posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

the academic dance

In response to yet another call for papers at an academic conference on the fibreculture list (this, unsent as I thought it too in-your-face).

fibrecultists:

I’m making the contrary assumption that fibrecult is not merely an announcement list these days … I could be wrong, but …

3D printed goods, cryptocurrencies, digital sharing – just some of the disruptive online practices and technologies that are transforming and reshaping our economy. These innovative technologies have impacted the market, enabling new business models, evolving market conditions and transforming economic and social landscapes. However, the commodification and commercial adoption of these disruptive technologies has also raised concerns and questions in terms of access, control and sustainability. How can we develop these practices to not only support a digital commons, but also to support more equitable and sustainable worlds?

The three items at the beginning of the paragraph above could very well be replaced by practically any ‘communications/fill-in-the-blank-here’ technology of the last 150 years. A materialist approach to technology, one that is hypnotized by each new and glittering object, its form, even its ‘potential’, seems never to learn any principled lessons on what is going on through technological ‘innovation’ and how to deal with it across the techno-social system. It’s as though there is a constant expression of surprise on the face of critical academic thinkers, “Oh look at this new toy coming from the ‘clouds’ today.” I can’t count the number of conference announcements from the academic-cultural-industrial complex of the last 20 years that read the same as this one, with only the names of the currently in-vogue technologies changed.

If there are no readily available and powerful answers *already in place* and *operational as a lived practice* for the issues and questions suggested by the rest of the paragraph, then there is absolutely no hope that an academic discourse will have any effect on the processes being commented upon. The gathering becomes simply another career notch of sessions, papers, panel discussions, talks, after-parties, meals, meet-n-greets, and, literally, insider trading in the currencies of academic ‘success’ (or survival, in the contemporary world of add-junk-tified edutainment). I understand there is always the need to propagate good ideas, and there are younger people who have to hash these things out in the face of a lack of historical perspective in their education, but it begins to resemble a treadmill that in no way serves to solve the problems.

I have no issues with the actual empowered coming-together of people, regardless of the reason, but it seems there is an inexorable evolution of academia towards a point where it is simply bankrupt of ideas *and lived practices* to deal with the current world. Where are the TAZs supporting change?

posted
  • author: Eric Kluitenberg
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility

The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.

The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

innovation

Fundamental innovations almost always seem to come from outside the established market leaders, who suffer ‘path dependency.’ Established firms are usually too committed to a particular conception of what their product is. This commitment is embedded in its manufacturing process and endemic in the thinking of its managers. When a major innovation appears, a leading firm understands the technology, but remains committed to its product and its production system.

Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, Nye, David E., MIT Press, Boston, 2006.

Technology, at base, may be defined as a means or pathway to gather and concentrate the (productive) energies of individuals in a social grouping. The difference between inventions lost in the detritus of history and those that become widely integrated in a social system is not necessarily related to the efficiency of the technology itself. The primary difference lies in the efficiency with which the broader social system uses the technological pathway as an effective means of tapping into the individual energies of the population. The broader social system is usually controlled by a subset of people, elites, who impose the pathway on the whole (and who tap off a surplus of energy from the pathway). It is controlled by those who define the pathway of flow. Set pathways have come into being to benefit those who are accessing the concentrated powers they provide. When a pathway is set, it has a built-in inertia which more-or-less resists alteration. This inertia is a mapping of a (counter-(r)evolutionary) resistance of human systems to change. The resistance comes from the relationship of energy flow that the pathway is defining. Individuals participating in either giving and receiving energy are reluctant to change the architecture of that relationship: it is a symbiotic relationship. There can be no receivers without those willing to give their life-energy and attentions to the receivers. Change comes hard. Innovation, the tendency to seek (newer and more) optimal pathways, is always negatively affected by this resistance to some degree. A(ny) technological pathway, once fixed upon, is adapted to and becomes the norm. (The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster is a nice fictional sketch of this from 1900.)

Nye addresses many other topics aside from innovation, so I’ll be picking through his book in the next days.

posted

The Military

(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)

The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS (techno-social system) and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.

