Together with the other programme strands – the exhibition Dark Drives: Uneasy Energies in Technological Times, the performance programme The Ghosts in the Mashine, the video programme Satellite Stories and the symposium in/compatible: systems | publics | aesthetics – the reSource constitutes a substantial part of the transmediale 2012 programme. It presents a constellation of workshops, talks and performances distributed into five different sub-themes: reSource Methods, reSource Activism, reSource Networks, reSource Markets and reSource Sex.

reSource Methods investigates intersections between artistic production and research, reflecting on methodologies of curating (post)media art as well as on experimental and speculative methods of in/compatibility through artistic practices.

With Martin Howse (uk/de), Anthony Iles (uk), Mattin (se/es), Jonathan Kemp (uk), Shu Lea Cheang (tw/fr), Cornelia Sollfrank (de), Geoff Cox (uk/dk), Florian Cramer (de/nl), Christian Ulrik Andersen (dk), Georg Russegger (au), Michal Wlodkowski (au), Luise Reitstätter (au), Joasia Krysa (pl/dk), Sidney Ogidon (au), Eva Fischer (au), Morten Breinbjerg (dk), Matthias Tarasiewicz (au), Rosa Menkman (nl), Morten Riis (dk), Marie Thompson (uk), Carolin Wiedemann (de), Robert Jackson (uk), Andrew Prior (uk), Magda Tyzlik-Carver (pl/uk) and many others.

reSource Activism sheds light on the practices of artists, activists and hackers who are rethinking critical interventions in the field of art and technology.

With Florian Wüst (de), Kathy Rae Huffman (us/de), Eckart Lottman (de), Pit Schultz (de), Roberta Buiani (it/ca), Alessandra Renzi (it/ca), Nicola Angrisano (it), and others.

reSource Networks reflects on viral and distributed strategies of networking, questioning the concept of networking itself and proposing alternative to proprietary systems.

With Dmytri Kleiner (ca/de), Baruch Gottlieb (ca/de) and the Telekommunisten Network, Aymeric Mansoux (fr/nl), Johannes P Osterhoff (de), Salvatrice Settis (it), Anna Adamolo (it), Victoria Estok (us), Nicholas Knouf (us), Wolfgang Spahn (de) and others.

reSource Markets reflects on the meaning of capitalism in a time of crisis, proposing both critical and playful alternatives to the capitalistic logic by intervening directly within the economical systems.

With Steve Lambert (us), Daniel Garcia Andujar (es), Jaromil (it/nl), Kate Rich (uk), Shintaro Miyazaki (jp/de) and Elanor Colleoni (it/dk).

reSource Sex reflects on the interference and overlapping between sex business and ‘alternative’ porn, aiming to explore and discuss the open interzona which exists in between the often male-oriented mainstream porn, and the more narrow scene of queer and alt porn communities.

With Sergio Messina (it), Karla Grundick (cz/de), Julianne Pierce (au/uk), Liad Hussein Kantorowicz (il/de), Kate Erhardt (za/de), Jacob Appelbaum (us), Zach Blas (us), Aliya Rakhmetova (kz/hu), Gaia Novati (it/de), Gabriella Coleman (us), Katrien Jacobs (be/hk), Francesco Macarone Palmieri aka WARBEAR (it/de), Shu Lea Cheang (tw/fr) and Martin Hug (ch/es).

WORKSHOPS IN THE RESOURCE PROGRAMME

The reSource for transmedial culture presents a series of workshop during transmediale, dealing with art and technology, hacktivism and politics.

Registration for all workshops is possible via the online form on our website!

