Network as Material: An Interview with Julian Oliver by Taina Bucher, Furtherfield.org: Continue reading

Diorama Panorama: Zoe Beloff Gets Inside Your Brain with 3D Movies and Models in ‘The Somnambulists’ by Tanja Laden, LA Weekly Blogs:

“Using early media like 19th century stereopticon slides, found footage and her own original 3D films, Zoe Beloff is a scavenger who makes quirky, multidimensional pieces of multimedia. She describes herself as a “medium” who speaks through artifacts of the past to create visual commentaries on the psychological implications of technology and civilization. Continue reading

Anxieties of Social Networking: An interview with Liz Filardi by Taina Bucher on Furtherfield.org:

“Liz Filardi is a New York City-based performance artist who often works in public space. She was recently awarded a Turbulence Commission for a networked performance piece called I’m Not Stalking You; I’m Socializing, exploring the anxieties of social networking in three modules. “Status Grabber,” the first module, is a satirical online service that extends the status update phenomenon to participation over the telephone. “Black & White,” the second module, is a Facebook-like website, consisting of two interlinked profiles, that tells the story behind one of the original cases of criminal stalking in America. “Facetbook,” the final module, is a performance piece in which the artist compiles a series of archives of her live Facebook profile to illustrate the tension of online identity — between the façade of a profile and the more telling story of how the profile changes over time. The interview was conducted by Taina Bucher, PhD fellow in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo, Norway. Bucher and Filardi met in Greenwich Village, New York City in May, 2010.” Continue reading here.

FluxRadio — a podcast curated by Joe Gilmore and Rhiannon Silver — explores some of the concepts and ideas behind the music and performance pratice of Fluxus. Featuring sound pieces by George Maciunas, La Monte Young, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, George Brecht, Yoko Ono and others, the programme charts the emergence of Fluxus through 60s avant-garde New York, examining the relationship to John Cage, Zen Buddhism and European avant-garde music.

Summary: The Fluxus movement was an international network of artists which emerged in New York in the early 1960s. Artists who were at some time involved include: Yoko Ono, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson and Jackson Mac Low. Many Fluxus artists met through the various experiments which were happening in musical education in 1950s America – most notable amongst these for the emergence of Fluxus, was John Cage’s class in musical composition at the New School of Social Research in New York. Continue reading

Hans Ulrich Obrist In Conversation with Hakim Bey, e-flux Journal #21:

[...] “HUO: I also wanted to ask you about the origins of T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, which is a book that changed the way I approached exhibitions … Most of my exhibitions in the ‘90s, and … Utopia Station in the 2000s, relinquished the curatorial master plan in favor of being temporary autonomous zones in which we would basically invite collectives and artists to curate shows within the show. So for me it was a toolbox for curating, and I always wondered how you came to write that book, how its genesis came about?

HB: Well, the real genesis was my connection to the communal movement in America, my experiences in the 1960s in places like Timothy Leary’s commune in Millbrook. And of course the main criticism of this activity is that it didn’t last. But these things tend to be very ephemeral — if a secular commune lasts in America for ten years, it’s a miracle. Usually only the religious ones last longer than a generation — and usually at the expense of becoming quite authoritarian, and probably dismal and boring as well. Continue reading

Interview with Michel Bauwens, founder of Foundation for P2P Alternatives by Lawrence Bird, on Furtherfield.org:

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.

SON[I]A #116: Interview with Kenneth Goldsmith (17′48”) — poet, university professor, and founder and main editor of Ubuweb, the Internet’s largest archive of artistic avant-garde material. An underground project that has no institutional backing or budget of any kind, Ubuweb is an influential repository that is as exhaustive as it is personal, reflecting the preferences, quirks and obsessions of its creator.

SON[I]A talks to Goldsmith about the origins, ideas and operation of Ubuweb:
Continue reading

Howard Rheingold - Networking the Community :: e- interviewed by Eric Kluitenberg for Scan Magazine “Community Networking,” 1993 (via nettime):

In 1993 Howard Rheingold wrote a remarkable book called The Virtual Community. In this book he gives what might best be called a personal account of the expanding culture of people communicating via computer networks. I asked him some questions about the relationship between virtual and traditional communities, most appropriately, via e-mail.

Howard Rheingold has been publishing books and articles on computer culture for many years. He is the multimedia columnist for Publish magazine and editor of Whole Earth Review. He has also been a consultant to the US office of Technology Assessment, and recently he took charge of Planet Wired a network project that will document the digital revolution with local examples, made accessible via the Net to a world-wide audience. Continue reading

Media-N, Fall 2010: V.6 N.2 - Dynamic Coupling:

How can one navigate an art career based upon collaborative practice? And an academic career where collaboration is pivotal…how can it work? Continue reading

Annie Abrahams: Allergic To Utopias — Interview by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X], Digicult.

What makes for a livable world is no idle question. It is not merely a question for philosophers. (…) Somewhere in the answer we find ourselves not only committed to a certain view of what life is, and what it should be, but also of what constitutes the human (…). - (Butler, Judith Undoing Gender New York and Abigton: Routledge, 2004, p. 17)

Annie Abrahams, born in the Netherlands, has been based in France since 1985. She holds a doctorate in biology from the University of Utrecht and is a graduate in fine arts from the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Arnhem. Continue reading