Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Date November 2007 / Category News
The first Rotterdam Barcamp ever took place at the Worm. It was a packed evening with very exciting presentations on software development and socio-political issues.
Denis Jaromil Rojo gave a talk on piracy and file sharing and discussed option for anonymous access.
Media design student Danja Vasiliev presented a modified ADSL router that was turned into a camera with automatic picture upload to a server through open WLANs.
Audrey Samson talked about the efforts of the Genderchangers to teach woman in using software. Criticizing open source software development for blindness in gender issues Femke Snelting from Constant hit the mark. The unfolding discussion was filled with gender essentialism and revealed how important it is to revisit developer's culture and its relation to the produced artifacts.
Thiago Noaves from Brazil talked about open source operated online radio broadcasting and how the government's increased funding is changing the Brazilian open source scene.
Socio-political issues were crucial in most of the presentations. It was clear that technology is never just means but reveals society and its regulations and codes. Hopefully the debate will develop further bringing together people from software development as well as from humanities and policy making. The first BarCamp was a good start and hopefully it establishes as regular event.
Date September 2007 / Category News
The recent trend in Germany towards surveillance is threatening civil rights seriously. The right wing minister for Inner Affairs even requires clandestine online searching of personal computers next to wiretapping, and data retention. This would be similar to house searches without even notifying the occupants. The constitutional legality does not approve the practice why CDU and CSU politicians currently try to change the laws. The plans for data retention of all citizen's Internet traffic, phone calls, e-mails and even the logging of geographical location in relation to mobile phone communication will be in effect soon. A growing group of concerned citizens is organizing actions for defending what is left of our civil rights.
The Institute for Network Cultures is hosting a conference on networks and theorizing networks. Since the term network gained rather a dimension of epistemology and describes as a metaphor not only telecommunication connections but also the way we "live, work and play" it is necessary to reflect on its meaning and use.
The conference New Network Theory takes place from 28-30 June 2007 at the University of Amsterdam
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Date April 2007 / Category News
The MIT Media In Transition Conference (April 27-29) is focusing on "creativity, ownership and collaboration in the digital age." The use of contemporary media provokes an optimistic description of the user's agency and the participation in the culture industries. This bias makes several issues explicit: Amateur culture which accompanied the mass production of consumer goods for decades, takes place on a global scale. The culture industry is extended into user communities which co-construct products by changing, modifying and innovating. Besides an entire cultural production takes place beyond the conventional channels of production and development.
But the 'socialization of production means' does not necessarily change issues of ownership and control.
The concept of participatory culture recalls how debates on technology development were nourishing a technological imaginary of the consumer's "emergence from self imposed immaturity."
In my talk I revisit concepts of participation and relate user participation to the socio-technical ecosystem wherein the cultural production emerges. (read the abstract)
MIT5: creativity, ownership and collaboration in the digital age. April 27-29, MIT.
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Date March 2007 / Category News
The forthcoming Dutch Electronic Art Festival is emphasizing "messy, sloppy interactions: interaction whose outcome is malleable and not definitive." Sounds good so far, and a look upon the program shows some most interesting events scheduled: The Evening of Knowbotic Research promises a Black Benz Race, a semi-fictional race in the migrational space between Switzerland and Albania. It deals with creating and using local communities to stimulate migration from one country into the other.
The seminar Not Everything is Interaction revisits the concepts of interactivity. The exhibition is assembled around concepts of interactivity in media art and presenting contemporary and almost classical works of the young field of media art. These are only a few examples from the comprehensive festival program. The festival will take place at the Las Palmas in Rotterdam.
Date September 2007 / Category News
The festival 'Nieuwe Grond: the Artist as Opinion Leader' features next a series of interesting lectures and performances an event with the notorious Yes Men. The Yes Men have infiltrated the public communication of corporate companies as Exxon, Halliburton, and Dow Chemicals, and deliver lectures as representatives of the World Trade Organisation. Their pranks involve a WTO call for legalizing slavery, a Dow Chemical press release pretending to pay appropriate compensation for the victims of the scandalous Bophal accident in 1984, and a call for replacing the democratic voting system through selling the votes to the highest bidder. Besides the lecture 'Roping and Branding: Riding the Corporate Bull with the Yes Men' the event features the documentary 'The Yes Men'.
Festival, Nieuwe Grond: The Artist as Opinion Leader,
September 27th - 30th, Landgoed De Horst, Driebergen (NL)
Lecture, Roping and Branding: Riding the Corporate Bull with the Yes Men,
Saturday 27th September, 17:30-19:30
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The graduation show of the Piet Zwart Institute master program in Media Design takes place at WORM Rotterdam. On Saturady July 7th Florian Cramer, head of the MA Media Design, gives an exclusive tour for the new media master students from Utrecht University. The exhibition covers a wide range of topics, from mash up web sites, over hardware hacking and critical software design to performance.
Piet Zwart Media Design Master, graduation show at WORM
The Amsterdam based Virtueel Platform is hosting a conference on the so called Web 2.0. Focus of presentations and debates are the promises and visions of participation, business opportunities and new ways of citizenship emphasized in countless glowing comments and articles. Not everybody shares the unreserved hype and critical remarks are published on the social-by-design buzz.
The conference attempts to cover the dissent and presents speakers arguing as oppositional as Charles Landbeater, an advocate for 'collective intelligence' and Andrew Keen, author of the Anti Web 2.0 Manifesto.
Virtueel Platform launched a 'Culture 2.0' weblog featuring articles and blog postings on the Web 2.0 and everything else with a 2.0 affixed, what brings up the question what is Web 2.0 anyway? Marianne van den Boomen gives a smart answer in pamphlet 1.
Culture 2.0, May 30-31, Amsterdam.
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Date April 2007 / Category News
The 2007 BSA Conference evolves around the topic "Social Connections: Identities, Relationships, Technologies" (BSA). In collaboration with Bernhard Rieder, I'll present a paper on Hybrid Foam. Using Sloterdijk's metaphor of foam, we try to reflect social formations below the threshold of network and community. In Massively Multi-user Information Management Systems (MIMMS) such as Flickr and delicious we recognize social connections that are not sufficiently described with the metaphors of community, network or even the crowd (see abstract).
BSA Annual Conference 2007, Thursday, 12th - Saturday, 14th April 2007, University of East London.
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Date March 2007 / Category News
The Wealth of Networks is a very interesting and enjoyable book on the collective production online. Yochai Benkler describes at hand of many examples how collectives of users generate valuable knowledge and a cultural resource. He refers to examples of successful bypassing repressive attempts of the copyright industry or politics. Benkler recognizes the media practice of communities as new ways of organizing citizenship and cultural production. The networks of collectives cause conflicts with the conventional system of civil administration and cultural industries. Benkler's argument is supported by case studies which explain the dynamics of collective production in networks. However Benkler sometimes seems to be quite optimistic about the capability of networks and the usage of technology.
Important is his claim for socio-political responsibility in dealing with the new cultural resources, a global archive and infrastructure, that are shaped by millions of users and that forms a crucial aspect of tomorrow's information society. The weblog Crooked Timber organized a seminar to discuss the book and published their various accounts to Benkler's hypotheses as well as his reply.
Tags Review