A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified (and directed) energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
more “The Military”

posted

thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

Dialogues, Networks, and Collaboration — Much of my creative practice, research, and indeed, presence is built on the activation of robust and sustained dialogues with a wide range of Others both remote and local. These dialogues form a network. The most powerful situation I can imagine for creative research and production is an open human network. I am keen to engage on the ground with the Australian, Sydney-based, and UTS creative community. I am familiar with the milieu, having been in Sydney for six weeks in 2006 as a visiting artist at COFA, and I very much look forward to being there again. I have an extensive personal/professional network of Antipodal creatives which dates back to the early 1990s that I will be pleased to activate on a more face-to-face basis.

Distributed Performance — My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years is centered around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of amplified digital networks as the locus for creative action. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, dance, sonic, and other expressive arts occurring in or augmented by collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence — and how that human presence is directly and indirectly affected by any/all technologies that filter and attenuate that presence: how human expression across a network system is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.
more “thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

metrics

responding to Roger Malina on metrics on the New-Media-Curating list:

sotto voce: A metric is a standard, and a standard is the fundamental building-block of a (our) techno-social system. We cannot have a techno-social system without standards, so the question becomes how many, how expansive, and how standard? Whenever standards are applied to a system, the system decreases its degrees of freedom and complexity, and increases internal control-ability for the duration of that the system maintains and applies the standards (which corresponds to how long the system has had access the a surplus energy to maintain the order that is required to apply standards).

If we seek for a ‘global’ standard when we have only, say, a national standard, our system will be poorer in its potential for creative innovation. As standards are applied more and more widely across systems (thinking of the development of global standards (i.e., telephone plugs)) idiosyncrasy decreases and the opportunities within which we encounter the un-expected decreases: (oh, as techno-road-warrior I can plug my modem in where-ever I travel, that’s cool — to maintain my position in the techno-social system I need this ability!). one positive aspect, however, occurs when (fewer) standards of a more local sense are applied, there are more opportunities for interstitial (TAZ’s) to arise simply because there are more interstitial gaps within/between larger standardized systems. more “metrics”

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

current Capra

Lesson #1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson #2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson #3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson #4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes. — Fritjof Capra

posted
  • place: Lübeck, Germany

e-culture and good food

Over in Lübeck, meet miga and then head to lunch with Andreas at Nui which I remember from the teaching at ISNM before. Had to get some outline of what is happening to the slowly sinking Titanic and what is required from me when I do a short course on e-culture in the spring.

Content: This seminar will explore the entire global regime of the trans-disciplinary field called “e-culture” as an intersection of digital technologies and cultural practices. Using case-studies to find out what is working and what is not, we will examine the technologies that most affect this sector, the political and economic policies that form it, and the social systems where it finds its place. As one model for the engagement of “new media’ technologies and social systems, “e-culture,” along with the “Creative Industries,” are the scene for much innovation, research, hype, and media reportage. This seminar will hunt for some truth by examining specific situations, precedent, technological infrastructures, and current trends.

Key phrases include: infotainment; web 2.0; economics of attention; locative media; wearable computing; technology globalization; media research; reception, storage, and transmission of culture; creative industries; cultural patrimony; cultural computing; corporate culture; jobs?; non-governmental organizations (NGO’s); ubicomp (ubiquitous computing); e-government; society of spectacle; globalization/dislocation of culture; Ikea for the Art Market; European Union effects; Soros Centers; networking; creative action; Road Warriors; First or Second Life?; the Finnish Model; future scenarios; borders and cultural difference; collaborative presences; and so on.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

spiritual death

still reading too much of other people’s stuff. need to concentrate on producing rather than consuming.

To oppose these bad habits and the systems that embody them, as well as to suggest alternatives to them, is enough to get branded ‘anti-technology’ these days. Again and again, we are urged to celebrate the latest so-called ‘innovations’ regardless of the deranged commitments and disastrous consequences they often involve. What passes for leadership in our technoculture echoes the corruption of the Renaissance popes and foreshadows a new reformation. As Martin Luther King once observed, ‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.’ — Langdon Winner

searching the net, pleased to see that Langdon is still around, teaching at RPI or so.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