Floppy Films Workshop. Moving Images on 1.44 MB
With Florian Cramer and guest tutor Dagie Brundert

This workshop will teach you how to revitalise floppy disks for moving images. Using extreme means of compression, we can squeeze whole movies on the 1.44 Megabyte provided by a single floppy disk, using run-of-the-mill video and image formats (MPEG and animated GIFs). Floppy films can be used for various inventive means.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 11:00–17:00, Upper Foyer
Thursday, February 2, 2012, 11:00–17:00, Upper Foyer
Friday, February 3, 2012, 11:00–17:00, Upper Foyer

in/compatible Material
Artistic intervention with Martin Howse, Anthony Iles, Mattin, Jonathan Kemp, Shu Lea Cheang, Baruch Gottlieb, and others

As an intervention within the flow of transmediale, the in/compatible Material Laboratory inserts itself in the cut between the compatible protocol(s) and an in/compatible/inverse divinatory materiality through the setup of a series of experimental situations.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 12:00–18:00, Café Global Stage and around the HKW

Activism Beyond the Interface: The Sandbox Project
Conceived and hosted by Roberta Buiani and Alessandra Renzi
With Nicola Angrisano and others

The Sandbox Project is a series of experimental production labs in different cities bringing together artists, activists and techies to reflect creatively on the in/compatibility and diversity of artivist practices.

Thursday, February 2, closed session: 10:30–14:30 / open session: 14:30–16:30, Café Global Stage

Google – One Week Piece Workshop
with Johannes P Osterhoff

During the workshop Johannes P Osterhoff and the participants will set up their browsers to automatically publish all their Google searches during transmediale on the web. They will interlink their searches so that they get good rankings and become visible for everyone in everybody’s search results. Participants can join the collaborative Google – One Week Piece and follow the example and communication of other public searchers. To participate you need a computer or mobile phone (Firefox or Chrome browsers).

Thursday, February 2, 2012, 11:00–13:00 / 14:00–16:00, K2

Fluid Nexus
with Nicholas Knouf

In this workshop participants will learn about historical and contemporary experiments in analog and digital network construction. Through activities using simple materials such as pen and paper, participants will create novel designs for information networks. Hands-on experience with Fluid Nexus will give participants a base to extend their explorations after the workshop. No programming experience is necessary.

Friday, February 3, 11:00–14:00, K2

R15N & Technologies of Miscommunication
Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb from the Telekommunisten Network will introduce the R15N system, try it out together with the participants, and discuss and explore possible technologies of miscommunication applications.

Friday February 3, 15:00–18:00, K2

Bio-Game
with Shu Lea Cheang and Martin Hug

The workshop focuses on the study and experiments in: human body as BioNet and blood cells as computing units; human (E)motion sensing using GSR sensor; body sensor data as algorithm to define rules of the game; hack and sabotage - devising collective game with multiple players.

Saturday, February 4, 11:00–14:00, K2
Must be 18 years old to attend!

Words of advice for young pornographers
with Sergio Messina

Sergio Messina, aging porn enthusiast and Realcore expert, will take you on a little tour about the joys of good porn, the pains of bad one, the reasons to make it and the ways to become stars - also trying to establish a few golden rules to make enticing smut.

Saturday, February 4, 15:00–18:00, K2
Must be 18 years old to attend!

Paperduino-Uno – a PaperPCB Workshop
with Wolfgang Spahn

In the workshop Wolfgang Spahn will teach how to create and modify PaperPCBs (Printed Circuit Boards). As an outcome of the workshop every participant will have designed and build his or her own Paperduino-Uno.

Sunday, February 5, 12:00–16:00, K2

ARTWORKS IN THE RESOURCE PROGRAMME

R15N
by Dmytri Kleiner, Baruch Gottlieb and the Telekommunisten Network

Telekommunisten present R15N as a working telephone-based interactive installation which is available as a mobilization and engagement platform for the transmediale community.

R15N is an artwork in the form of an experimental mobile phone service which attempts to generate local community engagement and communication. After registering with the service participants will be joined together in the R15N community, able to initiate and share information about what is going on at transmediale and beyond. Every member thus eventually becomes engaged in a real conversation with another, and this engenders cohesion and complicity.

R15N is the Official Miscommunication Platform of transmediale 2012.

