nettime mailinglist

CFP: DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media InternationalConference, Toronto, CanadaUniversity of Toronto, November 12-14, 2010submission deadline: May 20, 2010 A renewed emphasis on participatory forms of digitally-mediated productionis transforming our social landscape. ‘Making’ has become the dominantmetaphor for a variety of digital and digitally-mediated practices. The webis exploding with independently produced digital ‘content’ such as videodiaries, conversations, stories, software, music, video games - as well ascommunities of self-organized crafters, hackers, and other enthusiasts forwhom 'making' is an explicitly political act. This interactive conferenceseeks to extend conversations about these new modes of engaged DIY citizenship.Weinvite scholars, activists, artists, designers, programmers and othersinterested in the social and participatory dimensions of digitally-mediatedpractices, to engage in dialogue acrossdisciplinary and professional divides. All methodological andtheoretical approaches are welcomed. Submissions may include paperproposals, works of art and/or design, short video or audio segments,performances, video games, digital media, or other genres and forms.Please submit a 250-word proposal or description ofwork/presentation and a one-page artist or scholarly CV tosubmissions-QxDK6j2+ZJLBZiJTZbSTwtBPR1lH4CV8< at >public.gmane.org<https://owa.utoronto.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=5b504d72f02e4ebd90386c58e6615cde&URL=mailto%3asubmissions%40diycitizenship.com>.For more information and a list of our plenary speakers, visit our websiteat www.diycitizenship.com<https://owa.utoronto.ca/owa/redir.aspx?C=5b504d72f02e4ebd90386c58e6615cde&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.diycitizenship.com%2f>.

BEHIND THE NEWS with Doug Henwood"Best Music on an Economics & Politics Radio Show"Village Voice Best of NYC 2005opening commentaries at:<http://doughenwood.wordpress.com/>--------------------------------------------------Just posted to my radio archive<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html>:May 8, 2010 (KPFA version) DH on conspiracism (cont.) • Emily Gould, blogger and author of The Heart Says Whatever, on the new media world, kids today, etc. • Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen, on how Wall Street gets its way in DCApril 29, 2010 DH on conspiracism • Enrique Diaz-Alvarez, hedge fund trader, on the Eurocrisis • Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace USA, on climate politics and the oil spillApril 22, 2010 Mark Weisbrot of CEPR on Latin America • Steve Early on the departure of Andy Stern from SEIUthey join:---------April 15, 2010 Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute on how China’s currency manipulation kills American jobs (paper here) • Matt Taibbi on how Wall Street ripped offJefferson County, Alabama, and the U.S. governmentApril 8, 2010 Diane Ravitch, former conservative educational reformer turned critic of the privatization agenda and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, on the awfulness of the now- bipartisan scheme of testing, charters, union-busting, etc.April 3, 2010 (KPFA version) Ann Harrison, labor economist at Berkeley, on the effects of the anti-sweatshop campaign on Indonesian footwear workers • Steven Hill, author of Europe’s Promise, on the Old World as an economic model for the U.S.March 25, 2010 Tom Athanasiou of EcoEquity on the science and politics of climate change • Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program on the health care abominationMarch 18, 2010 Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch of York University, authors of In and Out of Crisis, on the current economic mess: origins, consequences, possibilities---Doug HenwoodProducer, Behind the NewsThursdays, 5-6 PM, WBAI, New York 99.5 FMSaturdays, 10-11 AM, KPFA, Berkeley 94.1 FM"best music on a show about economics & politics" - Village VoiceLeft Business Observer242 Greene Ave - #1CBrooklyn, NY 11238-1398 USA+1-347-599-2211 voice+1-917-865-2813 cellemail: <mailto:dhenwood-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>web: <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html>podcast: <http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/radio-feed.php>iTunes: <http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73801817 >or <http://tinyurl.com/3bsaqb>Facebook group: <http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53240558375>."blog": <http://doughenwood.wordpress.com/>--------------------------------------------download my book Wall Street (for free!) at<http://www.wallstreetthebook.com>

May 1, 2010FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEARTIST COMMITS SUICIDE ONLINE AS A WORK OF ART (WELL, SORT OF)Video and stills (explicit content): http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/nofunThousand of people watched powerless while a person was hanging from the ceiling, slowly swinging, for hours and hours. It happened yesterday, in the popular website Chatroulette, where people from all over the world can anonymously and randomly see each other through their webcams and chat with perfect strangers.The hanging man was in fact Brooklyn based artist Franco Mattes, and the whole scene a set up. The artist recorded all the performance and than posted it online. In the video, titled "No Fun", one can see all possible reactions, from the most predictable to the most unthinkable: some laugh, believing it's a joke, some seem to be completely unmoved, some insult the supposed-corpse and some, more cynical, take pictures with their phones. Apparently, out of several thousand people, only one called the police. Watching the video can be a strange experience, at times exhilarating as well as disturbing.Eva and Franco Mattes are already known for similar interventions done under the name 0100101110101101.ORG. What they wanted to achieve with this bizarre "online performance", as they call it, is not clear. "Since