posted
  • place: Washington, D.C.

Appendix 8: The Systems Process

[Ed: this document was written by Cleveland Hopkins as an addenda to an unidentified white paper produced in the early 1970s at the Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP) — a White House office dedicated to policy-making in a rapidly shifting telecom environment. It is meant as an introduction to the concept of the systems process for those unfamiliar with the approach. Cleveland Hopkins was involved as a Systems Analyst looking at USPS electronic mail-handling; international and domestic telecom policy; digital medical record-keeping in the context of universal health care, among many other projects. His early career included twenty years in weapons system development (radar and ICBM) with DOD and MITs Lincoln Laboratory and Radiation Lab (Rad Lab) among other organizations. See his obit for further information.]

APPENDIX 8: The Systems Process

It is the objective of this short paper to invite attention to the Systems Process, its concepts, its essential nature, limitations and capabilities, and its output.

Introduction

“The systems approach basically applies scientific methods to the solution of practical problems,” [1], Concepts of the systems process vary from regarding it as the most powerful intellectual tool ever devised to “…the vacuous systems approach…” Historically, some of these ideas were applied to the activity used during World War II by small groups of people in trying to solve problems that were beyond the capacity of one person in the available time; these initial applications were to radar matters involved in the defense of Britain. Larger business firms have used such a process for many years to pool the efforts of management to subsequently maintain or improve their profit margins. The process began to get widespread public recognition shortly after Robert S. McNamara became Secretary of Defense; he brought in a group of technical people, later called the “Whiz Kids“ by the military, who, after some effort were able to break up the massive military problems into pieces that could be profitably worked on by individuals of different professional backgrounds. Their results were then combined and modified by operational people so that the solutions were relevant to the real world. Some duplication was taken out of the military services, and great efforts were made to obtain maximum results for the money spent, giving rise to cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness schemes.

more “Appendix 8: The Systems Process”

posted
  • place: Vienna, Austria

Robert Adrian X 1935 – 2015

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF RADIO ART

Radio art is the use of radio as a medium for art.

Radio happens in the place it is heard and not in the production studio.

Sound quality is secondary to conceptual originality.

Radio is almost always heard combined with other sounds – domestic, traffic, tv, phone calls, playing children etc.

Radio art is not sound art – nor is it music. Radio art is radio.

Sound art and music are not radio art just because they are broadcast on the radio.

Radio space is all the places where radio is heard.

Radio art is composed of sound objects experienced in radio space.

The radio of every listener determines the sound quality of a radio work.

Each listener hears their own final version of a work for radio combined with the ambient sound of their own space.

The radio artist knows that there is no way to control the experience of a radio work.

Radio art is not a combination of radio and art. Radio art is radio by artists.

death

Robert and I got into contact via the Eternal Network more than twenty years ago. He was a networker, and an inspiring telecommunications and radio artist: or as Ars Electronica writes “artist, leading-edge thinker, media art pioneer, telecommunications artist, painter and sculptor.” His partner, Heidi Grundmann, is the founder of KunstRadio on Austrian National Radio.

posted
  • place: National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, Maryland

04 November 1971

1) On the way in RCP said it might be time to put thru a request for my transfer as the small effort on info/computer matters was cited at yesterday’s budget meeting w/ OTP.

2) Worked on the agency peak character flow analysis — it is slowly taking shape.

3) At the budget mtg w/ OTP yesterday, Dean’s assistant, a chap named Colby, said he had worked thru a computer project in 5 years & w/ 30 people! This is why he (RCP) thot it was a good time to request my transfer.

posted
  • place: Preston, VIC, Australia

hmmm?

Responding to Felipe’s thread on the bricolabs list:

Obviously, I’m not asking how serious lixoeletronico.org people are, because I’m one of them :P I meant the companies who say they are not using gold, coltan, tungsten etc any more.

sotto voce: If you want to dig (no pun intended) into this more, I’d highly recommend this audio/video panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

https://csis.org/event/rare-earth-elements

It’s a good in-depth intro to this issue by a panel of three experts who look at the contemporary situation with rare earth elements (which do not include niobium and tantalum from coltan deposits). But it is basically the same idea/situation — in the sense of there being a rare resource, in demand by a multiplicity of large forces/powers, in places where local people are considered to be disposable commodities.

(I am not promoting their opinions, but they do describe the situation well from their point of view, both historical and today’s view)…

I believe it is worth it to consider the principle, not the details, in these areas of activism, as EVERY material that the techno-social system uses for re-forming matter causes a similar distortion of localized systems: That is, look around your home, what’s made out of metal, plastic, chemicals, paper, wood… etc etc, it all requires machines to make which require more metals, plastics, chemicals, etc. etc… which make necessary the entire range of the global extractives industry which is closely allied to WAR (of every kind — both aggressive overt weapons war as well as slow and equally deadly environmental degradation warfare).

Humans do this. It is not avoidable. The only factor that we have the power to influence is *how much* we use — of course, this *how much* does imply choosing one type of device over another. It also places the choice directly in our power. We can make choices, we can influence others to make choices. But as long as this discussion proceeds here on this (telecom-based) mailing list, we are being somewhat hypocritical. Of course, educating each other is paramount, but the best teaching methodology is to ‘practice what one preaches.’ Which puts us squarely in a very problematic position of having to implement radical change in our tele- lived lives or else continue to support large portions of this global system.

If you want to stop mining, then you have to stop telecommunications. You have to go back to an industrial base before rare earths and coltan were discovered and rendered fit for use. (1800 were the first discoveries, but little use came before the beginning of the 20th Century).

Otherwise, this process will simply continue and expand, along with demand, and along with all the horrific effects that the human struggle for control of resources entails everywhere…

hmmm. god that sounds bleak. sorry, but from this materialist approach to global problems, there are no solutions. It would seem that a Buddhist approach which posits that *all is change* and to try to grasp and manipulate or put off change is a futile process. We must simply move through this incarnation and while treating each other as best as we can, not get caught up in the grasping at illusion…

I don’t know. (I type on my laptop and stare at the letters string themselves across the screen…)

posted

arts birthday tomorrow

This year I didn’t manage to jump into the fray with a live stream, but many other folks did — the party has already started in some places, you can browse the schedule of events here… and at ORF Kunstradio

“Art’s Birthday” is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.

He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Modest beginnings, but look at us now.

Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world. Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners – working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art.

After Filliou’s death in 1987, some artists began to celebrate Art’s Birthday with mail art, fax and slow scan TV events in the spirit of his concept of “The Eternal Network” or “La Fête permanente”. The birthday parties took place in different cities across the world and artists were asked to bring birthday presents for Art — works that could be shared over the network.

Art’s Birthday Party has never been a formal event, but was always organized on an ad hoc basis through the network. Every participating location (and they are different every year) organizes its own party — from a few friends in a private studio to a performance evening in a museum or gallery. Filliou’s invention of Art’s Birthday is wonderfully absurd and humorous in the typical Fluxus tradition of serious fun. So the global birthday party for art has always tried to be fun while paying homage to Robert Filliou’s dream of The Eternal Network. — Robert Adrian

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)

PROPOSAL :: Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)

(a) Name, address, URL, email and one page CV of author.

John Hopkins

https://neoscenes.net/

John Hopkins is a networker, artist, and educator occupied across a wide swath of techno-social systems with an extensive global network presence. He is active in numerous global creative networks beginning with the Cassette Underground and the Mail Art networks in the 1980’s and merging seamlessly into the propagating telecommunications networks of the present. He has engaged in many individual and collective dialogues concerning the facilitation of collaborative creative situations, and has facilitated or participated in numerous distributed projects.

https://neoscenes.net/blog/cv-resume

(b) A 1000 word proposal that should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 250 words and a list of keywords to indicate the subject area of the chapter. [Each of the commissioned chapters will contain text, images, videos, and/or audio.]