Please register yourself at www.r15n.net

Presentation of R15N at the opening of transmediale, Tuesday January 31, 17:00–18:30

Google – One Week Performance Piece
by Johannes P Osterhoff

From January 1 to December 31, 2011, the Interface Artist Johannes P Osterhoff has been publishing all of his search queries with the search engine Google in a One-year Performance piece called Google. Since for each search a website has been generated automatically, Osterhoff’s searches surface surprisingly well-ranked in Google’s search results. During the week of transmediale Osterhoff opens this hacking of Google’s business model to collaboration. Follow the searches of JODI, Olia Lialina, mspr0, Rene Walter and others or useGooglepublicly yourself.

Presentation as part of the panel Isolation and Empowerment after Web 2.0, Friday, February 3, 11:00–14:00, K1

PERFORMANCES IN THE RESOURCE PROGRAMME

Steam Machine Music
by Morten Riis

Steam Machine Music is a homebuilt mechanical instrument made mostly from vintage Meccano parts. The instrument is driven by a steam engine and the sound material is generated from various strings, dynamos and music boxes. But the most important sound generating part is the sound of the machine itself, the rhythmic patterns and pulsating drones of the steam engine, the squeaking of the gear trains. The instability of the entire mechanism is extremely noticeable, and displays and reflects the physicality of the machine to an extreme degree. Steam Machine Music questions the whole practice and conceptualizing of machine music in a historical perspective that points to the fact that machines always have been malfunctioning. The artist can be watched building up the Steam Machine at the opening night, followed by the performance Steam Machine Music later on. The perfomance will be repeated in a shorter version on Wednesday, February 1, in the framework of the in/compatible research practices event at K1.

Tuesday, January 31, live construction: 17:00–18:30 / performance: 20:30–21:00, K1

Watch Me Work
by Liad Hussein Kantorowicz and Kate Erhardt

Liad works as an erotic performer at an Israeli sex chat site. The usage of cameras, computers and projectors enables the viewers to peer into the live exchange of cyber sex work between sex worker and client, and compare between the sex worker’s actual experience and what is projected to the client. The performance seeks to de-exotify sex work, opting for a realistic perspective, and investigates the discrepancy between the hyped discussion about sex work as compared to the actual sex work experience.

The performance will be held in the context of the panel Commercialising Eros simultaneosly with a discussion with Jacob Appelbaum, Zach Blas, Liad Hussein Kantorowicz and Aliya Rakhmetova, moderated by Gaia Novati.

Saturday, February 4, 13:30 – 15:30, K1
Minimum age for admission 18 years!

RESOURCE LAUNCH AT TRANSMEDIALE 2012

Within the aegis of facilitating collaboration and the sharing of resources and knowledge between the transmediale festival in Berlin and the local and translocal scene engaged with art and digital culture, the reSource acts as a link between the cultural production of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology, hacktivism and politics.

After four days of talks, workshops and performances, the reSource programme at transmediale ends with a special game: Zombie Play in the Ludic Salon, reSourcing an Exquisite Media Corpse. The Ludic Interface Research Group (L.I.R.G.) cordially invites all visitors of transmediale 2012 to partake in a contemporary version of the surrealist game Le Cadavre Exquis. In the course of this event, different projects from the reSource for transmedial culture initiative will be brought into a playful dialogue with each other through aleatoric, agonal and just plain ludicrous methods.

With Mark Butler (us/de) (host), Natascha Adamowsky (de), Georg Russegger (au), Daphne Dragona (gr), Mathias Fuchs (de), Gregor Sedlag (de) and other special guests.

This initiative will include the presentation of the OutResourcing project: a collaboration project between transmediale and CEMA – Center for Experimental Media Arts at Sristhi School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.

With Prayas Abhinav (in), Linda Hilfling (dk/de) and an introduction by Kristoffer Gansing (se/de).

After transmediale 2012, reSource for transmedial culture will extend its activity into a series of events that will be held in the course of 2012 and beyond, as a way to gather and present the results as well as to continue the dialogue further, leading to the next transmediale festival in 2013. The methodology of the reSource as a peer production laboratory of knowledge, research and artistic projects, will be presented in the Auditorium of the HKW on the last day of the festival together with current reSource partners.

