www.bazzinkki.org

“The point is not good art — fulfillment in fantasy — but a new mode of life which allows fulfillment in actual life.

Sensibility which is not supported by the mode of life is mere escape”.

Henry Flint

Operation Bazzinkki by Monica Assari

Operation Bazzinkki by Giacomo Verde

Operation Bazzinkki by Petter Karlsson

]]> http://networkingart.eu/2010/07/operation-bazzinkki-26-06-10/feed/ 0 http://networkingart.eu/2010/06/event-signal-affect/ http://networkingart.eu/2010/06/event-signal-affect/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:51:00 +0000 tbazz http://networkingart.eu/?p=813 Conference-Colloquium, Aarhus University, June 12 &14, 2010, ADA building, room 333.

Crowd in Italy during a strike, 2008, from the book Sono Anna Adamolo (ed. 2009)

This conference-colloquium at the Humanistic Faculty, Aarhus University, will relate to the widespread use of the concepts event and/or affect in contemporary research of media, art, philosophy, politics and culture. It is the aim to qualify, explore and investigate the scope of the terms event and affect in different analytical fields. We assume that the renewed focus on event and affect is partly due to the impact of new (electronic and digital) media and the new forms of immediacy created by real-time control and transmission.
The conference will therefore investigate two key issues: 1) How can we describe event and affect on philosophical, artistic, political and cultural levels? 2) Has a new paradigm of the signal – related to the bypassing of representation in real-time transmissions – superseded the sign? What characterizes the signal?

By combining these questions the conference wants to initiate a broader discussion on a paradigmatic transformation from sign to signal in relation to the concepts of event and affect and their use and scope in art, politics and culture.

[The text above is an extract of the Conference's call. The arrangement team consists of: Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Britta Timm Knudsen, Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Carsten Stage, Camilla Møhring Reestorff, Mathias Bonde Korsgaard and Jonas Fritsch].

Download the program.

Keynotes:
Nigel Thrift, Brian Massumi and Erin Manning.
Speakers:
Niels Albertsen, Mads Anders Baggesgaard, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Christian Borch, Christoph Brunner, Merete Carlson, Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Leila Dawney, Carsten Friberg, Jonas Fritsch, Jan Ifversen, Britta Timm Knudsen, Mathias Bonde Korsgaard, Christoffer Kølvrå, Annette Svaneklink Jakobsen, Thomas Jellis, Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen, Thomas Markussen, Casper Høeg Radil, Carsten Stage, Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Anne Marit Waade.
Participants:
Lise Nygaard Christensen, Lise Dilling, Jette Geil, Lars Bo Løfgreen, Kirsten Marie Pedersen, Rebecca Parbo.

My paper is about networked events as political and social practices of criticism in grassroots communities. Title is: The Network Events. Networked art as a challenge for sociopolitical transformation. I will address some artistic and activist projects as an example of fertile zones of rewriting and experimentation of cultural and political codes. In particular, I will describe the Italian case of Anna Adamolo (2008-2009).

The Network Events
Networked art as a challenge for social transformation

by Tatiana Bazzichelli
In the artistic context of the past twenty years, networking art was referring to the ability of creating a map of connections in progress, and nets of relations among individuals. Since the 80s, platforms of networking have been an important tool for sharing knowledge and experience. Inspired by the early artistic practices and events of the Fluxus movement, the art of networking was based on the figure of the artist as networker: a creator of sharing platforms and of contexts for connecting and exchanging. It was not based on objects, nor solely on digital or analogical instruments, but on the relationships and processes in progress between individuals. Individuals who could in turn create other contexts of sharing.

The concept of Do-It-Yourself (self-production) was the starting point for the development of networked art, such as mail art, but also of punk culture and hacker ethic. The same Do It Yourself hands-on practice was used to describe subsequent phenomena of networking and hacktivism; from Neoism to Plagiarism, up until the 1990s, when the network dynamics were affirmed on a broader level through the use of computers and the Internet. The ‘hacktivist attitude’ referred to an acknowledgement of the net as a political space, with the possibility of decentralized, autonomous and grassroots participation. In these contexts of interaction and artistic experimentation, artists and activists worked in a critical space-in-between, a fluid territory in which to play with the structure of representation, hacking the codes of self-representation, and recombining them into something unpredictable.

In these free, active, experimental spaces, which anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1983) dubbed liminal states, new cultural elements and new combined rules can be introduced. It is in these instances that technology is used with artistic, cultural and political goals, the joint action of different subjectivities which show how it is possible to create a first step in redefining powers and hierarchies, in terms of dismantling and opening social, cultural and artistic categories. In my talk I will present some artistic and activist projects in which the practice of creating “network events” might be seen as a challenge for cultural, political and social transformation. In particular, I will address the Italian case of Anna Adamolo.