ABSTRACT more “Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)”

posted

thesis proposal :: Background

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

the price you pay

in response to this question posed by Annick Bureaud on the [new media curating] list (in a discussion about access to digital information):

The question might be : how much do you (really) pay in order to get access to an online document, how much the people who have worked to provide the access to this document are paid, who (ultimately) pays for this service?

sotto voce: The cost (what you pay) is directly correlated to the depth of your embeddedness, your degree of participation in the techno-social system. For example, to simply ‘own’ a laptop, I calculated over the past 15 years I spend around USD 120 / month. This does not include cost of upgrades and peripherals, telecom, electrical, or other costs. This is only having the machine sitting on my lap. Of course, to participate in the techno-social system more “the price you pay”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Migrating Reality: questions and answers

Three questions for participants in the Migrating Realities conference, as posed by Vytautas …

VM: If you migrate what really migrates? Geographical migration is so natural to our times that we should look for other definitions of the phenomena of migration. Actually, artists and cultural producers were and are always migrating, so we don’t have any problem in those fields. Can we differentiate between physical migration and migration in the networks?

ME: As I move, anywhere, at all — leaning over from the chair I sit on to look out the window, within the room where I type this text, outside to the market, to the airport and into a plane — my actual point-of-view changes. We are constantly moving and changing our points-of-view. Often we will desire to have the same point-of-view as an Other, or think that an Other should share our point-of-view. Many times we try this because we are afraid to trust our own point-of-view, where we are in that moment. When we step away from our own point-of-view, we lose contact with what is a deep source in life, the process of internal change. And anyway, if we want to take someone else’s point-of-view, we can try, but in the end it is impossible to have their eyes and our eyes at the same point in space and time. Migration is simply another specific word describing the changing that occurs to our of point-of-view as we transit through life.

Often I get the feeling, as I move through the international transportation network that more and more is becoming the same in that system. Maybe this an affect of life exposed to the international standards and protocols that govern such intensive engineering systems. Idiosyncrasy is not so welcome. Change is not welcome. Surprise and difference are not welcome. It is the same in all techno-social infrastructures and systems, including telecommunications networks, that indeterminacy is denied. Difference is discounted. When I sit and watch the screen, my point of view changes very little. What I see changes, but my point of view does not. In the long term, this is is an enormous shift from an embodied life where point-of-view changes constantly. What do we lose when our point-of-view does not change? We interrupt our evolution. Although this interruption is only temporary, as all is change. When our point-of-view is looking at the screen, we are all having, artificially, the same point of view. What is it that we see?

VM: I am actually myself constantly migrating from theory to practice and vice versa. This happens because of my teaching jobs at Vilnius University and Vilnius Academy of Arts. It’s only the third year of this type of migration, so I do not fell any consequences yet. Can you share with some interesting experiences which happens after those kinds of migrations?

ME: For me this is no migration. Nor even a ‘changing of hats.’ As a former engineer coming from a hard science background, now an artist and educator, I came to believe that this kind of migration is simply what people on the outside perceived about me. To the individual, internal life is a continuous phenomena where change (as in migration) is simply another experience of the change (at all temporal and spatial scales) that is the fundamental characteristic of the universe. Again, to emphasize the concept: all is change. The attitude we take when confronting change will govern the quality of life and the possibilities that it presents. A hard resistance to change, and a strict adhering to ‘wearing the proper hat at the proper time’ will limit the possibilities that the unknown and unexpected bring to life. An acceptance of change brings vital energies into every action, every practice that we undertake. These principles apply whether we are migrating from the bedroom to the kitchen, or from Asia to Latin America. From my own experiences, crossing the borders of many nations, many disciplines, and seeking to understand other points-of-view, I find that the possibilities of seeing the world from multiple points-of-view becomes a powerful tool for that understanding. It is a tool whose use cannot be learned except through these experiences, these dislocations. The world as-it-is is deeply connected to the experience of the observer and of the actor in it. We carry the imprint of all our points-of-view with us at all times. When we can bring multiple points-of-view to actions in that world, the actions are by nature more powerful because they are formed from a deeper experience of observing.

