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

Dear Friends,

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.

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.

Economies of the Commons 2 :: November 11-13 2010 :: De Balie & Hilversum - Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid, Amsterdam.

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. Continue reading