continuum of relation

taking Frieder’s thought-provoking commentary on my proposal draft and grinding through a thought process that in a infinitesimal way is becoming more precise and confident in dealing with the subject material of the thesis. this evening I synthesize the phrase continuum of relation to describe the continuous field of action and dynamic that constitutes our presence in the world. it is the continuum where technology is implemented (apparently) to increase the probability that understanding can be propagated across multiple human subjects, when, at the same time this altruistic goal is promoted, that exact technology injects uncertainty, a degree of attenuation, and a general increase in the complexity of the communicative act! uff! what to do? but I like the phrase continuum of relation — Google it, there are only 26 entries, and none of them in any way overlap in meaning at all. I find that comforting to be obscure. and, perusing the nettime archive, in a discussion with Felix and Geert, I read a 1999 Howard Rheingold article On Innovation and the Amateur Spirit where he quotes the daddy of the WWW:

The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was online, we could then use computers to help us analyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together. — Tim Berners-Lee

posted

The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

posted
  • place: Rösrath, Germany

fearlessness

the speed of religious innovation. words to wake up with from a sleep of a thousand dreams and groping around for the pathway. these two thoughts come to me: the despair I face is of my own making; and fearlessness is paramount. it is always this internal relation to the world, where change is framed as something accomplished by introspection, not in relation with the surrounding presence of spirit. although there should be no distinction between the internal spirit and the external spirit. they are One. but connection to that dynamic flow remains elusive and transitory in the confusing rush of noise that the social brings. (how this sounds an anti-social position, but this is not the case, merely to recognize the effect of social structures (as they enhance material survivability) on the individual.)

interstitial awareness, and Brakhage’s rise to the surface of my consciousness through meeting certain Others. the sheer animated viscerality of his expressions that so activated my fascination. the further individual creative expressions/projections can be stripped of the restrictions of abstracted and impressed social channeling, the closer the impulse comes to pure energy.

The light of power is waning. The eyes of individual subjectivity cannot adapt to mere holes in a mask, which are the eyes of those fog-bound in shared illusion. The individual’s point of view must prevail over false collective participation. In total self-possession, reach society with the tentacles of subjectivity and remake everything, starting with yourself. The reversal of perspective is what is positive in negativity, the fruit which will burst out of the old world’s bud. — Raoul Vaneigem

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

wireless hungry ghosts

nauseating quote about camera-phones:

“This is no longer about disposable cameras. We call it ‘disposable photography,'” said Ben Wood, a wireless analyst (editor: that is an analyst w/o wires), “There’s no such thing as a bad photo. The delete key takes care of the headless body or any other misfire. There’s no cost for making mistakes.” … “Everyone stages their own reality.” … USA Today

loss of memory, or the cost of memory transference from the body, lived, imprinted, to the external, re-presented. what is the cost? the archive is a playground for ghosts. like the hungry ghosts of the Japanese Obon tradition. belly distended, gnawing, grinding teeth loose in ratcheting jaw, yellow claw fingernails tearing at anything living. the prototypical consumer.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

teaching with technology

Teaching with technology conference. Concepts swimming at the popular surface of the sea. Little diving to the basal bentholithic ground. Why the ascendancy of the text? (and David Abram’s critique of written language as the initial wedge driven between lived/immersive experience in the sensual world and the new rational sentient be-ing.) Hearing things from the keynote speaker, intelligent, that I have dealt with and modeled in my teaching already. hmmmm. Stating the obvious. And keeping to the center. not comatose. (my presentation: Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity)

Deep in production states, the initial 2-hour DVD burned for the installation coming up in a couple weeks. First time in artifact production for public show since the installation at Deiglan in Akureyri in 2000. Tested the plasma screen today, some sizing glitches, but otherwise, it seems to look/sound good. Second iteration will happen this week, perhaps a third after that.

So little writing done here, reflections seem to be submerged by influx, hinted knowings (tongue on 9-volt battery, citrus), secretions of saliva. pressure of hearing, adsorbing.

Open source, middleware, centralization, privacy, (the idea of standards, or the principle behind, actually directly decreases possibilities of innovation!) so, when standards come from open source communities of use, vs a central corporate monolith, you get different results. mandated innovation … hah.

Technology, arts, media. ‘talk the talk,’ but where’s ‘walk the walk.’ The focus on a particular level of technology to implement in a teaching situation. There is no correlation between deployment of technology and the quality of the learning experience (period).

