCII text.

Interactive applications, viral marketing concepts, online communities, and more!
The Golden Dot is a yearly showcase and award ceremony for excellent student projects from the Institute for Interactive Media at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. This year, the Golden Dot will take place at Hotel Arena in Amsterdam, on 10 June 2008. In the afternoon, fourteen projects will be pitched before an official jury. That evening, the award ceremony will take place, hosted by Dennis Weening, Mtv Europe.

Golden Dot Awards 2008
Location: Hotel Arena
Language: Dutch(!)
15:00 Doors Open
15:00 Start
16:00 – 17:00 Project Presentations part 1
17:15 – 18:15 Presentations part 2
18:15 – 20:00 BREAK! Visit the exhibition of student graduation projects, join the Wii Guitar contest, and have some food (meals available for € 5,00).
20:00 – 21:00 Golden Dots 2008 Award Ceremony, hosted by Dennis Weening, Mtv
21:00 – 01:00 Party
More information: www.goldendotawards.nl.

Report of “Hello Creative World”, 24 April 2008. By Marije van Eck

The website for “Hello Creative World”, a conference in entrepreneurship in arts and creative education, informed me this event would “show a diversity of interactive tours, challenging climbs, relax cabins, physical training, exciting landscapes, and plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge and experience with a wide variety of Art Schools in Europe”. So, all prepared for an expedition, I arrived at the Dutch Design Center in Utrecht, a former furniture factory. Red and yellow ribbon led me to the Zagerij, where I was invited by the crew into a conference setting, beautifully decorated by artwork hanging from the ceiling. My visitor’s badge, very appropriate, was a Swiss army knife. I was very curious what this day had in store, because my background is not in arts. My drawing has never exceeded that of a ten year-old, and I would not consider myself very creative. I do have an interest in arts and education, and looked forward to hearing different voices and learning new things.

“Hello Creative World” was the result of the project ECCE (Economic Clusters of Cultural Enterprise), which aims to encourage the development of creative SMEs in various regions in Europe. The program started with a screening of the animation “A Fantastic Piano Lesson” by Ton van Rijswijk, which is – fortunately I might say – available on YouTube. A welcome speech by followed, in which the importance and exceptionality of the Faculty of Arts and Economics was explained by Derk Blijleven, dean of this faculty. Peter de Haan of Vrede van Utrecht, which provided funding for the event, explained that arts and culture have always been very important for the city, and they aspire to make Utrecht Cultural Capital of Europe, in 2018.

Keynote Speeches
First of two Keynote speakers, was Anamaria Willis, CEO of CIDA (Creative Industries Development Agency) in the UK. Her speech was perfectly suitable for this event, because her theatrical appearance and enthusiasm were very infectious. A woman with a background in theatre, Willis was all about “making things happen, profitably”. Through anecdotes of her personal success, she emphasized that the key to success and profit in the creative industries is belief. Belief in oneself, and in what one is doing. Teachers at art schools should give their students confidence, courage, to go out into the world and start a gainful business.

Some students will think making money out of arts is wrong, or not important, but Anamaria Willis said that money is needed in order to be able to keep doing what you want to do. There will be many people telling art students they do not know anything about business, but students should be proud of their improvisation skills when it comes to business skills. Because creative people create markets, whereas other entrepreneurs will be successful if they leap into it quickly enough. Willis ended her speech listing quite a few attributes creative entrepreneurs (should) have, among which: integrity, conceptual thinking, networking (local and global), commercial aptitude, and optimism. Confidence, belief, faith in making the impossible possible, and knowing what they are talking about, can make art students successful business(wo)men.

