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

Plausible Artworlds: Pad.ma — Potluck and Skype Conversation :: August 17, 2010; 6:00 – 8:00 pm :: skype “basekamp” and/ or 723 Chestnut St, 2nd floor, Philadelphia, PA.

The Pad.ma project is a result of the efforts of oil21.org from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and three organizations from Mumbai: Majlis, Point of View and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP.

Pad.ma, short for Public Access Digital Media Archive, is an interpretative web-based video archive, which works primarily with footage rather than “finished” films. Pad.ma provides access to material that is easily lost in the editing process as well as in the filmmaking economy, and in changes of scale brought about by digital technology. Continue reading

mez breeze wrote: In 2008, several articles here at Augmentology examined the concepts of Synthetic Presencing and Synthapticism. Both concepts are part of a theoretical framework that attempts to explain developing cultural > augmentological patterns. Presencing embodies a rethink of conventional entertainment modes:

Fiction and non-fiction classifications are designed to map to boundaries of known forms [think: cinema, literature, television and music]. They are so designed to provoke audience responses introspectively and externally. Current synthetic practices are refashioning this entertainment base via the perpetuation of types of unintentional and deliberately augmented recreation. These recreation types are reliant on immediacy of response, play, and Pranksterism. Continue reading

Everyone is a Designer In the Age of Social Media by Mieke Gerritzen and Geert Lovink, BIS Publishers.

Everyone is a Designer, Manifest for the Design Economy presents the Choice
Generation of 2010. Looking back at the first edition (2000), when we proposed the idea of democratization of design, a decade later this programmatic statement has become reality. We are designing our social lives, make our own choices, and create it all together! This book signals a new aesthetic movement of collaborism: a combination of socially, technologically and economically driven systematically generated visuals. A hierarchy of levels and layers, pulldown menus, buttons and blogrolls that give us access and possibilities to create visuals using style sheets, templates, renderings and frameworks for the look & feel of today’s design. Continue reading

[Image: Collaborative art illustrating how culture has become collaborative especially with the Internet. (Wes Bausmith Laila / Los Angeles Times)] Technology changes how art is created and perceived by Neal Gabler, Special to the Los Angeles Times — Through the Internet, video games, YouTube, Twitter, et al, original art is sampled and re-envisioned by anyone who can master the computer skills. But where does art end and amateurism begin?

It used to be so simple. A book had an author; a film, a screenwriter and director; a piece of music, a composer and performer; a painting or sculpture, an artist; a play, a playwright. You could assume that the work actually erupted more or less full-blown from these folks. Continue reading

[Image: Two Textual Instruments by Noah Wardrip-Fruin with Brion Moss, David Durand, and Elaine Froehlich] From the Page to the Screen to Augmented Reality: New Modes of Language-Driven Technology-Mediated Research :: July 12, 2010; 9:00 am – 6:00 pm :: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Rooms JG3002 and JG3003, John Galsworthy Building, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE.

Keynote Speaker: Jay David Bolter — Elite and Popular: Digital Art and Literature in an Era of Social and Locative Media: The relationship between digital literature and the literary mainstream has always been complicated. Despite a growing body of creative work, digital authors still have difficulty attracting the attention of traditional readers and critics. Continue reading

The 26th Annual CHArt Conference: Technology and ‘the death of Art History’ :: November 10-11, 2010 :: London, UK :: Call for Papers — Deadline Extended: June 30, 2010.

In recent decades the traditional practices of Art History have come increasingly under attack. This has led to changes so extreme that some have talked of the ‘death of Art History’. The CHArt 2010 Conference wishes to explore the role of digital technologies in the disruption of Art History and the profound changes in the way that we display, consume and study art.

In 1985, when CHArt was founded, new technologies only had a minimal impact on Art History. Twenty-five years on they have transformed the entire artistic process, from the creation and presentation of art, to its reception, dissemination and research. Reflecting on these changes, we will consider how Art History has evolved and in what ways digital technologies will continue to affect and transform the discipline in the future. Continue reading

via Olia Lialina (nettime)

[Image: ‘Nine Steps to Collaborative Composites’ qthomasbower @flickr] Mashup Cultures, Sonvilla-Weiss. Stefan (Ed.), Springeren: This volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers and scholars together with young researchers and students, proposing a colourful spectrum of media-theoretical, -practical and -educational approaches to current creative practices and techniques of production and consumption on and off the web. Along with the exploration of some of the emerging social media concepts, the book unveils some of the key drivers leading to participatory engagement of the User.

Mashup Cultures presents a broader view of the effects and consequences of current remix practices and the recombination of existing digital cultural content. Continue reading

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