Paragraphs. delineating breaks of time. illustrating the discontinuous nature of re-creating, re-production.

lost the life of language, the usage that does not spark, no internal voice. where the internal voice spends breathless hours; questions itself.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Carillion article

for the record, as the university (of Colorado) no longer publishes nor maintains the archive of this magazine, this is the text of an article done by a CU J-School graduate student, Nicole Gordon.

Visiting artist John Hopkins explores relationship between art and technology

After twelve years of living and lecturing in Europe, digital artist John Hopkins is back in the United States. He’s no stranger to the University of Colorado at Boulder; in fact, he earned his master of fine arts degree from CU-Boulder in 1989. These days, however, Hopkins has returned to campus as a visiting artist rather than a student.

“I’ve always had a deep connection to the physical landscape of the West, and intellectually I find Europe stimulating,” Hopkins said. “I’ve attempted to have both, though in the end, physical location is not always important. What is of primary importance is surrounding oneself with humane and positive people — then anything is possible.”

Hopkins’ interest lies at the intersection of art and technology. He describes his work as “art that is not artifact-oriented, but delves into the unique communicative aspects of global networks.”

“John Hopkins has a long-standing commitment to the art network,” said Jim Johnson, interim chair of the Fine Arts Department. “He brings to the department a dedication to art as an ephemeral human process and his work in the digital community has been a natural outgrowth of that dedication. He has inspired numerous art students to pursue art in the real context of one-to-one communication as opposed to the conventional and isolated production of precious objects.”

Hopkins has been a professional artist since 1985. His career has taken him to Iceland, Finland, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, and Austria as a visiting artist or guest lecturer. His art has been recognized at the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria and he has works in numerous private and public collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City.

At CU-Boulder, Hopkins is teaching introductory and advanced digital art classes, as well as working on individual projects with students and doing international performances.

One of his most recent projects at CU-Boulder, in collaboration with students, is a live, online open-platform happening for creative expression and action called di>fusion. The project, which can be experienced at https://neoscenes.net/projects/difusion1/, simultaneously occupies global network spaces and local physical space with collaborative performance, sonic, music, disc- and video-jockeys, text, poetry-slam, and video events.

“I have done similar projects with students across Europe,” Hopkins said. “And indeed, projects like di>fusion are only partially geographically grounded. Much of the project happens in the space of networks, so there are participants and audiences in many locations.”

Hopkins studied geophysical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines as an undergraduate and worked as a geophysicist before pursuing his art career. He says that art and science aren’t so far apart.

“I worked with electromagnetic fields in geophysics, and I’m basically doing the same in art,” he said.

After receiving his art degree, Hopkins found that the European cultural scene suited his ambitions.

“During the decade of the 90s, while the United States was heavily involved in the dot.com bubble inflation and bursting, there were others in other locations who were looking more critically at technological innovation and the rise of global networks,” he said. “These critical views were often coming out of creative cultural research in Europe.”

Hopkins also noted that funding for arts and culture in Europe is much greater than in the United States.

“There have been many opportunities to get funding for creative projects that could never be realized in the U.S.,” he said. “Scandinavia is generally more advanced than the U.S. in terms of technological implementations society-wide, so naturally there were many interesting things happening on the cultural side related to technology.”

An experienced teacher, Hopkins says that he is committed to the dynamics of the learning environment as a critical and important facet of his work.

“I seek to create vital learning spaces — conceptual and physical zones where the exercise of free expression and spontaneous dialogue take place,” he said.

Examples of Hopkins’ work and more information about him can be accessed on his personal Web site at https://neoscenes.net.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Iceland Day

Iceland Day. when the Icelanders brave cold wet weather and mingle on the streets.

Sogpal Rimpoche reminds and reminds and reminds. leaving nothing unclear. language suggesting practice. the hints are everywhere, and always elusive. rabbits in the 20×40 foot grass yard, they are starving for the drought. and, at the same time, an expert reminds Westerners that the word drought is not applicable to a place technically defined as a desert. it’s always dry here, and to have a lawn is an alien fragment of bourgeoisie command-and-control of an environment that will win out eventually. the rabbits, gophers, deer, the occasional javelina all love to feast on green garden delicacies, imported gently from New England and Old. while young hopeless and having no future Palestinians rip self and others apart. shreds. what is the statistic? in 5 years there will be 600 million young Islamic males between 18-25? don’t quote me on that. think that’s what passed the eyes. somewhere in the fragmented media flow partaken of.

meanwhile, thumbing seven years of travelog nose at the new wave of bloggers. they seem to think that personal logs of life-notes are somehow a distinct innovation. telling stories from the road, from life, in networked spaces. at the same time, lamenting my own inability to innovate my own network space quicker. often speaking about network presence with students, but aside from the anomalous remote communications regime operating for the last 20-odd years, what is there?

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

~/Connected

massive busy-ness over the weekend with the ~/Connected conference at the Lasipalatsi. Tapio had asked me earlier if I could help out with activities on the ground, and although I was pretty busy anyway, I was around to help, then ended up being quite involved in the discussions, and even made a short public presentation at the end in Bio Rex, dealing with best-practice scenarios for education/learning situations. Polar Circuit was held up as that model in learning situations, along with the idea of open-platform, socially balanced situations.

/~Connected press releases for local and translocal use

Cultural industries and independent media cultural production are of primary importance for Finnish policy development, as a new program, “Content Finland” is being drafted during next year. In each European country, goals of both national and transnational media culture have been met with different strategies. Through /~Connected knowledge and shared experience, it is possible to form models of best practice – and principles for both national and European policy.

The driving force behind this event and series of other meetings prior to it is the ECB, European Cultural Backbone (https://ecb.t0.or.at/, https://monoskop.org/European_Cultural_Backbone [Ed: now only a historical archive on monoskop]). It is a network of media cultural organizations, centers, and active individuals throughout Europe, not only European Union member countries. To quote Dr. Peter Wittmann, Austrian State Secretary for the Arts, “The European Cultural Backbone is the logical extension of this ongoing dialog between cultural practitioners and policy makers regarding strategies of “practice to policy” on both national and European levels.”

The Main organizer of /~Connected, the Lasipalatsi Media Center, also seeks to discuss how European media centers could increasingly collaborate. How to best connect venues of presenting media culture and sites that produce it? Support of networks, bandwidth, mobility, distribution and production are key factors for policy discussion.

Traditionally, in a European democracy, public space has been defined through access to public institutions, freedom to move in city spaces and through the existence of certain democratic instruments such as public libraries and publicly supported broadcast media. New media, Internet in particular, has made it possible to more actively shift content production to smaller units or groups. Creation of public space can mean support for content production and communication that does not focus on a single mass audience, but particular communities (or consumers) and layers within the larger society and the networked world. Major issue for debate is thus to consider, how to best connect various models of best practice and policy that enable cultural production in a networked, changing Europe.

The seminar takes place in the very center of Helsinki, in Lasipalatsi Media Center (https://www.lasipalatsi.fi). Meals during the conference program are provided for by the organizers and there is no attendance fee. We are providing air fare and accommodation for a group of participants that comes from smaller media centers and organizations. We are happy to assist your travel arrangements by providing information on accommodation and flights.

/~CONNECTED brings together practitioners, producers and policy makers within contemporary media culture in Europe. Its attempts to create exchanges of experience and information between organizations and individuals from different fields: media cultural organizations, media centers, policy makers on a local, national and European level, media art organizations, corporate research labs and university researchers.

Following events such as P2P conference in Netherlands and Networking Centers of Innovation in Austria, it explores the ways in which local experiences can be compared, exchanged and rewritten to form models of best practice.

The event will officially launch the ECB, European Cultural Backbone, a network based on trust and a shared interest to promote a rich media cultural practice, which already flourishes in Europe. The network proposes that an Internet Backbone or a set wide bandwidth would be subsidized by the EU in order to enable transnational media production, broadcast transmission of events and inexpensive communications. The ECB acts as an advisory body for the policy makers nationally and within the EU.

/~CONNECTED is very much about the goals of the ECB:

1) Bandwidth for media culture
2) Support for models of best practice
3) Active investigation of what European media culture consists of
4) Enhanced networking between media cultural organizations, individual hubs” and policy makers.

/~CONNECTED refers to the ways in which media cultural local practices and organizations create collaboration, projects, discourse and policy across and partly independent of national borders. Emerging networks, projects and content are no longer international, but translocal by nature, already connected.