I could write many stories, and indeed, have written many stories about this migration in my personal travelog which has now entered its thirteenth year. You are welcome to explore them at https://www.neoscenes.net/travelog/weblog.php

VM: However, sometimes migration is not tolerated. We may take for example: academia and migration between disciplines. The same happens with fine arts (to be more precise, academies and art markets), where migration of ideas between different mediums is hardly possible. I mean that academia and markets prefer some particular art medium to another, limiting the potential fluidity between them. Do we need this kind of migration and where lies the problem within it? Finally, where is interdisciplinarity in this framework?

ME: It seems like a migration, but this situation is embedded in the world-view. A materialist world-view makes distinctions between the appearance of things (and people), and subsequently to the material characteristics of the social system that humans construct. I believe this is a redundant world-view and is in desperate need of being retired! The question of interdisciplinarity is largely framed by this materialist point-of-view. By labeling someone as an artist, a scientist, an educator, a curator, a critic, a researcher, a historian, or any other title, we remove the acknowledgment that the person in question might be as well something else. A fixed and rigid title makes our relation with that person ‘safe’ because these common terms are well-defined and known in a typical social system. We know who they are, and therefore what they do. They are no longer the unknown stranger. But safety and security is an illusion that command-and-control social systems try to fool a population into believing: that change and the unknown are somehow under human control. An open system that allows the Self to confront the unknowns evolving from change has a much higher potential for innovation. Migration across social boundaries is always necessary — just as the wandering Buddhist monk, equipped only with the clothes on his back and a bowl, is the social tool that ‘allows’ the normal population to learn about generosity — so it is with the migrant, the unknown stranger, who can teach the native to overcome a fear of the unknown and open his home to feed and house the traveler and to share stories of the near and of the far.

The problem with this migration is only a problem for those who fear. Although, sometimes, as history often demonstrates, the fear in the native is so great that the stranger is killed before telling his story, before the table is shared and before the bread can be broken. So there is risk to the migrant. That is the only problem. Fear.

Another comment on interdisciplinarity: the one who rides two or three or four tigers is doomed to an exciting life in the wilderness. When he visits the City, he will be feared for the smell he brings, the smell of the unknown. But it is better than trudging along a well-used pathway with the nose in the dirt, following the crowd and fearing.

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: Ukiah, California

netart 2004 – Ping Melody

The netart 2004 exhibition is opening tomorrow, well, today, as Tokyo is ahead of Arizona. Here’s the blurb posted as my curatorial commentary:

where is netart?

When invited to join this year’s netart curatorial crew, I was somewhat skeptical that such an exhibition—with the attendant baggage of dusty artifact carried by the traditional Art World—would be a satisfying way to spend life-limited time when there are always other things to be done. That and the continuous nomadic movement that underlies my participation like a slippery mat, allowing only sporadic concentration of my remote presence hunting for and looking at network-based art and actually thinking about it.

However, collective curation with people who I knew were sensitive to the contingencies of remote collaboration and very aware of the limited understanding that the Art World has regarding net art makes the project interesting. So what then? Do I trawl the now-vast network for something brightly shining or sounding attractive? Eye candies? A hopeless task. The only thing to do was to sift the daily flow of content, during interstitial times when local presence was not demanded—the information flow personally customized by the networker to form a vital link with the remote macro-network—while keeping the overall blast of data at a comprehensible level. Not always possible: it’s getting ever more difficult with each spam-filled day. Especially given that the networker is not fond of reductionist activities which concentrate attention on particular nodes.
more “netart 2004 – Ping Melody”

posted
  • place: Trondheim, Norway

sound play

A field trip starting early, meeting Jonas with a crew of 25 11-year-olds from a workshop at the science museum. We meet on the frosty lawn of the main NTNU administration building and after a short exercise, sitting for two minutes and then listing all the sounds they could hear, we proceed to break into small groups and visit the anechoic and echo chambers in the Department for Electronics and Telecommunications. Nothing like kids in an echo chamber testing the loudness of their screaming with a Db-meter!