The second keynote speech was provided by Jeroen van Mastrigt, from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) Faculty of Arts, Media and Technology. His presentation was about the game industry. This is more my field of knowledge. Not a game designer, but having studied games, many examples from his speech were familiar to me, where they puzzled quite some people in the audience. Van Mastright has a history in new media, and is the initiator of the game design program at the HKU. He said there are many things wrong with the game industry, because a lot of companies do not innovate. Also, even though a lot of bigger companies have entered the game industry, they follow a blockbuster logic and focus on making games as realistic as possible. The game designers on the other hand, are young, energetic and innovative, but instead they create what the publisher wants them to create.

Jeroen van Mastrigt emphasized the role education can have in innovating the game industry. Students work, with large companies such as Philips, on innovative games, they create pervasive games and through creating these products they learn many (entrepreneur) skills. Education and research are very valuable to students, and some games created at art school are even so successful, that the students graduate already being entrepreneurs. “Giving kids the opportunity to create games is like not only teaching them how to read, but also how to write”, is how Van Mastright’s described the importance of the game design program.

The Climbs: Two Workshops
After the keynote speeches, the visitors were all invited to choose a workshop to attend. Options for the ‘first climb’ were: “Reflection – Developing Curricula”, “T-Shirts and Suits: Creativity and Business”, “Alumni Development” and “Talent Development: The role of governmental bodies in talent development”. Since everything was new to me, I chose the workshop that appealed to me most and in another part of the Dutch Design Center, I attended the workshop “T-shirts and Suits”. This workshop was moderated by Hans van Dulken of the HKU, and featured a panel of three speakers: David Parrish, an advisor and trainer for creative businesses, and author of the book T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity, also freely available as a pdf; Aileen Gilhooly, opera singer and consultant, and Pierre Gueydier, of the faculty of the arts, languages and history at Université Catholique de l’Ouest in West France, responsible for students’ career development.

The workshop focused largely on the gap between creative people and business people. Making money is something that a lot of artists will consider ‘impure’. David Parrish tries to bridge this gap through his trainings and his book, which aims to make business theory accessible to many people. Learning about business will give creative enterprises more strength. Concern that arose, creative people will be forced into business molds, was done away with, because it became clear that the advisors, who have a background in the creative industry, always ask the creative people what is important to them, so it is not always about making as much money as possible. Pierre Gueydier spoke about a program at his university where product design students are facilitated in finding a steady job, because often creative designers are only hired on a temporary or freelance basis. The added value of a designer for a company was discussed, and a workshop participant mentioned that these people can help the company not only create beautiful products, but often also care for the environment and can help create sustainable products.

After lunch, I attended a second workshop. Available were: “Business Start-Ups at University”, “Work-Based Learning”, “Entrepreneurship: Art or Experience?”, “Research in Education” and “Internationalization of Art schools”. Because of my university background, in which I rarely create, but always research, I chose the ‘retreat in a mountain cabin’. A small group of people attended this workshop on education, hosted by Giep Hagoort, Professor of Art and Economics at HKU. He is the author of the book Art Management: Entrepreneural Style and chairman of the research group Art and Economics, currently engaging in research of cultural SMEs in Utrecht.

Giep Hagoort mentioned that research is not a hot topic at the HKU. I can understand that, because the HKU is not a research school. A workshop participant of the Willem de Kooning art academy in Rotterdam faced the same problem. Students are starting up their own creative businesses as part of the educational program, but no one is doing any research on how these businesses are developing, so she was interested in starting up a research group. Lack of research, by students and teachers, on the one hand, is a problem. The kind of research that needs to be done, is also an issue. Organizations that provide funding want to see numbers, while research in arts will not often provide statistical data. Funding in itself is a big issue as well. What kind of research can you do, who can you do it with, will funding be provided if the research is interdisciplinary? These issues I believe are very serious, but also very common in all fields of research, and it will take a lot more for them to be solved.

