Networked Media Sampler
DIY NETWORK TOPOLOGIES & PROTOCOLS
Thematic Project Description
Historically the “embroidery sampler” was a piece of fabric used to practice one’s skills and record favorite patterns to be shared with others. Rather than a cohesive design, its surface was embellished with “samples” or small embroidered demonstrations of embellished letters from the alphabet and decorative stitchery, which were intended to show the proficiency of the maker and uniqueness of the handcrafted designs.
As a thematic project, the Networked Media Sampler takes this model as its starting point. Rather than a singular theme, it is a collection composed of a series of workshops, talks and presentations. Each element in the series is intended to highlight key areas of interest within networked culture and open source media practices. Through hands-on explorations and theoretical enquiry, the Networked Media Sampler will look at the contrast between closed and open systems. It will examine the limitations of the contemporary idea of the "Web", social media, and the so-called "Open Web". Next to this the project will look at models of network topologies and protocols, play with DIY approaches to building your own tools, and explore the dynamics of peer-to-peer exchange.
Keeping with the tradition of the sampler, this thematic project is a means of testing the surface of a very rich and complex tapestry whose texture is constituted through intertwining threads, nodes and rhizomatic turns.
Guests
Seda Guerses is a researcher working in the group COSIC/ESAT at the Department of Electrical Engineering in K. U. Leuven, Belgium. Her topics of interest include privacy technologies, participatory design, feminist critique of computer science, and online social networks. She has a keen interest in the subject of anonymity in technical as well as cultural contexts, the spectrum being anywhere between anonymous communications and anonymous folk songs. Beyond her academic work, she also collaborates with artistic initiatives including Constant vzw, Bootlab, De-center, ESC in Brussels, Graz and Berlin. You can find more information about her dwellings here:http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/~sguerses[1]
Nicolas Malevé (BE/ES) is an artist, software programmer and data activist who lives between Brussels and Barcelona. He develops multimedia projects and web applications for and with cultural organisations. His current research is focused on cartography, information structures, metadata and the means to visually represent them.
Since 1998 Nicolas collaborates with Constant, a non-profit association, based and active in Brussels since 1997 in the fields of feminism, copyright alternatives and working through networks. Constant develops radio, electronic music and database projects by means of migrating from cultural work to work places and back again.
Selection of works: *Copy.cult and the Original Si(g)n*, a project of investigation on the alternatives to author's rights:www.constantvzw.com/copy.cult/home [www.constantvzw.com/copy.cult/home] Yoogle! an online game that allows users to play with the parameters of the Web 2.0 economy and the marketing of personal data. http://yoogle.be [2]
<stdin> (FR/BE) is a graphic and media design studio, mixing visual design and programming for print and non-print design. They believe that programs make design, and programs are designed. Their projects are not only shaped by the tools they use, but ultimately their tools are shaped through their practice. <stdin> has a special interest in processes, education, theory and free software philosophy. They also collaborate on a regular basis with deValence and are part of Open Source Publishing. OSP (Open Source Publishing) is a graphic design collective that uses only Free, Libre and Open Source Software. <stdin> is Stephanie Vilayphiou and Alexandre Leray. See: http://stdin.fr/[3]
Marc Garrett (UK) is a net artist, media artist, curator, writer, street artist, activist, educationalist and musician. Emerging in the late 80's from the streets exploring creativity via agit-art tactics. Using unofficial, experimental platforms such as the streets, pirate radio such as the locally popular 'Savage Yet Tender' alternative broadcasting 1980's group, net broadcasts, BBS systems, performance, intervention, events, pamphlets, warehouses and gallery spaces. In the early nineties, was co-sysop (systems operator) for a while with Heath Bunting on Cybercafe BBS, dedicated to arts, technology and hacking.
Co-director and co-founder, with artist Ruth Catlow of the net arts collectives and communities- furtherfield.org [4], netbehaviour.org [5], also cofounder and co-curator/director of the gallery space called HTTP Gallery in London, UK. Currently involved in co-running, collaborating with many others on Node.London. Also co-curating various contemporary Media Arts exhibitions, nationally and internationally such as Game/play a touring exhibition.
Ruth Catlow (UK) is Head at Writtle School of Design. She is an artist, educator and co-founder and co-director of Furtherfield.org [6], a grass roots media arts organisation and its gallery HTTP Gallery in North London. She works at the intersection of art, technology and social change with artists, curators, musicians, programmers, writers, activists and thinkers from around the world. At Furtherfield she is currently developing the artistic programme and organisational infrastructure with a focus on Media Art Ecologies, aspiring to engender shared visions and infrastructures for other possible worlds.
She regularly contributes to publications, books and conferences and has participated in exhibitions at CCA, Glasgow, The Baltic, Gateshead, Limehouse Town Hall, London as well as galleries in Zagreb, Madrid and Detroit and has work featured on the Rhizome Artbase and The Digital Kitchen. She was a recipient of a 2003 Low-fi Net Art Commission. She is adviser to Tiltfactor an independent games production lab that focuses on critical play.