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Cleveland Hopkins 1910 – 2003

Dad passes this evening. after this long struggle, and a long life. code blue, Janet calls, racing into the hospital. Nancy and Mom there, holding his hands. His heart couldn’t bear more time here. I am just home from school, exhausted. Stop what I am doing, and concentrate on a slender thread of consciousness. Light some incense. Crumble some sage harvested for just this purpose from the depths of Sand Canyon off the Yampa, press it deep into the palms, smelling the released sweetness. Burn some, the smoke mixing with the incense. An intuitive impulse says “write the time now.” on a 3×5 card, I write the time, 6:52. A call comes ten minutes later, he has passed. As birth is the surfacing, death is the submerging of soul back into its own, its transitory place. time shivers, small waves move outward, and the bardo of passing opens. Unmeasured intuition and connection. Still small voices, suspension of the material presence.
more “Cleveland Hopkins 1910 – 2003”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

TiBook

sunrise. brain seems most lively now, working on the syllabi of the upcoming courses.

stone upon stone
I enter The Thing
mouth yawning
complete absence abides
within. from this void a Light appears
the Light penetrates The Thing
throughout, almost completely
except immediately beneath the surface
where liquid eye
does not go
I see this
in a Dream, eyes open.
and want to cry.

so it goes. morning. waiting for. the sun. and for a new computer. ten years on, having had three laptops, waiting for the fourth, a Titanium PowerBook. have probably spent USD 12,000 total on them, cumulatively. and on other digital equipment, well, another USD 3,000 or so. telecommunications costs, post box rent. in aid of remote presence.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

net.culture presentation

Good afternoon, my name is John Hopkins, and I will be introducing several projects to you in the context of a course net.culture that I was teaching at Media Lab during the last academic year.

1) I will give you a background for the course,

2) Some of the ideas that drive it and some activities that happened as a result of it

3) Following that I will introduce three on-going projects that were generated in the context of the course, and presentations will be made about each of those. more “net.culture presentation”

posted
  • place: Trondheim, Norway

Iteration Two: Research Plan for Doctoral Studies at UIAH/TAIK

AIMS

The aim of undertaking Doctoral Studies at TAIK/Media Lab is to reflect on two deeply intertwined parts of my life and praxis — the first, 13 years of teaching the creative use of technology-based tools to artists and university-level art students, and the second, near 15 years as a networking artist. This period of intensive engagement has, for several reasons, not allowed for substantial organized research although it has been an exceptionally rich period of experience, exploration, and exchange.

Art, at its social and human core, is an action centered on the exchange of creative energies as they are attenuated by an infinite number of mediative (material) carriers. The artist is that person who seeks to engage in a dialogue of energies with an Other. These two proto-definitions are the basis of my praxis. The experience and wisdom gained in that praxis will directly inform my research.

Creative activities at the confluence of art and communication (science and technology) are taking on an increasingly important role in cultural production. The territory mapped by these activities, especially their impact on rapidly changing social structures and systems, is an area generally not well understood. Occupying the dynamic field of that intersection, while focusing on specific threads of interest, is a primary task of the doctoral research plan. more “Iteration Two: Research Plan for Doctoral Studies at UIAH/TAIK”

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

neoscenes occupation: an international network-building project

[ED: written and published as part of the acoustic.space initiative established by friends Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits at the re-lab in Riga, Latvia net audio issue 1999 ISSN 1407-2858.]

acoustic.space #2 (1999 ISSN 1407-2858), Riga, Latvia, September 1999

In September of 1998, neoscenes occupation (nso) was formally launched as a networking project in the second Open-X venue at the 1998 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.

The basic concept for the project is rooted in several facets of my former and current involvement as a networker, and my broad experience in arts and design education in Europe and North America during the last fifteen years.

Having taught or lectured in, and visited many tens of art and design institutions, and engaged in wide-ranging discussions with many educators, I had gradually come to the conclusion that much of the (formal) educational process in the developed world is irrelevant, dead, or dying. I viewed neoscenes occupation as a vehicle for the re-creation and renewal of the learning process—applying a series of conditions to make it an “omni-directional flow of energies with a force multiplied far beyond the meat count and with a reach that is far ahead of the game.”

Rhetoric aside, the project has several interlinked concepts and goals relating to creating a viable independent social network of people who share creative aspirations.

