Digital Work
Seminar, October 11, 2003, Rotterdam
How do we work now with digital media? Have we shifted from a work culture based on the ambience of clubs to one locked inside cubicles? Has media design become rationalised to the point of complete predictability or is there still room for creativity and fundamental innovation?
With thousands of graduates being skilled-up in digital media across the Netherlands and Europe every year and with the internet becoming massified and maybe even normal, it is time to look at the daily reality of digital work.
Digital work includes the complete cycle: the non-glamorous work of call-centres and warehousing that provides its back-end, the more deadly globalised work of the manufacture and dumping of computers, as well as the non-work of leisure and consumption. How do the hacker ethics of free, networked, deregulated co-operation mesh with other forms of worker organisation? What are the new models emerging amongst the mix of roles, skills, ideas, talents, activities and technologies? After dot.bomb, is financialisation any way to run a culture? How does digital work effect and provide new perspectives on media design: how is design itself shaped and driven by the sites and software which it makes?
Info
Date: Saturday 11 October 2003 Time: 13:00 – 17:00 hours Admission: 5 euro, students 3 euro Free for students and employees of the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy and Hogeschool Rotterdam Location: V2_, Eendrachtstraat 10, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Registration: please mail to: workshop@v2.nl Presentation and discussion in English
Speakers
Maurizio Lazzarato is a Paris-based sociologist, a member of the editorial group of the journal Multitudes and the author of the influential essay, ‘Immaterial labour’. He is the author of: “Puissances de l’invention. La psychologie économique de Gabriel Tarde contre l’économie politique” and of “Videofilosofia, percezione e lavoro nel post-fordisme” Lazzarato last worked in relation with V2 on the project, ‘10dencies, lavoro immateriale’ with Knowbotic Research
Steve Baldwin is a New York based co-founder of NetSlaves the site that has for the last five years charted work on the internet from the beginnings of the ‘Great Tech Gold Rush’ to its present day. Allworth Press have just published NetSlaves 2.0, which Baldwin co-authored with Bill Lessard. Baldwin has been an editor at PC Magazine, Computer Shopper and Time Warner’s pathfinder. Recently, he developed Ghost Sites of the Web an ezine devoted to failed websites.
Laurence Rassel is a Cyberfeminist and member of Constant, an artist-run organisation in Brussels. Constant has organised numerous digital culture events such as Copy.cult and Jonctions-Verbindingen. Along with Interface3, a centre for womens’ vocational training and digital working life, and in the framework of the ADA network for women and technology, Laurence Rassel is an organiser of Digitales, a yearly working conference bringing together women from various backgrounds dealing with new technologies.
Following the presentations, there will be a roundtable discussion providing responses from experts and designers from the Netherlands. The roundtable will be moderated by Brian Holmes
Respondents
Enric Gilli Fort is an interaction designer based in Rotterdam. He has worked in projects such as exhibitions, CD-ROMs, events, net-art, research, web-based applications and computer aesthetics. For the last year he has been working at V2_, in projects like Face Your World, Amicitia, V2_online and D-tower.
Eduard von Lindheim is a member of the Adapter group a network of digital designers and artists based in Rotterdam and organisers of last year’s excellent Madrettor festival of digital media.
The panel will also be joined by a representative of FNV KIEM, a trade union organising in the area of digital work.