With Tatiana Bazzichelli (reSource for transmedial culture), Stéphane Bauer (Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien, Berlin), Oliver Baurhenn (CTM, Berlin), Clemens Apprich and Oliver Lerone Schultz (Post-Media Lab, Leuphana University Lüneburg).

A final note in the spirit of networking: participate in discussions around the reSource for transmedial culture on twitter via the hashtag #tmresource!

transmediale is a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

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.

Introductions

Preface | Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt
Why “Hacking”? | Tad Suiter

Hacking Scholarship

Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps | Jason Baird Jackson
Burn the Boats/Books | David Parry
Reinventing the Academic Journal | Jo Guldi
Reading and Writing | Michael O’Malley
Voices: Blogging | Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Mark Sample, Dan Cohen
The Crisis of Audience and the Open Access Solution | John Unsworth
Open Access Publishing | Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Open Access and Scholarly Values: A Conversation | Dan Cohen, Stephen Ramsay, and Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Voices: Sharing One’s Research | Chad Black, Mark Sample
Making Digital Scholarship Count | Mills Kelly
Theory, Method, and Digital Humanities | Tom Scheinfeldt

Hacking Teaching

Dear Students | Gideon Burton
Lectures are Bullshit | Jeff Jarvis
From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able | Michael Wesch
Voices: Classroom Engagement | Mills Kelly, David Doria, Rey Junco
Digital Literacy and the Undergraduate Curriculum | Jeff McClurken, Jeremy Boggs, Adrianne Wadewitz, Anne Ellen Geller, and Jon Beasley-Murray
What’s Wrong with Writing Essays: A Conversation | Mark Sample and Kelly Schrum
Assessment versus Innovation | Cathy Davidson
A Personal Cyberinfrastructure | Gardner Campbell
Voices: Learning Management Systems | Matt Gold, Jim Groom
Hacking the Dissertation | Anastasia Salter
How to Read a Book in One Hour | Larry Cebula

Hacking Institutions

The Absent Presence: A Conversation | Brian Croxall and David Parry
Uninvited Guests: Twitter at Invitation-only Events | Bethany Nowviskie
Unconferences | Ethan Watrall, James Calder, and Jeremy Boggs
Voices: Twitter at Conferences | Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Jason B. Jones, Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Amanda French
The Entropic Library | Andrew Ashton
The Wrong Business for Libraries | Christine Madsen
Re-imagining Academic Archives | Christopher J. Prom
Interdisciplinary Centers and Spaces | Stephen Ramsay and Adam Turner
Take an Elective | Sharon Leon
Voices: Interdisciplinarity | Ethan Watrall, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, David Parry

Conclusions

An Open Letter to the Forces of Change | Jennifer Howard
The Trouble with Digital Culture | Tim Carmody

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.

Instead, the combination of peer-to-peer with mobility enables a new concept of an information transfer infrastructure that relies on fluid, temporary, ad-hoc networks. People and devices are at once implicated as mobile nodes in this network (known in computer science as a sneakernet).

Fluid Nexus bypasses Internet intermediaries’ control over the identification and circulation of messages. This makes Fluid Nexus an important tool for activists. Access to the data stored by Fluid Nexus requires a search warrant for your own devices—or another device running the software. No identifying information regarding the sender is attached to a message, putting the sender in control. And in conjunction with other software such as ObscuraCam identities can be further obfuscated as desired or necessary.

In the event that information needs to reach a broad audience, we’ve added another feature called the Nexus. The Nexus is a space on this site for “public” messages to be automatically uploaded by any Fluid Nexus user. The Nexus includes text, audio, images, and video capabilities. The sender has control whether the message will become public or not.

For more information on Fluid Nexus, see the paper “Transnetworks and the Fluid Nexus Project”, forthcoming in Fall 2011 in the proceedings of dis/connecting/media 2009.

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”.

In the context of a rapidly growing global communications network, in which our IP is traded and which governments and corporations seek to control, what might be the role of the pirate? The media regularly report examples of minor IP theft; individuals downloading or sharing content. More recently the activities of Anonymous and Lulz have gained attention. This raises the question of piracy as political imperative, social compact and tactic of economic subversion.