Free Beers by Superflex

Last May 21st, I ran a seminar together with Geoff Cox on the intersections between art, business and activism, at Aarhus University.

The seminar, as part of the DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Center meetings, addressed the new forms of business that emerge from the uses of social media and critical arts practices, models that offer new insights into exploitation and even new ways of creating value. Geoff and I opened  the discussion on how best to translate these topics  into future research projects (e.g. in collaboration with SNYK), while presenting a range of different concepts. The research seminar was scheduled for Friday the 21st of May, 10-12, Aarhus University.
The title “Disruptive Art of Business” derives from a paper I wrote for an upcoming book, as part of my PhD Research investigation on Networking 2.0.

Key concepts: crisis of value, debt economies, alternative models (eg. music industry), donations based models, open source business, P2P (see Peer to Peer Foundation for instance), non-monetarised exchange and the gift, free software development, waged and unwaged labour, transformation of the institution, new forms of organization that take cue from networks culture (Organized Networks), buzz words, like sustainability, recuperation and tactical media strategies, disruptive art.

References:
Fred Turner, ‘Burning Man at Google: A Cultural Infrastructure for New Media Production’. New Media & Society, Vol.11, No.1-2 (April, 2009), 145-66.
PDF: http://www.stanford.edu/~fturner/Turner%20Burning%20Man%20at%20Google%20NMS.pdf

Christian Marazzi, Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy, Semiotext(e) 2008.

Hardt & Negri’s Common-wealth
http://angeleconomics.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-of-hardt-and-negris-commonwealth.html

Davenport and Beck’s The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Economy of Business (2001)

Pine and Gilmore’s  The Experience Economy (1999).

Share festival ‘Market Forces’, 2009
http://www.toshare.it/?page_id=1641&lang=en

viralcommunication.nl
http://pzwart.wdka.nl/communication-in-a-digital-age/2010/01/26/conference-announcement-viral-communication/

Other typical sources include: Tapscott & Williams’s Wikinomics (2006); Floridi’s The Rise of the Creative Class; Eric S. Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar; all those key texts that explore the new immaterial economy enthusiastically.

After the previous common experience in Peenemünde (Germany), and in Bergen (Norway), I met again Martin Howse and Gordan Savicic in Aarhus for the Interweaving Technologies Conference (April, 22, 2010), promoted by DARC and DUL, Aarhus.

In 2008 Martin Howse organized the Peenemünde_xxxxx Workshop in the historical location of Peenemünde (where the Luftwaffe tested the V2 rocket during World War II), and with Gordan and some other people, I was part of “an intense, conspiratorial two day long working group/workshop”, following the traces of Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1972). During that time I was working on the topic of pornographic coding (inspired by the paper of Stewart Home and Florian Cramer, 2005), which I also analyzed with Stewart Home and Paolo Cirio in the previous 24h-speculative-coding-workshop organized by Martin in Bergen at the Piksel Festival (November 2007), where we created a prank on MySpace.

I was involved in the Peenemünde xxxxx workshop reflecting on the subject of pornographic coding with Gaia Novati and Federico Bucalossi from Italy. What we realized during those intense days was a video, which we called Orgasmatic Implosion. Martin and Gordan worked instead on the EM practice, ‘a landscape and the exposure of its hidden (EM – electromagnetic) double’. It was a very fulfilling experience, which we presented some days after at Transmediale 2008 in Berlin, as part of the Salon’s program (read more here).

On April 22, Martin and Gordan came to Aarhus to run two workshops: Psychogeographics Aarhus by Martin Howse and Wi-Fi cracking workshop by Gordan Savicic as part of the Interweaving Conference. You can look at some photos here.

Martin introduced us the concept of psychogeophysics, which we already experimented in Peenemuende, but this time we made an intervention in the Aarhus landscape, walking around the site of the Interweaving Conference, searching for hidden signs and electromagnetic feedback. At the end we built a psychogeophysic map of the hidden waves, sounds and skin emotions we collected during our walk.

Gordan made us understand how the WEP/WPA wireless network encryptions work, and we managed to visualize the hidden networks surrounding the infosphere, analyzing network packets and the security risks of our wireless data. We worked with Linux/Ubuntu exploring what is beyond the user graphic interface, and getting to know better the hidden levels of networking.

Due to the ash- and eruption related cancellation of the three-day seminar Interweaving Technologies – the Aesthetics of Digital Urban Living, The DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, and The Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University, organise the mini-seminar Aesthetic eruptions of the digital. The seminar is arranged by Lone Koefoed Hansen and Lars Bo Løfgreen.

It will be a 3-4 hour seminar with some talks by presenters from the Aarhus area. Additionally, there will be two workshops:  Psychogeographics Aarhus by Martin Howse (UK/DE) and Wi-Fi cracking workshop by Gordan Savicic (AU/NL).

I will be part of the panel The Politics of Networks with Geoff Cox, Søren Pold and Christian Ulrik Andersen, giving a talk entitled “Aesthetics of Common Participation and Networking Enterprises”.
Read the rest of program here. Read the workshop descriptions below (extract from the Conference’s website).

Workshop 1: Psychogeophysics Aarhus

by Martin Howse (http://www.1010.co.uk/org/)

“Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” [Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Guy-Ernest Debord]

Psychogeophysics Aarhus proposes discussion and intervention (walking) in the spectral city of Aarhus, and within the novel interdisciplinary frame of psychogeophysics, colliding and revitalising psychogeographics with earth science measurements and study; a practical investigation of urban geophysical archaeology and spectral ecologies.

Psychogeophysics Aarhus is situated within the context of a mobile research laboratory devoted to the use of free software and open hardware within the field of psychogeophysics. Workshops and working groups have been conducted within this frame in Newcastle (The Courier’s Tragedy) and in Berlin (Topology of a Future City as part of Transmediale10).

Workshop 2: Wi-fi Cracking Workshop

by Gordan Savicic (http://www.yugo.at/processing/)

The workshop will showcase the ease of cracking WEP/WPA wireless network encryptions as a way for understanding the risks of Wi-Fi networks and will provide participants with handy computer skills for the precarious offline times. Further, we’ll look at network packet capture and analysis. The workshop is open to anyone with a healthy dose of curiosity and paranoia. No prior technical experience is required. Bring your own laptop (either PC or Intel-Mac, G3/G4 Macintosh computers are not supported!)

Parla come navighi. Antologia della webletteratura italiana (Anthology of Italian Webliterature) is published. I wrote the preface, with the title: ‘Per una letteratura della partecipazione’ (’Towards a Participatory Literature’).

The Anthology is a collections of writings, poetry, essays, and reflections on the new forms of experimental  literature in the era of social media. Published by Il Foglio Letterario, is edited by Mario Gerosa, with editing assistance by Roberta Peveri.
The title might be literally translated into ’speak the way you surf’, even it makes not so much sense in English. The idea comes from ‘parla come mangi’ (speak the way you eat), the Italian common way to say ‘be simple’, ‘don’t try to be rhetoric’, or better, ‘don’t overdo when you speak’. Basically, the Anthology wants to present the microcosm of the Italian web- and network-literature, and the consequent experimental effort in creating new languages and new forms of writing by the social media users. The focus is therefore not just to use social media as a inexpressive communication tool, but to transform them into a platform of creation.

As we read in the introduction by Mario Gerosa, the digital revolution has changed the way we express our identity. Today we can get an idea of people based on how they communicate on the Internet. Once said ’speak the way you eat’, now, to understand the other, you look at the way you write on the Web. With the advent of Web 2.0 new languages are blooming and new forms of expression came to life, both designed by professionals as amateurs, all of them sharing the same enthusiasm for the new instruments of communication. Twitter in hendecasyllables and Facebook status are the starting point for existential implications; chats in Second Life tell you about complex virtual relationships; feuilleton weblogs, experimental novels to read on the screen are some of the new expressions that form the galaxy of the Italian webilterature. A new trend, yet to be discovered and analyzed, which reconciles opposites, and next to the Neo-avantguardes which Internet advocates, show the dear, old, good poetry, re-enacted in the virtual domains. This Anthology offers a first taste of this new literature, a first result of the Web 2.0 communication phenomenon, an invitation to get to know a rich and unexplored territory from virtual worlds to social networks.

Last Friday, on April 9, 2010, I presented the topics of this Anthology at the the Department of Language, Literature & Culture, Italian culture (http://italiensk.au.dk) of Aarhus University,  together with the ones of my book Networking. La rete come arte | The Net as Artwork, published in Italian in December 2006 by Costa & Nolan (Milan) and in English by DARC, the Digital Aesthetics Research Center of Aarhus, 2009 – with the Preface by Derrick de Kerckhove. Starting from the idea of networking (which we found in the concept of participatory literacy, as well) I investigated the development of net art, hacker art and digital culture in Italy. The seminar presented some Italian artistic and activist projects and ended with the analysis of the new forms of experimentation in social media.

If you are interested, this is the link to buy the Italian Anthology of Webliterature.

"JODI: Something Wrong is Nothing Wrong", Ad by Motherboard TV (DELL)

Keywords:  counterculture, social networking, Web 2.0, business & advertisement.

The above image, published in VICE magazine Vol 7 Nr 2 (2010), is an advertisement for the social networking platform Motherboard TV, sponsored by DELL. But people into digital culture would immediately recognize something else.
The advertisement shows a reconstruction of the homepage http://wwwwww.jodi.org, a work by the Dutch artists JODI.org, a very well known symbol of the early net.art. JODI were part of a recent show at Eyebeam gallery in New York (December 2009) and got interviewed by the team of Motherboard TV (see here).
But this advertisement, branded by DELL, might also be the symbol of something more. What were once the values and philosophy of the hacker ethic are since some years the domain of many of the business companies which represent the development of “Web 2.0” and contributed to create the notion of social media. I have analyzed this matter on an article which is going to be published on the next issue of the Arnolfini journal, ‘Concept Store’ (Bristol, UK) .

The ideas of sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers and the hand-on imperative of the hackers’ imaginary, today are strictly connected with the use of commercial platforms. We are facing a progressive commercialization of contexts of software development and sharing, which want to appear open and progressive (very emblematic is the motto “Don’t be evil” by Google), but which are indeed transforming the meaning of communities and networking, and the battle for information rights, placing it into the boundaries of marketplace.This process is changing the meaning of collaboration and art itself.

In the last half of the twentieth century Avant-garde art practices from Fluxus to mail art have promised the creation of collaborative art and the production of new models of sharing knowledge. Today, social networking platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Second Life have established themselves among Internet users, representing a successful model of connecting people, an a successful business strategy. But these networking platforms have their roots in a series of experimental activities in the field of art and technology started in the last half of the twentieth century which  transformed the conception of art as object into art as a network of relationships, possibilities of collectively intervening in the creation of an artistic product.

For example, the figure of the artist as a creator of sharing platforms and of contexts for exchanging is part of a background of artistic and technological experimentation from Fluxus and mail art to hacktivism and net.art; collective identities and multiple singularity projects have direct references on the Luther Blissett Project and the Neoist network-web conspiracy (as I wrote on my previous book Networking, 2006). Today, techniques of networking developed in grassroots communities have inspired the structure of Web 2.0 platforms and have been used as a model to expand the markets of business enterprises. The principal success of a Web 2.0 company or a networking enterprise comes from the ability of enabling communities, providing shared communication tools and folksonomies.

Is it today still possible to speak about “counterculture”, when social networking has become the motto of the Web 2.0 business? Digital economy and artistic subversive practices look fully interconnected. It should not surprise that Motherboard TV choose the work of JODI to represent its corporate image, writing on it: “JODI: Something Wrong is Nothing Wrong. Viruses, 404s, spam, and other exquisite works of art”. The marketing is demonstrating to have learned the lesson very well: “language is a virus from outer space”, wrote William S. Burroughs.

The act of responding with a radical opposition does not look like an effective practice anymore. Artists should probably answer becoming cultural viruses themselves, generating cultural Trojan Horses – or better, social hacks – adopting the strategy of disruptive business as a model of artistic creation. The understanding of how network business works might show the way. Creative intersections between business and art become an important territory for the re-invention and rewriting of symbolic and expressive codes. A possible field of intervention  to create artistic, cultural and political experiences, using the unexpected, and a deep level of irony and social criticism.

Venue: Culture Lab, Space 4/5, Newcastle, UK
Time/Date: 9th March 2010 – 10th March 2010, 09:00 – 17:00
AHRC funded Collaborative Research

I am leaving for Newcastle to attend the event: Creative Digital Media Research Practice: Production Through Exhibition. It is an AHRC funded Collaborative Research Training project on digital media, art research and curating. I’ll be part of a a panel on Do It Yourself research practice (moderated by Lalya Gaye) and I am going to present the topics of my current research at Aarhus University, Networking 2.0, An aesthetic, technological and social critique of collective art. I will also share my methodological approach, which is inspired by the Ethnographic Surrealism of James Clifford, (1981) and present my current investigation, which combines a multi-semiotic approach, and an empirical “intermedia” of networking practices, hacker and activist strategies.