Dialogue is at the core of the whole nso idea — dialogue as the bi-directional movement of energies between any two people who engage each other in honest and open exchange. Dialogue that moves in opposition to the oppression of monologue and centralized patriarchal infotainment; that stands as two quiet voices versus the blasting inferno of social emission. Dialogue, as pure expression of heart and soul, is the core of all meaningful activism. more “neoscenes occupation: an international network-building project”

posted
  • place: Trondheim, Norway

Iteration One: Research Plan for Doctoral Studies at UIAH/TAIK

BACKGROUND

It is first pertinent to precede the research plan with a brief overview of my rather eclectic background.

My own relationship with technology was deeply influenced by my father who worked in various capacities for the US government and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory as a telecommunications expert, operations analyst, and engineer. It received a firm grounding during a rigorous applied education in Geophysical Engineering with a specialization in Potential Fields Methods (Time-Domain Electromagnetics, Gravity, and Magnetics) at the top school in the world for that particular specialty. An unsatisfactory career as an international explorationist for a multinational oil company ended with my decision to pursue photography, a long-time personal avocation. After becoming a Master Printer (in black&white photography) in NYC and working in several professional photographic positions there, I returned to school and studied, notably, with the experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage. It was during these studies, concluding with an MFA in Photography/Video/Film that I began teaching and spending a significant amount of time in Europe, where I was frequently exhibiting my photographic work in Germany and France. I subsequently relocated to Reykjavík, Iceland where I started up a modest Photography and New Media program for students at the Icelandic College of Art. Since 1995 I have been working as a nomadic artist and free-lance educator teaching a range of workshops in 12 countries that orbit around the issues of networked computing, technology, creativity, dialogue, and personal activism. more “Iteration One: Research Plan for Doctoral Studies at UIAH/TAIK”

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

Café9 in Brief

The purpose of Café9 is to provide a network-based social environment within which young people between the ages of 15 and 25 in Europe can creatively collaborate and communicate. Throughout this network young people may experience and take advantage of “virtual mobility”. They will be able to establish channels for dialogue and develop mutual understanding of others making use of new information technologies.

Café9 is a joint project of partners from Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Sweden, Iceland, Czech Republic, and Norway. The project has started in June 1999, and it will finish in December 2000.

The project will be implemented by providing network venues and interactive services in seven European cities in the fall of 2000, using both existing and highly sophisticated information and telecommunications technologies. This socio-technological platform will be the foundation for a wide range of projects initiated by young people in collaboration with youth organizations. The conceptual starting point of the project is the European tradition of café culture.

The main objectives of the project are to (i) raise the understanding of and the interest in other cultures among young people, (ii) construct multilateral partnerships between participating youth-related organizations, (iii) acquire experience of innovative organizational and operational models that can be applied to similar projects in the future, (iv) provide possibilities to young people to initiate projects based on the Internet, both at a local and European level, (v) provide groups of young people a possibility to work as volunteers in the Café9 venues, and (vi) enable them to take an active role as advocates of their local culture within the Internet. In quantitative terms, the Café9 project aims to have at least 50,000 visitors the Café9 venues, 1,500,000 visitors in its web site, and 50 individual projects initiated and funded.

The project concept has five layers: (i) The network of participating organizations and people is the basis of the project, and operates as a pool of skills and resources; (ii) The physical infrastructure consists of a wide range of both traditional and highly sophisticated Internet-based technologies and applications integrated into a network of physical Café 9 venues in seven cities. Each venue has multimedia-PC´s, and a video broadcasting system to broadcast and receive content and live events between cities; (iii) Projects initiated by young people take place within the context of the above described infrastructure and network and (iv) Young people act as the project creators, hosts in the Café 9 venues, and as active participants in the projects initiated by other groups.

Audience participation is facilitated by the following means: Café9 venues are centrally located in each city making them easily accessible to young people; the Internet will be an integral part of the project, enabling global participation; every Café 9 venue will be hosted by a team of young people from the local community to lower the barriers of participation; the project will be highly visible in the promotional activities of the participating cities; local community and youth organizations will be integrated into the project in an early phase, and selected research organizations will be invited to participate in order to increase the exchange of skills and experiences.

The dissemination of the results will be guaranteed through a seminar and workshop held in November 2000, by publishing a guide of best practices, and documenting a wide variety of projects implemented by young people in the Café9 Web Portal.

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

next five minutes 3 – tactical education

into the NextFiveMinutes conference. I have been burned out for much of the time for some reason, almost catching a cold yesterday evening, then this morning, spraining my back with the most minimal movement zipping up my suitcase, I wasn’t even bending over. scared the shit outta me. my panel presence (Tactical Education/Media Competence) was shortly after, and that went quite well, but by mid-afternoon I hobble back the the hotel, barely able to walk because of the sciatic pain. missed an appointment with Nan which I was quite looking forward to, not to mention several dialogues with new contacts. really don’t believe it, that I have done something serious. been stretching all afternoon and evening between bouts resting in bed. nothing else to do! Faugh! miss a dinner with an interesting artist. following are notes for the Tactical Education presentation (on the neoscenes occupation project):

sotto voce: introduction: start by restating my conviction that:

venues like this can, by their nature, only mirror or document what is happening “out there” — and although this precise venue here — me speaking to you is probably not anyone’s first choice of interaction — but I was eager to participate in this part of nextfiveminutes as an opportunity to open some dialogues on methodologies and experiences. I would wish that the expressions here will represent ideas so vital that there will be nothing to do after our brief time together but to ACT. but I suppose that the most one can hope for is that some of these thoughts would be on a level fundamental enough that some of you might share these dialogues at future times. or at least be entertained by my ignorant display of polarized generalizations.

put neoscenes occupation within a larger context of praxis, personal philosophy, and reality. more “next five minutes 3 – tactical education”

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

neoscenes occupation

the neoscenes occupation project for Ars Electronica (which approaches in days) begins to take some form, at least as an idea:

the educational process in the developed world is dead or dying. neoscenes wants to re-create and renew education, making it an omnidirectional flow of energies with a force multiplied far beyond the meat count and with a reach that is far ahead of the game. join neoscenes, speak, act, make a difference in your own head and body and soul. the occupation is of the network, is of each others lives, is of being, is of body, it is of it all.

neoscenes is about the creation of personal spaces wherein the individual realizes the potential of individual and collaborative creativity. it is about seizing the opportunity presented by the Internet and contemporary telecommunications to create active spaces that are autonomous of the traditional “institutions of higher learning”. it is about sharing neoscenes has established a primary level of mechanisms for this engagement in the basic technologies of the web, IRC (Internet relay chat), and the neoscene listserv. IRC, a live text-based communications medium is widely available on any networked PC; the neoscene listserv allows distribution of information via email, and this website will become a central point networking neoscenes participants and their relevant web-based information. other means of collaboration will be employed as participants decide to utilize including iVisit, CUSeeMe, FTP, VRML, and other technologies as they become available.

so it goes. now to make it happen!

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

eight dialogues call/proposal

The forum in which this new art operates is not the materially stable pictorial space of painting nor the Euclidean space of sculptural form; it is the electronic virtual space of telematics where signs are afloat, where interactivity destroys the contemplative notion of beholder or connoisseur to replace it by the experiential notion of user or participant. The aesthetics of telecommunications operates the necessary move from pictorial representation to communicational experience. — Eduardo Kac
12.02.1996

Hallo friends:

This is a broadcast message to enLighten you about a project of mine that was selected for inclusion in an online/gallery exhibition which will take place on the Internet and within the confines of the List Art Center Gallery at MIT in Boston between January 29 and March 29. (FYI, the public site for the whole project — https://artnetweb.com/artnetweb/port/index.html)

At the moment I am interested in gathering eight of you as participants (significant *Others*) in one of these dialogues via the internet technology “IRC”, the infamous chat lines… Where we can have a two hour (or so) text-based dialogue remotely via our keyboards…