Collaboration, participation, learning and exchange are central to Ruth's artistic practice and she is an experienced producer and commissioner of co-devised, participatory artworks that utilise social technologies and has developed Furtherfield.org's Participation and Learning programme, working in diverse community and educational contexts. She has worked in Higher Education for over 15 years. In recent years she worked as part of a team at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication to develop pedagogically-led approaches to developing and exploiting new emergent technologies and tools (e.g. social software, pervasive computing) in anticipation of shifts in future professional life within sustainable communities of practice.
Linda Hilfling is a Danish artist who makes problematic various claims of participation and free access professed in the burgeoning landscape of "social media". Attentive to the latent forms of organization implicit in such networks (codes, organization and law), Hilfings' investigations uncover gaps between the theory and practice of these structures.
Audrey Samson is a Rotterdam based media designer, artist and researcher. She manages the Digital Art Lab at the CKC culture/arts center (Zoetermeer, NL). She teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam, NL). She completed a BFA Major in Design Art from Concordia University in 2002 (Montreal, Canada), and a M.A. in Media Design from the Piet Zwart Institute in 2007 (Rotterdam, NL). Her research/practice focuses on: rethinking interfaces, the use of online media for mourning purposes, the concept of finality in reproducible media, women's relationship to technology, the affordances of the internet medium in telematic performance, working from the products of planned obsolescence, and re-assembling objects to endow them with new functionalities. Audrey is co-founder of the Roger 10-4 project together with Sabrina Basten. She is part of the Genderchangers (gender & FLOSS) network and the Aether9 telematic performance group. More info on her endeavors can be found at www.ideacritik.com [7]
Eric Schrijver (Amsterdam, 1984) is a designer, theatre maker and author. He proposes artists and designers to get intimate with their toolset. He has lectured at the Libre Graphics Conference and written for Libre Graphics magazine. For more information see his site: [8]
Wendy Van Wynsberghe is a member of Constant vzw - a non-profit organisation for art and new media, based in Brussels, highly active in the field of open source, feminism and alternatives for copyright - from 2000 she started volunteering on regular basis for Constant, since 2004 she works for the organization as a core member, partly responsible for production, hard and software, audio archiving, and as a activator of the workshop network Linux & audio in collaboration with Radio Campus, Radio Panik, Radio Air Libre, collectifs.net, BxLug. She is also involved in a partnership that organizes open hardware workshops, called Ellentriek, together with De Pianofabriek and Ladda.http://www.lo-bat.be/blogw/ [9]
Walter Langelaar is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Rotterdam. He is one of the founding members of Moddr and runs Worm’s media lab. Next to these activities he is currently working in the field of post-interactive sculpture, he deploys dedicated machines into a variety of gallery, festival and party circuits. His working interests include open source game engines, bot AI and neural networks, and “strange loops” through virtual and physical realities. He works with a wide variety of media including computer games, hacked electronic devices, software, video, sculpture and performance.See: [www.lowstadart.net]and http://moddr.net/[10]
Tentative Schedule
(dates subject to change – check wiki calendar for the most current information)
- October 6, Install Party: Reboot and Rethink, workshop
- October 10th-11th, Terminal Sessions: Getting down to basics, workshop
October 18th – Walter Langelaar Guest Lecture - moved - date to be announced- October 25th Programm(ed/ing) Culture Audrey Samson Guest Lecture & Eric Schrijver, Guest Lecuture and mini-workshop
- Nov. 1st Terminal Session – Is this really the end?, workshop
- Nov. 8th Linda Hilfling Guest Lecture
- Nov. 14-15 Nicolas Maleves and Aymeric, Workshop
- Nov. 28-29 Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Guest Lecture followed by tutorials
- Nov. 21,22,24 Workshop with Stock, Aymeric and Wendy
- Nov. 29th Seda Guerses: Anonymity and Performing Protocol, Guest Lecture and Workshop
- Dec. 5th – 6th workshop with Stephanie and Alex plus other OSP members – take note other Libre Research Graphic Unit activities will be happening during this week. We might be satelliting into those events.
- Dec. 15th Final presentations and assessments
Documentation
Maintain your plans, notes on lectures, and work documentation on the wiki. Planning and documentation allows you to track your progress, prioritize course work, and helps staff to coordinate support and feedback. Remember, never be wiki-shy!
Misc.Important Stuff
(AVOIDING: Pipeline for pipelines sake... pipe youtube into sound into a blog, woo!)
Ex: HTTP degrades when number of downloaders increases. Response: Bittorrent as a protocol (Students read Bram .. original Bittorrent protocol document.
Required readings and audiovisuals
HTTP
BitTorrent - Protocol
Douglas Rushkoff: The next net