Here is a description of the event – my talk is scheduled on the afternoon of March 10, Culture Lab, Newcastle.

“The aim of the series is to bring together post-graduate students of digital media art practice and curating with specialists in the field in order to share research methodologies and enhance the level of cross disciplinary understanding. We seek to integrate the specialist methodologies of digital media into the wider fields of arts and design.

We bring to the table the complete lifecycle of digital media art, from education to production to dissemination, exhibition and interpretation. This holistic approach is of fundamental importance now that digital media art is increasingly accepted in a broader range of traditional cultural, institutional, and gallery contexts. Outreach will focus on bringing students, practitioners, and curators into dialogue to share methodologies, knowledge, and experience”.

Stay Tuned!

Lynn Hershmann Leeson. Photo by Tatiana Bazzichelli

I met Lynn Hershman Leeson in her studio in California Street for an interview for my PhD research during my visiting scholarship in San Francisco / Stanford. I got to know her through Henrik Bennetsen of the Stanford Humanities Lab. She invited me at the San Francisco Art Institute to attend a preview-screening of her upcoming film: Women Art Revolution, which is currently in post-production. After the screening we got a questionnaire, to give her our first impressions on the film. The film, coming out in the Fall of this year, is about the evolution of the Feminist Art Movement in the United States. I was very impressed by the comprehensive works of Lynn, by the amount of interviews with women artists she did in the course of the past thirty years,  and how, already in the Seventies, she managed to develop one of the first experiments in the  creation of multiple identities, transforming her own life in the one of her alter ego: Roberta Breitmore.

My interview with Lynn is going to be published in the upcoming summer issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac. Here is an excerpt of it:

“Lynn artistic work starting in the Sixties investigated the transformation of the social itself. Through her artificially constructed alter-egos, active both in real and virtual life, cultural symbols are recomposed according to unedited modalities. Gender power structures, the representation of subjectivity, or the artificial construction of identities – all these have found perfect balance in her works.
Lynn Hershman Leeson has created a critical reflection, putting her body on the performance stage through more than thirty years, starting in the seventies with the creation of the multiple personality Roberta Breitmore, and continuing through her works into this day with her upcoming film about the Women Art Revolution. They stress the cultural implication of gender in daily life, rewriting the codes of art and technology. Dynamics of interaction, dialogue and collective exchange acquire a particular relevance in her works”.

More info about Lynn’s work are here: www.lynnhershman.com

Check the film website: womenartrevolution.com ]]> http://networkingart.eu/2010/03/women-art-revolution-a-film-by-lynn-hershman-leeson/feed/ 0 http://networkingart.eu/2010/02/hackerspace-in-aarhus/ http://networkingart.eu/2010/02/hackerspace-in-aarhus/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:25:59 +0000 tbazz http://networkingart.eu/?p=532 Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 5:00pm – 7:00pm. SpringLab, Finlandsgade 24A, Aarhus.

Yesterday was the opening night of Hack Århus, the new hacker space in the city of Århus. A lot of people came despite the snow storm and we had fun with some talks, hack-presentations and circuit bending. I gave a short speech about the roots of hacker ethics and the background of hackerspaces, with examples from Italy, Germany and California.

There were some people from Labitat, the hackerspace in Copenhagen, who shared their experience with us, and some projects presentations followed – like the very interesting one about the coding-wooden-sculpture machine from Jacob Pedersen, who is one of the initiators of the Hackerspace.

Some more info about Hack Aarhus:

Hack Århus is an informal meeting place for everyone interested in the creative use of technology in the broadest sense. Hack Århus is trying to build an open space where people of diverse backgrounds come together to share resources and knowledge to build things, create digital art or hack in general.

The kick-off event introduced the Hack Århus hackerspace as well as the ideas and projects behind it to everyone interested: a couple short talks and a hands-on workshop afterward.

With guests from the Labitat, the hackerspace in Copenhagen, as well as from Aarhus University.

Program:

• 17.00 – 17.20 :: What the Hack? – A Short Trip into the Roots of Hackerspaces and Hacker Ethics
• 17.20 – 17.40 :: Labitat – Experiences from a Hackerspace in Copenhagen
• 17.40 – 17.50 :: Hack Århus – State of Affairs
• 17.50 – 18.00 :: short break
• 18.00 – 18.15 :: Projects I – A CNC Machine for Every Home
• 18.15 – 18.30 :: Projects II – Arduino for Fun and Profit
• 18.30 – 19.00 :: Workshop – Circuit bending (bring fun stuff!)

More info at: http://www.hackaarhus.dk/