we live online" declared Franco Mattes "than we should get used to die online"."I'm sorry if somebody was offended" commented Eva Mattes "Actually, I too was shocked by some of the reactions. And I'm not easily impressed".According to New York University researcher Marco Deseriis "No Fun raises disturbing questions on the hyperreality of the contemporary mediascape as much as on the Orwellian spectacularization of daily life and death. But it would be simplistic to blame the Internet for the dramatic exhaustion of social interaction at a distance. What is more difficult to recognize is our own complicity and desire to be seduced by the latest technological wonders. In our daily obsession with media attention, frequently disguised as search for authentic communication, we end up being so narcissistically preoccupied with looking at ourselves that we can no longer recognize the other".After the video circulated online the comments started spreading: "This is plain wrong" comments a YouTube viewer "you don't play with death, it may even push people most easily influenced to emulate it".Science fiction author Bruce Sterling said: "I think it's nice that Franco took the trouble to so visibly hang himself, as opposed to just anonymously hanging his net-culture pseudonym of ones and zeros. This shows unusual personal warmth for a 0100101110101101.ORG project".The Mattes are not new to this kind of black-humor-provocations: in 1998 they invented an artist, whose works were ultra-violent splatter- like sculptures inspired by atrocity images found online. After obtaining a certain following, the inexistent artist committed suicide to become a cult-figure of the '90s underground art as well as an allegory of media vampirism.

The role of Internet and ICT policies in the UK after the 2010 election:does it make a difference for the role of the Internet in Britishsociety if there will be a Labour-Lib Dem or a Conservative-Lib Demgovernment?Source: NetPoliticsBlog, http://fuchs.uti.at/367/Will there be changes in Internet and ICT politics and policies afterthe 2010 elections for the Westminster parliament? Willit in thiscontext make a difference if there will be a Tory-LibDem government or aLabour-LibDem government? The election manifestos of the three partiesgive us an idea of what to expect for the near future for UK Internetpolitics.Liberal Democrats: No agenda is also an agendaThe Liberal Democrats do not have an agenda for the role they want toassign to ICTs and the Internet in Britain. In their “Liberal DemocratManifesto 2010”, the prospects for the economy are fully focused onestablishing a Green economy. There is no discussion of the role of ICTsand the Internet in the economy. One finds a few passages in the 109pages of the document, where ICTs or the Internet are mentioned: TheLibDems seem to consider social networking sites and web 2.0 primarilyas problem, where users become victims of individual crimes. Thereforethey want to tackle ”online bullying by backing quick-report buttons onsocial networking sites, enabling offensive postings to be speedilyremoved“ (p. 17). They do not discuss the problem of onlinecommodification of users and the circumstance that the Internet isdominated by a commercial, advertising-oriented culture that results indata surveillance for economic purposes. Discussions about the onlinebullying report button ignore the positive aspects that web 2.0 has forthe socialization and growing-up process of adolescents. The LibDemswant to advance “better government IT procurement, investigating thepotential of different approaches such as cloud computing andopen-source software“ (p. 17) and “support public investment in theroll-out of superfast broadband, targeted first at those areas which areleast likely to be provided for by the market“ (p. 26). They do notargue what kind of broadband Internet they want to provide, if it shouldbe freely available to all citizens or if it fit should be amanifestation of an intensified commodification of the Internet so thatusers have to pay private companies for getting access to a broadbandInternet that is dominated by commercial culture. The message that theLiberal Democrat’s manifesto gives is that they have no clue about whatrole the Internet and ICTs should play in society. Having no ICT andInternet agenda is also an agenda, although not a particularly good one.So what about the Conservatives and the Labour Party? Can they make adifference in ICT and Internet politics?Conservative Party and Labour PartyOther than the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party in their120-page Conservative Manifesto 2010 and the Labour Party in their78-page Labour Party Manifesto 2010 give significant attention to therole of ICTs and the Internet in British society. The Tories have evenpublished a 9 page “Conservative Technology Manifesto” for the 2010elections. But an analysis of these manifestos shows that large quantitydoes not necessarily mean good quality.Both the Conservatives and Labour want to advance the rollout of asuper-fast Internet broadband infrastructure. They want to invest publicmoney in building this infrastructure and leave no doubt that privatecompanies should control it. “We want Britain to become a European hubfor hi-tech, digital and creative industries – but this can only happenif we have the right infrastructure in place. Establishing a super-fastbroadband network throughout the UK could generate 600,000 additionaljobs and add £18 billion to Britain’s GDP“ (Conservative Manifesto 2010,p. 24). “Our plans will give Britain the fastest high speed broadbandnetwork in Europe, helping to create 600,000 additional jobs. We willmake the British government the most technology-friendly in the world,and meet our ambition that the next generation of Googles, Microsoftsand Facebooks are British companies“ (Conservative Technology Manifesto,p. 2). “We will be the first country in Europe to extend superfast 100mbps broadband across most of the population. This is up to 50 timesfaster