The UK government’s recent Hargreaves Report “Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth” considered whether “…laws designed more than three centuries ago with the express purpose of creating economic incentives for innovation by protecting creators’ rights are today obstructing innovation and economic growth?” (Hargreaves 2011) The report’s short answer was “yes”. Its longer answer offers some positive suggestions; for example, encouraging distribution and open access to orphan works. However, more disturbing conclusions, driven by vested interests and political considerations, threaten open access to intellectual property.

The most worrying recommendation is the creation of an IP commodity market; bringing together rights’ holders and other business interests to create “the world’s first Digital Copyright Exchange”, making “…market transactions faster, more automated and cheaper”. This recommendation is made, by Hargreaves’ own admission, after receiving “evidence” from some of the largest IP holders on the planet, including Pearson, News Corporation, Reed Elsevier and the European Publisher’s Council. Hargreaves proposes a market “…providing the services global players use to license their content for world content markets”. This would benefit large-scale IP holders and speculators. “Supported by other moves to achieve easier cross border licensing in the EU, bulk licensing of large digital collections and a common code of practice for copyright collecting societies, the UK can aspire to be the leading service support centre for IP matters in the European time zone.” If implemented this would herald the full marketisation of creativity and confirm it as a speculative commodity.

This month’s discussion on empyre considers the motivations and potential value of the pirate ethos as an alternate model of creative and economic activity, especially in relation to intellectual property - perhaps the most subjective and transformative of all forms of property. We propose that piracy, including its modalities of vagrancy and vandalism, offers a contrasting model that may allow us to reclaim creativity and innovation from the chilling instrumental visions of governments and corporations. In what often appears a black and white world pirates come in shades.

Hargreaves, I (2011) http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview.htm - accessed 24 June 2011

This months guests on empyre, in the order of the weeks they will be sharing their “intellectual property”, are:

Shu Lea Cheang works with net-based installation, social interface, networked performance and film/digital production. Her work traverses hard and soft, sex and polities, fiction and reality, fantasia and earth-bound. Cheang co-initiated Kingdom of Piracy (since 2002), an online, open work space which explores piracy as the net’s ultimate art form. For KOP, she created BURN (2003), commissioned by FACT, Liverpool and shown as part of Zone of Urgency at Venice Biennale 2003. Currently she is working on UKI, (2009-2012), a viral performance/game project which merges corporal virus, viral codes and bio-hack in a scenario of code-sexing frenzy. http://kop.kein.org, http://kop.kein.org/burn, http://www.u-k-i.co

Paolo Cirio works as media artist in various fields: net-art, street-art, video-art, software-art and and experimental fiction. He has won prestigious art awards and his controversial works have been sustained by research grants, collaborations and residencies. He has exhibited in museums and art institutions worldwide. As public speaker he delivers lectures and workshops on media tactics. His works include Google will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir and Face to Facebook.

Jussi Parikka is Reader in Media & Design at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton). His books include Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (2007); The Spam Book: On Porn, Viruses and Other Anomalous Objects from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (2009); Insect Media: Archaeology of Animals and Technology (2010) and Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, Implications (2011).

Magnus Lawrie is an artist and PhD candidate at Edinburgh College of Art. He has participated in hackspaces and wireless networking communities in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe, including the Chateau Institute of Technology and the Electron Club in Glasgow. He is the recipient of the ELMCIP studentship award, researching creative digital writing practices.

Saul Albert is a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University, London, on the Media and Arts Technology Programme where he is working on Conversational Aesthetics. He works with The People Speak creating ‘tools for the world to take over itself’, and co-organises Dorkbot London, a local chapter of a global group of ‘people doing strange things with electricity’.

Julian Oliver is a New Zealander based in Berlin. Not just an Artist but a Critical Engineer, working since 1998. His work has been presented at many museums, electronic-art events and conferences, including Tate Modern, Transmediale, Ars Electronica and the Japan Media Arts Festival. His work has received several awards, including the Golden Nica at this year’s Prix Ars Electronica for a collaborative project with his studio partner Danja Vasiliev. Julian has given numerous workshops in software art, hacking, artistic game-development, information visualisation, UNIX/Linux and open source development practices. He is an advocate of free software, working exclusively with free and open source software in his own practice.

