Digital Culture

Unconference: “Re-Rooting Digital Culture”

Cultura21, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post comes to you from Cultura21

13th of May at the University of Westminster

Over the last decade the awareness of anthropogenic climate change has emerged in parallel with global digital communication networks. By their very nature, the new tools, networks and behaviours of productivity, exchange and cooperation between humans and machines grow and develop at an accelerated rate.

The transdisciplinary panel will explore the impact of digital culture on climate change, developing themes adopted in grass-roots, emerging and established practices in art, design and science.

The ideas for the unconference have grown out of Furtherfield’s Media Art Ecologies programme. ”Unconference” thereby stands for a participant-driven meeting, which tries to avoid some of the aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees, sponsored presentations, and top-down organization.

Furtherfield was founded in 1997 as the Internet took shape as a new public space for internationally connected cultural production and is now a centre where upwards of 26,000 contributors worldwide have built a culture around co-creation – swapping and sharing code, music, images, video and ideas.

For more information visit: www.furtherfield.org.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)

– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)

– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)

– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Leonardo On-Line: Global Warning Symposium / 01SJ Biennial

news, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The GLOBAL WARNING Symposium is organized by ZER01: The Art and Technology Network, City of San Jose Public Art Program and CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University in collaboration with LEONARDO/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and with additional support from the Montalvo Arts Center.

The two-day symposium examines the interconnectedness of ideas and actions and the current relationships between art-making, science and ecology. A group of distinguished artists, scientists and policy-makers will present and examine case studies of collaborative environmental projects. A session highlighting environmental policy and an overview of activist environmental art will provide context for scientist-artist dialogues engaging active audience participation. Three teams selected to develop designs for the Climate Clock—a landmark public art project that incorporates Silicon Valley’s measurement, data management and communications technologies to aid the understanding of climate change—will present their work. Public policy, urban planning, sustainable design and civic cultural/economic development strategies serve as platforms for a look at how public art can stimulate community dialogue about these issues of critical importance.

Day 1 of the Global Warning Symposium will be sponsored by Leonardo/ISAST. Participants include: Meredith Tromble (Moderator), Stephen Schneider, Gail Wight, Karen Holl, Andrea Polli and Marisa Jahn.

2010 01SJ BIENNIAL OVERVIEW

The 01SJ Biennial is a multidisciplinary, international contemporary art festival that focuses on the intersection between art, technology and digital culture. The 3rd 01SJ Biennial will take place September 16–19, 2010 in venues throughout downtown San Jose, CA.

BUILD YOUR OWN WORLD

The theme of the 3rd 01SJ Biennial, “Build Your Own World,” is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world—in both large and small ways. It is about how powerful ideas and innovative individuals from around the world can make a difference and come together to build a unique, citywide platform for creative solutions and public engagement. It is about the inspiration needed to build a world we want to live in and are able to live with.

Leonardo On-Line: Global Warning Symposium / 01SJ Biennial.

Technology, culture, Rodney King, Ian Tomlinson and Damien McBride

news, RSA Arts & Ecology, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two very modern stories, and one slightly older one:

1) Attempting to grasp the new digital culture, the UK’s Labour party falls foul of it instead when Gordon Brown’s protege Damien McBride is caught plotting to feed bloggers malevolent disinformation.

2) Protestors, long warning of the evils of surveillance culture, suddenly find that surveillance has its uses when horrendous footage of the beating of Ian Tomlinson emerges, to be followed yesterday by more amateur phone video of another police assault on a G20 protestor.

The socio-technological earthquake continues to alter the way our culture unfolds in surprising ways. The omnipresence of continually updated digital representations of our world is altering our relationship to it in ways that are both dangerous and liberating.

Blogger Tomorrow Museum suggested something like this recently, kicking off with Momus’s idea of the 1:1 ratio of experience to writing. For the slightly Eeyore-ish artist/musician Momus, the suggestion that we now turn every act into content – a blog, a Tweet- is something of a worry. For Tomorrow Museum, though, this world in which everyone becomes a witness is a safer place. He cites the filmed beating of Rodney King – the assault that started the LA Riots – as a starting point of this info earthquake.

The paradox is that while Damien McBride’s actions are now witnessed and scrutinised, we’ve also lived through a decade in which around seven million have been killed or died in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia with barely any witness at all.

And having met Rodney King a couple of times while I was working in South Central Los Angeles, I wouldn’t envy anyone who becomes part of the info-maelstrom. The film of Rodney King’s beating became a focal point for civil rights activism, but King himself was not a man who ever asked for the attention, who felt tragically responsible for the deaths that happened in the ensuing riots, and who appeared to be just as much a victim of the all attention he had as of that original police assault.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology