INC newsletter December 2010

The Institute of Network Cultures wishes you a merry Christmas and a great 2011! We are closed from the 24th of December till the 3rd of January.

In this newsletter you can read more about:

Upcoming conferences:

‘Video Vortex #6’ Conference | 11-12 March 2011, Amsterdam
‘What is a Book?’ Conference | 20-21 May 2011, The Hague and Amsterdam

Articles:

Twelve theses on WikiLeaks by Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens)
Blog postings and video documentation of the ‘Economies of Open Content’ Conference

Recent Publications:

Dmytri Kleiner, Telekommunist Manifesto
Vito Campanelli, Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society
Theory on Demand series

Forthcoming publications early 2011:

Josephine Bosma, Nettitudes: On a journey through net art
2nd Video Vortex Reader

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Video Vortex Conference in A’dam | 11-12 March ‘2011

On the 11th and 12th of March 2011 a next conference about Video Vortex will be organized in TrouwAmsterdam. Conference themes are: Online Video Aesthetics; It’s not a Dead Collection, it’s a Dynamic Database; Country Reports; Platforms, Standards and the Trouble with Translation; Online Video as a Political Tool; and Online Video Art.

The following speakers have confirmed their participation: Natalie Bookchin, Andrew Clay, Florian Cramer, Sandra Fouconnier, Sam Gregory, Nuraini Juliastuti, Koen Leurs, Florian Schneider, Teague Schneiter, Patrícia Dias da Silva, Ferdiansyah Thajib en Holmes Wilson.

On Thursday the 10th of March, the Institute for Sound and Vision (in collaboration with INC and NIMk) organizes two workshops at NIMk. These workshops offer participants the opportunity to gather hands-on experience with online video. Participants can work in different creative workshops and play with a range of online video tools and technologies. Facilitated by experts, the topics are: remixe and re-use of open video collections, open source webcasting and participatory video production. On Saturday evening the 12th of March, performances and video projections will take place during an evening program.

More information: https://networkcultures.org/videovortex/6amsterdam

Tickets for the conference: https://networkcultures.org/videovortex/6amsterdam/info/tickets

This conference is taken place within the SIA-RAAK Publiek program Culture Vortex. Culture Vortex is an innovation program to encourage public participation in online cultural collections.

Consortium Partners: University of Amsterdam, MediaLAB Amsterdam, Institute for Sound and Vision, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Virtual Platform, VPRO, Amsterdam City Archive, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, IDFA, and the International Urban Screens Association.

More information: 
http://networkculture.org/culturevortex

Sponsors: Foundation Innovation Alliance, University of Amsterdam, University of Applied Science, Domain Media Creation and Communication, and Mondriaan Foundation.

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‘What is a Book?’ Conference | May 2011

“What is a Book” is an international, three-day event containing a symposium with panel discussions and presentations, workshops, exhibitions, and a book launch that will take place in Den Haag and Amsterdam 19 – 21 May 2011 to answer the fundamental question, ‘what is a book today?’ This event, the largest of its scope in the Netherlands to date, aims to build discussion around the future of e-publishing, literacy and book design that brings together a diverse spectrum of stakeholders from around the world: theorists, publishers, writers, librarians, artists, and software and hardware developers.

The event is organized by Electronic Publishing and Interactive Media, in the kenniscentrum CREATE-IT at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Domain MCI, in cooperation with Book and Digital Studies at the University of Leiden.  Project partners: Koninklijke Bibliotheek The Hague (KB), Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (OBA), Nederlands Uitgeversverbond (NUV), Meermanno Museum, Institute of Network Cultures (CREATE IT, HvA DMCI), Letterkundig Museum and the Graphic Design Museum (Breda).