Michel Bauwens is founder of the P2P Foundation, a global collaborative interested in understanding and promoting peer production, governance and property in every domain of human life, as well as open and free (input), participatory (process) and commons-oriented (output) paradigms. Its aim is to see how the p2p ethic, open infrastructures, and institutional ecology of peer production can become the new core social norm. With Frank Theys, Bauwens co-produced TechnoCalyps, the metaphysics of technology and the end of Man, a 3-hour TV documentary. The resource base is available via http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Simon Yuill is an artist, programmer and researcher who has published with MUTE, Variant and MIT Press. He is currently working on projects with Constant VZW (Brussels) and The Strickland Distribution (Glasgow).

Also in this issue:

Towards an Archaeology of Media Ecologies: ‘Media Ecology’, Political Subjectivation and Free Radios
Michael Goddard
Autocreativity and Organisational Aesthetics in Art Platforms
Olga Goriunova
Media Ecologies and Imaginary Media: Transversal Expansions, Contractions, and Foldings
Jussi Parikka
Four Regimes of Entropy: For an Ecology of Genetics and Biomorphic Media Theory
Matteo Pasquinelli
Faulty Theory
Matthew Fuller
Subjectivity in the Ecologies of P2P Production
Phoebe Moore

“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.

We are incredibly proud to launch into our 2011 line up of discussions and welcome Simon Biggs to moderate the first discussion of the year. While Simon will be introducing the next topic, we thought it might be appropriate to send along a recap of the history and activities of –empyre- over the last several years.

-empyre- soft-skinned space is a global community of new media artists, curators, theorists, producers, and others who participate in monthly thematic discussions via an email list serve. The online discussions facilitate critical perspectives on contemporary cross-disciplinary issues, practices and events in networked media. Anyone interested can register to receive posts and participate following the link for joining at http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/.

The list is currently co-managed by Renate Ferro (USA) and Tim Murray (USA) with the help of Gabriel Menotti (UK), Nicholas Ruiz III (USA), and Simon Biggs (UK). –empyre- also welcomes guest moderators who organize discussions for one month. it enters its ninth year, empyre- soft-skinned space continues to be a platform dedicated to the plurality of global perspectives reaching out beyond the Northern Hemisphere to Asia and Latin America.

The past nine years of archived monthly discussions can be accessed (here). These -empyre- archives are currently archived by Pandora, a project of the National Library of Australia, dedicated to preserving online publications of national significance for future generations and by the Rose Goldsen Archive, as a repository of emergent ideas amongst those working at the leading edge of contemporary practice.

In January 2002, -empyre- soft-skinned space was launched by network artist, critic, and curator, Melinda Rackham (AU). -empyre- was conceived as research forum for Rackham’s PhD research at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Australia. Structured as an experimental peer arena, the community grew exponentially and within the first year Adrian Miles (AU) and Rebecca Cannon (AU) joined briefly as facilitators. Long-term facilitators Christina McPhee USA) and Michael Arnold Mages (USA) were invited to the -empyre- curatorium soon after, and during the next years they were joined by Jim Andrews (CA) and Felix Sattler (AU/GER). In 2005 Tracey Meziane (AU) and Marcus Bastos (BR) joined the team, and in 2006 and 2007 it was extended with Sérgio Basbaum (BR),(USA) Renate Ferro (USA) and Tim Murray (USA) Ferro and Murray now serve as the list’s managing moderators with the team of Nicholas Ruiz III USA), Gabriel Menotti (UK), (BR), and Simon Biggs (UK).

The -empyre- global community has supported several special projects over its nine-year history. It was featured as part of documenta 12’s Magazine Project conducting three moderated conversations in 2006 and 2007. In 2008, -empyre- collaborated with the Anderson Art Ranch, in Snowmass, Colorado, to offer two Presidential Full Merit Scholarships to members of the -empyre- community. -empyre- also has collaborated with institutions and festivals to produce dynamic online forums for physically located events. Some of those events have included the Cornerhouse in Manchester, Marcos Weskamp’s Social Circles visualization time slice of the list dynamics, in 2008 in San Francisco a special conference with City Light Books on Paul Virilio, in 2009, a special panel on “viral marketing” at Exit Art, New York City, and in 2010 a discussion held in conjunction with The Making Sense Colloquium at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

The moderating team looks forward to a new year of discussions in 2011 and wishes all of its subscribers a Happy New Year.”

Renate Ferro and Tim Murray,
Managing Co-Moderators

Now celebrating its 30th year of service to artists, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) has a distinguished history in two experimental fields, radio art and net art; it has commissioned, distributed and archived hundreds of works, thereby supporting and advancing many artists’ careers, and establishing itself as a vital resource for arts and educational institutions, and the general public. NRPA is the only organization in the United States that has as its core mission the commissioning of networked art by both emerging and established artists.

Although times are tough for many of you, we’re asking you to dig deep and make a contribution (tax-deductible for US Residents) that will enable NRPA to continue providing you with free access to our extraordinary projects: Turbulence.org, Networked_Performance, Networked_Music_Review, Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art), Upgrade! Boston, and New American Radio.

Please go to the Turbulence homepage to contribute via PayPal or check.

With Thanks and Sincere Good Wishes for 2011,

Helen Thorington and Jo-Anne Green
Co-Directors

PS: Connect with us on Facebook (turbulence.org; nrpa.org) and on Twitter.

Michel Bauwens is one of the foremost thinkers on the peer-to-peer phenomenon. Belgian-born and currently resident in Chiang-Mai, Thailand, he is founder of the Foundation for P2P (Peer-to-Peer) Alternatives, and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property.

Lawrence Bird is a designer, instructor and writer with an interest in cities and their image. He has been trained in social science-based urban design (MSc), and in the phenomenology of cinematic architecture (PhD). He’s currently working on the postdoctoral project Beyond the Desert of the Real, based in Winnipeg, Canada. He also makes films, and is currently developing a hybrid film and animation project WPG_POV.

Economies of the Commons 2 is a critical examination of the economics of on-line public domain and open access resources of information, knowledge, and media (the ‘digital commons’). The past 10 years have seen the rise of a variety of such open content resources attracting millions of users, sometimes on a daily basis. The impact of projects such as …Wikipedia, Images of the Future, and Europeana testify to the vibrancy of the new digital public domain. No longer left to the exclusive domains of digital ‘insiders’, open content resources are rapidly becoming widely used and highly popular.

While protagonists of open content praise its low-cost accessibility and collaborative structures, critics claim it undermines the established “gate keeping” functions of authors, the academy, and professional institutions while lacking a reliable business model of its own. Economies of the Commons 2 provides a timely and crucial analysis of sustainable economic models that can promote and safeguard the online public domain. We want to find out what the new hybrid solutions are for archiving, access and reuse of on-line content that can both create viable markets and serve the public interest in a competitive global 21st century information economy.

Economies of the Commons 2 consists of an international seminar on Open Video hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision on November 11 in Hilversum, a two day international conference and two public evening programs on November 12 and 13 at De Balie, centre for culture and politics in Amsterdam. The event builds upon the successful Economies of the Commons conference organised in April 2008.

Confirmed speakers include:

Charlotte Hess (Syracuse University - Keynote), Ben Moskowitz (Open Video Alliance), Simona Levi (Free Culture Forum), Bas Savenije (KB National library of the Netherlands), Yann Moulier Boutang (Multitudes), Peter B. Kaufman (Intelligent Television), Harry Verwayen (Europeana), James Boyle (Duke University), Jeff Ubois (DTN), Sandra Fauconnier (NIMK), Dymitri Kleiner (Telekommunisten), Nathaniel Tkacz (University of Melbourne), a.o.

Organisers:

Kennisland/Images for the Future Consortium / Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision / De Balie / Institute of Network Cultures University of Amsterdam, Department of New Media