than Labour’s planned broadband network – and willopen up newopportunities for the next generation of British high tech companies,and put Britain at an advantage when it comes to developing innovativeonline platforms and services. We will unleash private sector investmentto build this superfast broadband network by opening up networkinfrastructure, easing planning rules and boosting competition“ (p. 6).The Labour Party also wants to advance a high-speed Internet broadbandinfrastructure. It speaks of “Broadband Britain“: “Britain must be aworld leader in the development of broadband. We are investing in themost ambitious plan of any industrialised country to ensure a digitalBritain for all, extending access to every home and business. We willreach the long-term vision of superfast broadband for all through apublic-private partnership in three stages: first, giving virtually everyhousehold in the country a broadband service of at least two megabitsper second by 2012; second, making possible superfast broadband for thevast majority of Britain in partnership with private operators, withGovernment investing over £1 billion in the next seven years; and lastlyreaching the final ten per cent using satellites and mobile broadband.Because we are determined that every family and business, not just some,should benefit, we will raise revenue to pay for this from a modest levyon fixed telephone lines. And we will continue to work with business, theBBC and other broadcasting providers to increase take-up of broadbandand to ensure Britain becomes a leading digital economy” (Labour PartyManifesto 2010, pp. 1:7f).Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party leave no doubt that theywant to invest taxpayer’s money for creating a high-speed broadbandinfrastructure that is controlled by private companies and that can beaccessed by people in the UK by paying fees to Internet service providercompanies. This means that public investment is used not for creating apublic infrastructure that is universally accessible, which meansaccessible for all without payment, but for privatizing theinfrastructure so that is in the hands of companies and thereby de-factobecomes commodified and private property. If access to knowledge,knowledge production, and communication are universal conditions ofhuman and societal flourishing, then Internet access – a centralinfrastructure for contemporary information, communication, andco-operation – should be treated as being part of the commons of societyand should be made available without payment to all citizens. Acommodified Internet infrastructure privileges high-income classes,stratifies Internet access, as a tendency excludes lower-income groups,and commodifies the access to knowledge and communication.The Conservatives do not think about Internet access solutions beyondthe market, whereas the Labour Party suggests to “build on our networkof UK Online centres and public libraries to spread free internet accesspoints within the community, and develop new incentives for users toswitch to online services“ (Labour Party Manifesto, p. 9:5). FreeInternet access within libraries is a strange idea, it is like not beingable to take home a book from the library, but having to read the fullbook in the library. The Internet is a highly flexible and mobiletechnology, containing access to certain places, such as libraries, istherefore an odd and backward-oriented policy suggestion. The onlyviable solution is to create freely available, non-commercial wirelessInternet access points all over the country.What kind of Internet content and platform providers do the Tories andLabour favour? Both parties claim that they will advance economic growthby fostering entrepreneurship in the ICT industry and providing tax cutsand start-up subsidies for ICT and Internet companies. “A Conservativegovernment will build a new model of economic growth, based on high techand high value industries. This means harnessing and catalysing the nextgeneration of technologies, and helping businesses to create highly paidnew jobs in every part of the country. We will build a high tech 21stcentury infrastructure that is fit for purpose, and we will lay thefoundation for a British technology revolution” (Conservative TechnologyManifesto 2010, p. 6). “As recommended by the Dyson Review, we will keepR&D tax credits but will simplify and refocus them on high techcompanies, small businesses and new start-ups in order to stimulate anew wave of technology” (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 7).Similar policies are envisioned by Labour: “Labour believes we shouldrebuild our economy in new ways: with more high-tech business, fairerrewards and responsibility from all, including at the top” (Labour PartyManifesto 2010, p. 0:4). “Within this, the Growth Capital Fund willfocus on SMEs which need capital injections of between £2 and £10million, while the Innovation Investment Fund will focus on the needs ofhigh-tech firms” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 1:6). “At the heart ofour approach to building a strong and fair Britain is a commitment tosupport enterprise” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 1:7).Both the Tories and Labour cling to the 1990s Californian ideology(throwing public money at ICT companies and thereby hoping for economicprosperity and a new job wonder). The result of the Californian ideologywas not long-time economic growth, stability, and a new job wonder, butthe bursting of the Internet economy bubble in 2000 and as a result thenew economy crisis. It is therefore surprising that the two largestBritish parties show continued faith in ICT and Internet corporatism anddo not look for possibilities for public investment in alternativeInternet and ICT models that try to go beyond crisis capitalism, financecapital, and try to see the Internet and ICTs as part of society’scommons. The Internet that both parties imagine is one that is dominatedby monopoly capital, and in a nationalistic tone it is envisioned thatInternet