Video Vortex Reader II :: Call for Contributions — DEADLINE: May 10, 2010.

In response to the increasing potential for video as a significant form of personal media on the Internet, the Video Vortex program examines key issues that are emerging around the independent production and distribution of online video content. With the rise of YouTube and alternative platforms, the moving image on the Internet has become expansively more prominent and popular. As a wide range of technologies is now broadly available, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has reached a totally new dimension. Continue reading

Fibreculture Journal # 15: What Now? The Imprecise and Disagreeable Aesthetics of Remix :: From the Editorial:

It became a minor phenomenon during 2007. By September 2009 it was a virus out of control. Described in Wired as a “popular internet meme” (Wortham, 2008), the obsessive serial mash-up of a key sequence from Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 film of the last days of Adolf Hitler, Der Untergang (The Downfall), is suggestive of the cultural logic of the contemporary formation known as remix. Remix culture is comprised of what could loosely be termed amateurs and professionals engaged in the practice of creatively re-using found material. The distinction is useful in identifying the aesthetic and material differences between dedicated intermedia remix artists (Negativland, Martin Arnold, Craig Baldwin, Soda_Jerk), artists who incorporate elements of remix into a broader audiovisual practice (Philip Brophy, Candice Breitz, Christian Marclay, John Zorn) and the vernacular audio-visual mash-up/remake/dub/scratch aesthetics associated with a broad range of online practices. Continue reading

直接当下：网络文化与现实诗学 by Kazys Varnelis; Chinese Translation by Lily & Honglei:

在整个九十年代，数字计算和网络技术在很大程度上只应用于办公室工作，其文化影响仅限于个别专有领域的爱好者。如果说这十年的新媒体艺术形成了一种非常重要的艺术亚文化，它基本上还是孤立和自我参照的，部分原因是由于艺术家们对黑客文化的迷恋，由于长期以来格林伯格主义者 (Greenbergian) 的艺术审察, 还由于艺术机构将其边缘化. 在电脑离开有限的用户群体, 成为有广泛社会功能之前,瓦克﹒寇司克 (Vuk Cosic)，朱迪(Jodi)，阿列克谢﹒舒利金 (Alexei Shulgin)，和希思﹒班廷 (Heath Bunting) 等艺术家重演了二十世纪初的前卫战略，同时将图形与八十年代黑客文化的程序演示平等化[1].

今天，相比之下，数字技术，是日常生活中的明确无误的存在，并逐渐与地来自主流社会的需要和公约不可分割的. 网络文化是一个广泛的社会文化的转变，就像后现代性，并不限于科技发展或“新媒体” [2]. 正因为数字和网络技术的成熟与当代文化是不可分割的, 我们必须在更宽广的背景下理解其, 事实上, 这甚至比电视产生于后现代的现象更令人瞩目. 今天, 可以说, 所有的艺术都是网络艺术的一种延伸.

Mark Amerika: Unreal Time :: until January 3, 2010 :: National Museum of Contemporary Art, Building of the Athens Conservatory, Vas. Georgiou Β 17 -19 & Rigillis street, Athens.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art presents for the first time in Greece, a retrospective exhibition of the American artist and pioneer in the media arts field, Mark Amerika. The first presentation of his work in Greece took place in the framework of EMST’s online exhibition titlted e-critures (2008).

By emphasizing the construction of new digital identities and fictional personas, as well as the cross-correlation of new histories and mythologies in website, Amerika investigates the ways by which the somatic-sensory experience evolves into a new “Life Style Practice”. Continue reading

[Image capture, July 11, 2009, http://hulu.com] The following text was originally published during the month of August, 2009 as part of Drain’s Cold issue… The text is republished in full on Remix Theory with permission.

In 1964 Marshal McLuhan published his essay “Media Hot and Cold,” in one of his most influential books, Understanding Media.[1] The essay considers the concepts of hot and cold as metaphors to define how people before and during the sixties related to the ongoing development of media, not only in Canada and the United States but also throughout the world.[2] Since the sixties, the terms hot and cold have become constant points of reference in media studies. However, these principles, as defined by McLuhan, have changed since he first introduced them. What follows is a reflection on such changes during the development of media in 2009.” Continue reading at Remix Theory >>

Conference and Performanes: Network as a Space & Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice :: November 8 - 10, 2009 :: University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.

This conference will focus on the increasing use of the network as a space and medium for collaborative interdisciplinary art practices including electronic literature and other network based art forms. Researchers will present papers exploring new network-based creative practices that involve the cooperation of small to large-scale groups of writers, artists, performers, and programmers to create online projects that defy simple generic definitions and disciplinary boundaries. Continue reading

Read | Write The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality by Kazys Varnelis — in Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art):

ABSTRACT: Network culture is not limited to digital technology or to the Internet but rather is a broad sociocultural shift. Under network culture both art and everyday life take mediation as a given. Life becomes performance, taking place in a culture of exposure in exchange for self-affirming feedback from the net. This chapter explores the role of this poetics of the real in cultural production from YouTube to the gallery. The new poetics of reality is not the traditional realism. Earlier codes are replaced by immediacy, self-exposure, performance, and remix.

Strip, split, join, print: Digital Writing with Python Final Performance :: August 5, 2009; 7:00 - 8:30 pm :: Interactive Telecommunication Program, New York University, 721 Broadway, 4th floor, Room 447, New York City.

Over the course of the Summer semester, seven NYU students have composed, mangled, generated and remixed text with their new programming language of choice: Python. Student projects under development include programs to generate Fibonacci creation myths, stochastic Walt Whitman madlibs, e.e. cummings/Twitter mashups, and new poetic forms based on Gone With The Wind.

After an intense semester, these students gather for one night only to perform their textual creations. All are welcome to this evening of experimental performances of digital writing! Continue reading

[Image: Visualizations of Remix Culture by Participatory Media Lab. Also see Remix Culture: Creative Reuse and the Licensing of Digital Media in Online Communities]

Mapping the Global Commons: A Quantitative Perspective on Free Cultural Practice — a talk by Giorgos Cheliotis :: July 14, 2009; 12:30 pm :: Berkman Center, Harvard University, 23 Everett Street, second floor, Cambridge, MA + webcast live :: RSVP required.

Where in the world are people using Creative Commons licenses? How much content is licensed under Creative Commons and what are the individual, social and cultural factors that influence adoption? Also, what happens after content is made available for remixing under an open license? What kind of ‘cultural flows’ emerge from ad-hoc, large-scale remixing activity and how do these vary under different incentives for production? These are the questions I will attempt to sketch an answer for, combining data analysis, visualizations, and individual, qualitative perspectives. Continue reading

“‘Pirate Philosophy’ explores how the development of various forms of so-called internet piracy is affecting ideas of the author, the book, the scholarly journal, peer review, intellectual property, copyright law, content creation and cultural production that were established pre-internet. To this end it contains a number of contributions that engage with the philosophy of internet piracy, as well as the emergence out of peer-to-peer file sharing networks of actual social movements - even a number of political ‘Pirate Parties’.1

So much so usual for a publication on the topic perhaps. What makes this issue of Culture Machine a little different is, firstly, its refusal to ascribe an intrinsic or essential value to piracy… ” Introduction to Pirate Philosophy by Gary Hall, Culture Machine, Vol. 10 (2009). Continue reading