More information: http://www.e-boekenstad.nl/

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12 theses on Wikileaks by Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

On 30 August 2010, Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens wrote their ‘Ten Theses on Wikileaks’, a technological and organizational reading of the Wikileaks initiative, that had published the ‘collateral murder’ video, the Iraqi and subsequently Afghan War Logs. The piece was posted on nettime, the INC website and a few other places, there were some responses but not much happened. This all changed late November when Wikileaks started to release United States diplomatic cables, so-called Cablegate, collaborating with The Guardian, Der Spiegel and a few other news media. Lovink and Riemens rewrote the article and added two theses and published it on December 7th, first in English on Eurozine and Nettime, followed by a German translation for the Frankfurter Rundschau and a Suhrkamp anthology, a Dutch version in NRC-Handelsblad and the Flemish newspaper De Morgen and Web translations in Italian, Spanish and French. This time the piece really resonated with the audience, in part because it was not about the future of journalism or the celebrity cultus around WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Read the twelve theses on Geert’s blog:

https://networkcultures.org/geert/2010/12/07/twelve-theses-on-wikileaks-with-patrice-riemens/

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Blog postings and video documentation of the ‘Economies of Open Content’ Conference

The Economies of Open Content conference critically examined the economics of access to and preservation of on-line public domain and open access cultural resources, also known as the digital commons.

You can find all conference-related blog postings here:

http://ecommons.tuxic.nl/

The video documentation of the presentations is available here:

https://networkcultures.org/ecommons/

This conference was organized by: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, De Balie, Knowlegdeland, University of Amsterdam, New Media department, and Institute of Network Cultures. Sponsors: Mondriaan Foundation, Foundation Democracy and Media, Images for the Future and Virtual Platform.

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Dmytri Kleiner, Telekommunist Manifesto

In the age of international telecommunications, global migration and the emergence of the information economy, how can class conflict and property be understood? Drawing from political economy and concepts related to intellectual property, The Telekommunist Manifesto is a key contribution to commons-based, collaborative and shared forms of cultural production and economic distribution.
Proposing ‘venture communism’ as a new model for workers’ self-organization, Kleiner spins Marx and Engels’ seminal Manifesto of the Communist Party into the age of the internet. As a peer-to-peer model, venture communism allocates capital that is critically needed to accomplish what capitalism cannot: the ongoing proliferation of free culture and free networks.
In developing the concept of venture communism, Kleiner provides a critique of copyright regimes, and current liberal views of free software and free culture, which seek to trap culture within capitalism. Kleiner proposes copyfarleft, and provides a usable model of a Peer Production License.
Encouraging hackers and artists to embrace the revolutionary potential of the internet for a truly free society, The Telekommunist Manifesto is a political-conceptual call to arms in the fight against capitalism.
Dmytri Kleiner is a software developer working on projects that investigate the political economy of the internet, and the ideal of workers’ self-organization of production as a form of class struggle. Born in the USSR, Dmytri grew up in Toronto and now lives in Berlin. He is a founder of the Telekommunisten Collective, which provides internet and telephone services, as well as undertakes artistic projects that explore the way communications technologies have social relations embedded within them, such as deadSwap (2009) and Thimbl (2010).
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/the-telekommunist/

This publication was supported by the Foundation of Democracy and Media.

Previously published Network Notebooks:
– Rob van Kranenburg, The Internet of Things: A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID, Network Notebooks 02, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007. ISBN: 978-90-78146-06-3.
– Rosalind Gill, Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web, Network Notebooks 01, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007. ISBN: 978-90-78146-02-5.
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Vito Campanelli, Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society

Studies in Network Cultures #4
Vito Campanelli, Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society
(Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: INC Hogeschool van Amsterdam)

We live in a world of rapidly evolving digital networks, but within the domain of media theory, which studies the influence of these cultural forms, the implications of aesthetical philosophy have been sorely neglected. Vito Campanelli explores network forms through the prism of aesthetics and thus presents an open invitation to transcend the inherent limitations of the current debate about digital culture. The web is the medium that stands between the new media and society and, more than any other, is stimulating the worldwide dissemination of ideas and behaviour, framing aesthetic forms and moulding contemporary culture and society. Campanelli observes a few important phenomena of today, such as social networks, peer-to-peer networks and ‘remix culture’, and reduces them to their historical premises, thus laying the foundations for an organic aesthetic theory of digital media.

Vito Campanelli is a new media theorist and lectures on the theory and technology of mass communication at the University of Naples – L’Orientale. His essays about media art are regularly published in international periodicals such as Neural. He works as a freelance curator and as a promoter of events in the domain of digital culture. He was also co-founder of the non-profit organization MAO – Media & Arts Office.

