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.

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!

Promoted by DUL: Digital Urban Living and DARC: Digital Aesthetics Research Center.
Presented by Tatiana Bazzichelli.

Sirikata (www.sirikata.com) is a BSD licensed open source platform for games and virtual worlds. The platform has grown out of a several years of research at Stanford University, initiated by Media X, and the current ambition is to expand into a fully community run open source project. At the Stanford Humanities Lab we have built practical projects that explores potential futures of collaboration, cultural institutions and musical performance. Bennetsen will demonstrate and discuss this work in context of new technological possibilities offered by Sirikata.

Bio:

In his role as associate director of the Stanford Humanities Lab Henrik Bennetsen maintains a strong interest in 3D collaborative spaces and open source technology. He is heading the Speed Limits research project, a collaboration with the Danish Bornholm’s Kunstmuseum on how 3D collaborative technologies may augment traditional cultural institutions. As part of this, he is deeply involved in the development of the open source Sirkata platform for the deployment of games and virtual worlds. Previously Henrik lead the Lifesquared research project that explored animating traditional archives using new technology. In 2007 he co-founded the Stanford Open Source Lab that has since grown to about 60 members from across the Stanford community. Henrik is Danish and has a MSc. In Media Technology and games from the IT University of Copenhagen and a BSc. in Medialogy from Aalborg University. Before his return to the world of academia Henrik was a professional musician and still has a strong side interest in creative self expression augmented by technology.

AHAcktitude 2009, Milan

The community of aha@lists.ecn.org, the Italian mailing list on art and hacktivism is organizing a 3 day event in Milan at the Cantiere Social Centre. They called it AHAcktitude, as a collective development of the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism project which I founded in 2001. I will contribute via Skype from San Francisco with a presentation on the topics I am researching during my visiting scholarship at Stanford University (starting August 2009).
The name of my presentation is: From Silicon Valley with Love, and it will connect art, tech and grassroots projects in the Bay Area (Saturday November 28, 9.30pm).

Here is the AHAcktitude press announcement:

In Milan on the 27, 28, and 29th of November the artivists of the AHA mailing list will meet at the “Il Cantiere” social centre.
Activist-artists, artistic hackers, social-artistic activists, call them  whatever you like. The 600 subscribers to the AHA mailing list are just a small part of all those people who, in Italy and in the world, know that the medium is not just the message, but the massage and the ‘mixage’. They know that it is not enough to complain about TV (be it mainstream, communitarian or niche), or blabber on about alternative communication, because the experience must be developed, and because communication without bodies only communicates stereotypes, and the body without intelligence only produces manipulation.

For this reason from last year the subscribers of aha@list.ecn.org meet face to face periodically, each time in a different city, to open the black boxes, to get their hands inside the technological devices for communication and imagination, to deconstruct the official knowledge and share new knowledge, to work at collective intelligence of bodies and not at capital intelligence, to broaden the resistance to globalization of multinationals.

AHAcktitude will be three days of activity and activism, of enjoyment and sharing, of study and fun. Technology, music, Internet, literature, telecommunications, marketing and social networks: everything will be targeted at open sourcing and open sharing. Methods, approaches, attitudes that are different but that communicate in order to explore, understand, and act in our condition of technologically modified beings.
Because human beings are worth more than merchandise, and we will not be satisfied while the life of someone who has more is worth more than the life of someone who has nothing.

aha@lists.ecn.org is an Italian mailing list created in 2002 within the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism project, founded by Tatiana Bazzichelli,
aka T_Bazz. AHA wants to promote networking and critical thinking, connecting artistic practices to political and social activism. We define these practices as artivism.

(Txt from the AHAcktitude community website)

More info:

AHAcktitude 2009:
http://www.ahacktitude.org/event/2009/
Social Network:
www.ahacktitude.org

AHA mailing list:
http://lists.ecn.org/mailman/listinfo/aha

AHA – Activism-Hacking-Artivism:
www.ecn.org/aha