Thematic project: Open events

Open events: Communities and their means of encounter

Public events are a privileged arena for cultural and social interchange. Unfortunately, most events are presented to the public as finished products leading to a passive consumer atitude from the public. To contradict such tendency, several events have open up their structure allowing the public to get involved in the overall organization. Events that seek active participation have abandoned an organization structure based on hierarchies and static planning to embrace participation and distributed forms of organization. Involving the public from an early fase has proved to foster participation and to create a fertil soil for forms of culture that otherwise would not have an expression. Grounded on existing cases of open conferences and festivals, it is shown how open, distributed and participatory models have been used to create successful events.

In this thematic project off-line events are analyzed in order to cover and understand the following subjects:

Centralized, de-centralized and distributed networks;
Network cultures: social networks / anti-social notworking;
Self-organization;
Participation;
Agile development;
Asyncronous server-client communiation;
Peer-to-peer software;

== Documentation ==

Each participante is supposed to create a wiki page to document the following aspects:

Outcomes of weekly assignments;
Project plan;
Project concept;
Annotated bibliography;

== Final project and essay ==

The final project and essay should evolve from the weekly assignments. The project is supposed to be based on distributed networks and participation. Agile developments techniques should be used to achieve the final result.

== Required readings and audiovisuals ==

=== Bibliography ===

Armin Medosch. Society in Ad-Hoc Mode (2004) Autonomedia [1]
Chantal Mouffe. Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces (2007)
David Garcia, Geert Lovink. The ABC of Tactical Media (1997)
Walter Benjamin. The Author as Producer (1970) New Left Review I/62
Matthew fuller. Behind the Blip: Software as Culture (2003) Autonomedia
Lazzarato, Maurizio. Immaterial labor. In Radical thought in italy: A potential politics, ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, vol. 7 of Theory Out of Bounds, 133 – 147. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1996.
Deleuze & Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (on the rhizome). University of Minnesota Press, 1987
Alexander Galloway: How Control Exists after Decentralization (Introduction) (2006) The MIT Press.
Hardt, Michael. Hail the Multitudes, From Adbusters 57, Jan-Feb 2005
Lovink, Geert and Rossiter, Ned. Ten Theses on Non-Democratic Electronics: Organized Networks Updated, http://summit.kein.org/node/888 - May 2007.
Ned Rossiter. Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions (Paperback)
Miessen, Markus. The violence of participation: Spatial practices beyond models of consensus in http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-01-miessen-en.html
Bauwens, Michel. ’The Social Web and its Social Contracts: Some Notes on Social Antagonism in Netarchical Capitalism’ (2008)
Cox, Geoﬀ. "Antisocial Applications: Notes in support of antisocial not-working". http://pro ject.arnolﬁni.org.uk/pro jects/2008/antisocial/notes.php Retrieved on 2008-08-01.
D. Ronfeld and J. Arquilla, “ Networks, netwars, and the ﬁght for the future,” ﬁrstmonday, vol. 6, no. 10, October 2001.

=== Audiovisuals ===

Directed by Lutz Dammbeck, Das Netz (2004) 121 min
Directed by Mark Neale, William Gibson: No Maps for These Territories. (2000)
Manuel DeLanda: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. (2007) European Graduate School
The yes man (2003)
Geert Lovink: 2007 European Graduate School
Jacques Derrida: On Forgiveness. (2004) European Graduate School
Stefaan Decostere, 'Warum wir Maenner die Technik so lieben' (Why do we man love technology so much) (1985)
Lev Manovich: The Infinite Expansion; Ars Electronica 2007
This is what Democracy looks like, USA (1999) 72 min
Bruce Sterling: On sustainable design (2007) LIFT Conference

Weekly Plan

Meeting 01 (24-09-09)

Pecha Kucha: Short introduction;
Introduce the Open events;
Present plan for the semester;

Meeting 02 (01-10-09)

Open events: self-organization, participation and distributed networks.
Introduce AJAX;
Introduce Agile development;
Todo: Presentation of micro assignment, wiki page and structural planning;

Meeting 03 (08-10-09)

Discuss and analyze different networks: centralized, decentralized and distributed;
Discuss issues of protocol;
Develop AJAX;
Todo: Presentation of micro assignment;

Meeting 04 (15-10-09)

Discuss participation: collaboration and Agonistic Spaces;
Todo: Presentation of micro assignment;

Meeting 05 (29-10-09)

Deadline: Annotated bibliography;
Visit exhibition (tba);

Meeting 06 (05-11-09)

Mesh networks and peer-to-peer software;
Todo: Presentation of first prototype of final project;

Meeting 07 (12-11-09)

Discuss projects
Deadline: Mid-term assessment;

Meeting 08 (19-11-09)

Todo: Presentation of first prototype of final project;

Meeting 09 (26-11-09)

Deadline: Thematic project essay;

Meeting 10 (03-12-09)

Todo: Presentation of final project's documentation;

Meeting 11 (10-12-09)

Deadline: Submission of project.

Meeting 12 (17-12-09)

Todo: Final presentation of projects possibly outside PZ.

User:Kenny Henry/openevent/plan

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