Earlier editions in the series Studies in Network Cultures:
Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute for Network Cultures, 2006).
Eric Kluitenberg, Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute for Network Cultures, 2008).
Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009).

More information:
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/
http://www.naipublishers.com

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Theory on Demand series

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.

Recently three books have been published in this series:
Pit Schultz & Geert Lovink, Jugendjahre der  Netzkritik: Essays zu Web 1.0
This study examines the dynamics of critical Internet culture after the medium opened to a broader audience in the mid 1990s. It is Geert Lovink’s PhD thesis, submitted late 2002, written in between his two books on the same topic: Dark Fiber (2002) and My First Recession (2003). Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2010. ISBN 978-90-816021-4-3.

More info and pdf:
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-02-jugendjahre-der-netzkritik/

Nikos Papastergladis, Spatial Aesthetics, Art, Place and the Everyday
This book examines the most recent shifts in contemporary art practice. By working with artists and closely observing the way in which they relate to urban space and engage other people, locally and globally, Nikos Papastergiadis provides a critical account of the transformation of art and public culture. He shows art has sought to democratise the big issues of our time and utilize new information technologies.
Spatial Aesthetics will help artists, curators and cultural workers think about the ways they intervene in public life. Challenging recent declarations in the art world that theory is obsolete, it seeks to show how art uses ideas, and how everyone can be involved in the ideas of politics and art. ISBN: 978-90-816021-3-6.

More info and pdf:
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-05-spatial-aestheticsart-place-and-the-everyday/

Tom Apperley, Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global
Global gaming networks are heterogenous collectives of localized practices, not unified commercial products. Shifting the analysis of digital games to local specificities that build and perform the global and general, Gaming Rhythms employs ethnographic work conducted in Venezuela and Australia to account for the material experiences of actual game players. This book explores the materiality of digital play across diverse locations and argues that the dynamic relation between the everyday life of the player and the experience of digital game play can only be understood by examining play-practices in their specific situations. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2010. ISBN: 978-90-816021-1-2.

More info and pdf:
https://networkcultures.org/theoryondemand/titles/no-06-gaming-rhythms-play-and-counterplay-from-the-situated-to-the-global/

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Josephine Bosma, Nettitudes: On a journey through net art

Studies in Network Cultures #5
Josephine Bosma, Nettitudes: On a journey through net art
(Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: INC Hogeschool van Amsterdam, forthcoming 2011)

Nettitudes consists of highly accessible and theoretical reflections on art in the context of new technologies, specifically Internet cultures. Net art works are mostly interdisciplinary and hard to pin down as one specific artistic discipline. The dramaturg, filmmaker, sculptor, musician, painter, photographer, writer, poet, and danser; they all escape their label when making a net art work. This novel terrain of the arts demands new theoretical approaches and concepts, which can be found in ‘Nettitudes’ by art critic Josephine Bosma.
Josephine Bosma has been active as a journalist and critic in the field of art and new media since 1993. One of the first people to probe into the domain of net art, her pioneering work has been published internationally in books, periodicals and catalogues.

More information:
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/
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Second Video Vortex Reader

Following the success of the first Video Vortex Reader, The Institute of Network Cultures will launch the second Video Vortex reader during the Video Vortex conference, to be held on the 11th and 12th of March 2011. It’s a publication dedicated to examining significant issues that are surfacing around the production and distribution of online video content.

The first reader, Video Vortex Reader: Responses to Youtube, is available as a free pdf on the INC website: https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/videovortex/

The content table of the publication will be published online at the beginning of January 2011 on the blog: https://networkcultures.org/videovortex/vv-reader

More information:
https://networkcultures.org/videovortex

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Overview INC Publications
https://networkcultures.org/publications/overview/

Institute of Network Cultures Media Archive
https://networkcultures.org/archive/

Geert Lovink’s Net critique blog
https://networkcultures.org/geert/

Institute of Network Cultures
Amsterdam New Media Research Centre
https://www.networkcultures.org

Institute of Network Cultures Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/networkcultures

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