During lunch, I spoke briefly with Derk Blijleven, who spoke during the introduction of the event. After telling him about my interest in new media, and my research in online video, we spoke about YouTube, and he asked me if in my opinion a graduating art student could say that they did not want to associate with YouTube and therefore not publish their work on the platform. I was attempted to leave that decision to the student, but what Blijleven told me next was this conference in a nutshell: No, a student cannot ignore a platform like YouTube, because of its massive size and influence, because an art student is a marketer, and needs to be noticed, and needs to be aware of what people, the potential consumers of their art are doing. “A Fantastic Piano Lesson” was viewed 44,366 times on YouTube. Hopefully that will give the art student the courage to make their art work profitable.

This year, Impakt festival, an annual media art festival in Utrecht (NL) had a Web 2.0 theme: YourSpace.

“(…) what exactly are the quality properties of these new structures and how do they relate to existing social contexts? Are Hyves and MySpace about social networking or are they merely platforms for vain self-exposure? Is a blog a public diary or a valuable contribution to the social debate? And what is the meaning of a festival now that makers can reach their audience through YouTube in an increasingly simple manner?”
- fragment from the general festival introduction, by festival director Arjon Dunnewind

With a combination of events, screenings, programs around invited artists and by guest curators, and presence on various social networking sites, Impakt chose a slightly different approach than their usual set-up of screenings, exhibitions and talk shows. The whole idea of what a festival can be in times of what Impakt referred to as ‘Society 2.0′, was addressed at the opening debate: The Future of Festivals. Various curators and festival organizers debated if the Internet challenges the function of the festival, bringing people together and share interests, recommend creative products (with expert curators and festival programmers), etc.
The panel discussion, which took place on one of the hottest days in Utrecht ever, was moderated by Chris Keulemans, and included curators from the New York Underground Film Festival, which recently presented its final edition and will find a follow up in Migrating Forms, Submarine Channel, Tank.tv and Version Festival. The conclusion was that where the Internet is very important in community building and contextualizing your program (or even the heart of a program like tank.tv), the actual get-together is very important for people to start collaborating, exchanging ideas, and giving the network a boost. The advise to festivals was to also make sure that the festival is visible throughout town, instead of choosing an exclusive attitude of either obscurity or elitism. Use all the space you can get your hands on, and make sure you distribute your work for free or really cheap. In the end everybody will benefit from the exposure, according to Ed Marszewski from Version Festival.

Chris Keulemans, moderator of the afternoon, complimented the New York Underground Film Festival with actually ending their activities when they felt they had lost touch with the format of the festival. That’s a brave decision indeed. The future of festivals seems bright, as long as everybody knows what a festival is about: hanging out with interesting people and seeing new things. The panel was inspiring in the sense that all these (young!) people were very open to changes in the field, and even though everybody of course struggled with funding they just organize stuff anyway.

The opening night featured short presentations by all the curators of the festival programme, including a short statement and a screening of a film or fragment. Small selection: Former INC researcher Marije Janssen, who worked with us on The Art and Politics of Netporn and curated the C’LICK ME festival, was invited to make a program on online identity and sexuality titled Multiplicity of Desire. Migrating forms, the former New York Underground Film Festival curators, showed the bizarre film Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me, by Ryan Trecartin (USA 2006, 7:00), from their YourSpace screenings program You Are What You Eat that touched topics such as branding and recommendation systems. Klaas Kuitenbrouwer introduced the festival edition of the Sunday School (’Zondagsschool), titled PetSpace (which i worked on a one of the curators), about representations of animals in new media, and the relations between man and animal (as seen from the animal’s perspective).

Worth mentioning was the graphic design by Lava, as well as the on-site rating system Gifted, created by NetNiet which was fun. Every visitor was given a badge with an icon (that looked a bit like a space invader) and a number. After installing an application on your mobile phone, or going to the website, it was possible to rate visitors according to the question of the day. The rating had mild real-life consequences. A low-rating could for instance mean that you would not get a piece of rye bread with your coffee, instead of a cookie.

Check the Impakt leaders by Lava on YouTube: http://nl.youtube.com/user/ImpaktFestival