Each of the eight dialogues will be taking place (as scheduled at the moment) one a week between 2-4 pm EST (New York Time) on a Wednesday afternoon for the duration of the show… For those of you who are not familiar with IRC technology, if you have internet/WWW access, then you can run an IRC host on your local machine. There are even some Browser-based chat locations that can be used with no extra software — just Netscape or Explorer… Anyway, I hope to hear from eight of you (or more! — probably should have some alternates…) Again, these dialogues are not thematic or otherwise “directed”, they are *just* dialogues… more “eight dialogues call/proposal”

posted
  • place: en route Copenhagen, Denmark - Malmö, Sweden - Stockholm

control freaking

Another long day. This morning Björn and I were up at 7:30 to catch a bus to the hydrofoil to Malmö, and then another short bus ride to the Academy. The hydrofoil took only 45 minutes and cost an astonishingly miniscule 15 DKK (= 3 USD). Competition in action. The Malmö Academy has exceptional facilities in an entirely new building. Everything was highly organized and secure with locks on all door except for the bathrooms. I was scheduled to give a lecture at 13:00 and I indeed did do just this. They have a decent lecture room with a video projector and assorted techno-goodies except for the fact that one amp channel and speaker had been fried, so I had to play video and audio works on one channel. Such is techno-life. My host, the Academy Principle, Gertrud Sandqvist I had met last year at the Nordic-Baltic Conference on Art and Technology in Helsinki. At the lecture she sat in the front row, not particularly unusual until the question-answer session at the end — she mediated between me and the students, choosing students, modifying their questions, and ”interpreting’ my answers for the students. More than odd, it was quite an show of the psychology of control. She seemed unable to allow the students to interact without her dominance. Sad for them. I understand now her reputation which is not great, on this very issue of control-freak. Oh well. Björn meanwhile was meeting some former students. We ended up taking different trains — I had the First Class EurailPass, and could ride in style, though flat broke.

At the moment I am sitting comfortably on another one of these new high-speed European trains. This one the X2000 from Malmö to Stockholm. First class, they even serve a dinner. Not bad. I sat across from a senior Quality Control engineer from Eriksson, Inc., one of the largest companies in Sweden dealing in telecommunications. We had an interesting conversation about technological developments in Scandinavia and Europe, as well as photography. Already here in Scandinavia things have a feeling of organized and peaceful order, with a level of social wealth that is simply not available further south in Europe. There is far more competition in the telecom business which is bringing (for example) good internet and telephone services at reasonable rates. Education is well-funded (though conservative) without the need for academics to be constantly begging for national resources.

posted
  • place: Montreal, Canada
  • author: Tom Sherman

The Finished Work of Art is a Thing of the Past by Tom Sherman

At the close of this century we are witnessing a major change in how value is determined. The value of material wealth is giving way to the value of information. In this time of transition, these apparently incongruous value systems mix and form hybrid systems for determining value. Unique, precious material objects still hold their value; some actually increase in value in a relatively short time. Information that is useful but scarce is also valuable. Scarcity, even in an era marked by an abundance of information, is still a key factor in determining value. Those who hold valuable information may still wish to maintain exclusive, proprietary control – to increase the life of the information. Information is subject to decay or aging. Information is not inexhaustible. It may revert to data, the raw material from which it is formed. How and when information is maintained and released is determined by those in control; those who initially recognize its value, manage it and operate with it accordingly.

Contemporary art is part of an emerging sector of the economy called information and knowledge. Knowledge-workers create information for others to use. Worker in this case does not imply those who act only upon the instructions of others, knowledge-workers think for themselves. They know things that others do not know. They solve problems or help others solve problems. Knowledge- workers produce information, they transform data into information-distinguishing key aspects of disorder through the discovery and/or imposition of form. Artists fit nicely into this description of knowledge-worker. Contemporary artists, curators, critics and art historians are the knowledge- workers who form the contemporary art domain of the new sector of the economy called information and knowledge.

CONTEMPORARY ART MUST BE SEEN AS INFORMATION TO BE OF VALUE
more “The Finished Work of Art is a Thing of the Past by Tom Sherman”