Pad.ma – short for Public Access Digital Media Archive – is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non-commercial use.

We see Pad.ma as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video-making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself… beyond the finite documentary film or the online video clip. Continue reading

Flashfl00d is a semi-secretive mass public exhibition of rapidly-distributed hidden flash drives containing downloadable exhibitions. Continue reading

Bitcoin – Finally, Fair Money? by The Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London and Scott Len, Mute:

Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency deploying peer-to-peer networking to enable secure and anonymous transactions without a central bank. Unlike many economic commentators, The Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society and Scott Len take the currency seriously but ask, how exactly does it differ from ‘real’ money?

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto designed a new electronic or virtual currency called Bitcoin, the goal of which was to provide the equivalent of cash on the internet. Rather than using bank or credit cards to buy stuff online, a Bitcoin user will install a piece of software, the Bitcoin client, on his computer and send Bitcoin to other users directly under a pseudonym. One simply enters into the software the pseudonym of the person one wishes to send Bitcoin, the amount to send, and the transaction will be transmitted through a peer-to-peer network.ⁱⁱ What one can specifically obtain with Bitcoin is somewhat limited to the few hundred websites which accept them, but includes other currencies, web hosting, server hosting, web design, DVDs, coffee in some coffee shops and classified adverts, as well as the ability to donate to WikiLeaks and to use online gambling sites despite being a US citizen.ⁱⁱⁱ However, what allowed Bitcoin to break into the mainstream – if only for a short period of time – is the Craigslist-style website ‘Silk Road’ which allows anyone to trade Bitcoin for prohibited drugs.^iv On 11 February, 1 BTC (Bitcoin) exchanged for $5.85, 8.31 million BTC were issued so far, 0.3 million BTC were used in 8,600 transactions in the last 24 hours and about 800 Bitcoin clients were connected to the network. Thus, it is not only some idea or proposal of a new payment system but an idea put into practice, although its volume is still somewhat short of the New York Stock Exchange.

The reSource for transmedial culture, a new framework for the transmediale festival, aims to create a distributed platform for networking, curating and research throughout the year 2012 and beyond by envisioning the festival as a peer-production context of sharing knowledge and practices. Continue reading

Hacking the Academy: A Book Crowdsourced in One Week: MPublishing, the publishing division of the University of Michigan Library, is pleased to announce the open-access version of Hacking the Academy, The Edited Volume. The volume is forthcoming in print under the University of Michigan Press digitalculturebooks imprint.

This volume was assembled and edited by Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt from the best of over 300 submissions received during a spirited week when the two editors actively solicited ideas for how the academy could be beneficially reformed using digital media and technology. For more on the unusual way this book was put together, please start with Cohen and Scheinfeldt’s preface. Continue reading

Fluid Nexus is an application for Android phones and desktop computers enabling exchange of messages without the need for centralized mobile networks. Messages are transferred by short-range networking technologies like bluetooth and through the movement of people from one location to another.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, networks continue to be defined by their stable topology represented in an image or graph. Peer-to-peer technologies promised new arrangements absent centralized control, but they still rely on stationary devices. Mobile phones remain wedded to conventional network providers. Continue reading

July 2011 on –empyre soft-skinned space: Reclaiming Creativity as Agent of Change :: Moderated by Simon Biggs (UK/ Australia) with co-moderator and discussant Magnus Lawrie (UK) and invited discussants, Shu Lea Cheang (Taiwan/ USA/ France), Paolo Cirio (Italy), Jussi Parikka (Finland/ UK), Saul Albert (UK), Julian Oliver (NZ), Michel Bauwens (Belgium) and Simon Yuill (UK).

Established during the so-called “age of discovery”, cities such as London were not only loci of empire but trading hubs. At that time European nations exercised power at sea. However, there were other players on the high-seas — the pirates, portrayed as scavengers and thieves but also as social innovators and redistributive “Robin Hoods”. Continue reading

From the Editorial: “This issue is an exercise in media ecology that is paradoxically unnatural. Instead of assuming a natural connection to the established tradition of Media Ecology in the Toronto-school fashion of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and the work of scholars involved in the Media Ecology Association, our issue stems from another direction; its theoretical orientation is more inspired by the work of Felix Guattari and engages with several overlapping ecologies that are aesthetico-political in their nature. It stems from a more politically oriented way of understanding the various scales and layers through which media are articulated together with politics, capitalism and nature, in which processes of media and technology cannot be detached from subjectivation. In this context, media ecology is itself a vibrant sphere of dynamics and turbulences including on its technical level. Continue reading

Posted by Renate Ferro and Tim Murray on -empyre-:

“Happy New Year to all of our –empyre- subscribers as we prepare to launch our ninth year as a list-serve hosting approximately 1400 subscribers. Since 2002 Melinda Rackham has launched the website from subtle.net. We thank her for all of the energy and support that she has provided in –empyre’s- initial inception and many years of nurturance. Cornell University has agreed to host the site on their library server so you will notice that our URL has changed. Stay tuned to our new URL at empyre.library.cornell.edu and watch our new site evolve over the next few months. Continue reading