monopolies will be British in the future. So the Tories speakof the “ambition that the next generation of Googles, Microsofts andFacebooks are British companies“ (Conservative Technology Manifesto2010, p. 2). There is not the slightest awareness in these documents ofthe many problems associated with Internet and ICT monopolies and thedomination of the Internet by capitalist logic.Both the Tories and Labour consider ICTs and the Internet important forpublic administration and democracy. However, the ideas of both partieson digital democracy are conventional and do not go beyond eGovernment.The Tories want to increase the transparency of public administrationwith the help of the Internet: ”We will open up Whitehall recruitment bypublishing central government job vacancies online, saving costs andincreasing transparency. [...] We will: require public bodies to publishonline the job titles of every member of staff and the salaries andexpenses of senior officials paid more than the lowest salarypermissible in Pay band 1 of the Senior Civil Service pay scale, andorganograms that include all positions in those bodies “ (ConservativeManifesto 2010, p. 69). We will “require senior civil servants topublish online details of expense claims and meetings with lobbyists;examine the case for giving Select Committees the power to preventincreases“ (p. 70).Similar announcements can be found in Labour’s election programme:“Public services in the digital age: Citizens expect their publicservices to be transparent, interactive and easily accessible. We willopen up government, embedding access to information and data into thevery fabric of public services. Citizens should be able to compare localservices, demand improvements, choose between providers, and holdgovernment to account. We have led the world with the creation ofdata.gov.uk, putting over 3,000 government datasets online.Entrepreneurs and developers have used these datasets to unleash socialinnovation, creating applications and websites for citizens from localcrime maps to new guides to help find good care homes or GPs. We will nowpublish a Domesday Book of all non-personal datasets held by governmentand its agencies, with a default assumption that these will be madepublic. We will explore how to give citizens direct access to the dataheld on them by public agencies, so that people can use and controltheir own personal data in their interaction with service providers andthe wider community“ (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 9:5).The Tories present themselves as the harbingers of direct democracy:”Give citizens more power: People have been shut out of Westminsterpolitics for too long. Having a single vote every four or five years isnot good enough – we need to give people real control over how they aregoverned. So, with a Conservative government, any petition that secures100,000 signatures will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament. Thepetition with the most signatures will enable members of the public totable a bill eligible to be voted on in Parliament. and we willintroduce a new Public reading Stage for bills to give the public anopportunity to comment on proposed legislation online” (ConservativeManifesto 2010, p. 66). ”We will throw open the doors of Parliament byintroducing a technology enabled Public Reading Stage that will involvethe public in the legislative process, and harness the wisdom of crowdsto improve bills and spot potential problems before legislation isimplemented” (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 3). The idea ofthe Conservatives is to let citizens suggest proposals that arediscussed in parliament and to make use of the Internet to let citizensexpress their opinion on proposed legislation. This means that they wantto foster political talking and interaction, but do not want to givecitizens real power to influence and decide on legislation outside ofgeneral elections. The suggested reforms are not an expression ofgrassroots democracy and grassroots digital democracy, but rather ofpopulist digital plebiscitarianism or what Carole Pateman in the 1970scalled pseudo-participation: citizens are summoned to “participate” bycommunicating and voicing opinions in order to silence them anddiscourage real participatory politics, in which they can directlyinfluence decisions and have a say in politics.Also Labour wants to strengthen democracy with the help of ICTs and theInternet, although their ideas remain more abstract: “Opening upgovernment – central and local – in this way offers huge potential forBritain. We can use new technologies to give people a say onpolicy-making; enable citizens to carry out more of their dealings withgovernment online; and save money for taxpayers as we switch servicesover to digital-only delivery” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 9:5).It remains unclear what exactly it means to “use new technologiestogive people a say on policy-making”. Such a vague abstractness isashame for an election programme.Both the Tories and Labour understand digital democracy to mean thatgovernment provides more information to citizens with the help of ICTsand that citizens can communicate opinions to politicians, thegovernment, and parliament with the help of the Internet. Thisunderstanding of digital democracy is narrow because it fully leaves outthe importance of civil society and citizen-to-citizen politicalcommunication for a flourishing and dynamic democracy. The notion ofdemocracy is confined to politics, there is no talk about economicdemocracy, work place democracy, and democracy in other spheres ofsociety and the role that ICTs and the Internet could play for advancingparticipatory democracy in all realms of society. The understandings ofdigital democracy that can be found in the election manifestos of theConservative Party and the Labour Party are one-dimensional,government-focused, and do not realize the actual potentials that theInternet can pose for democratic reforms that enable participatorydemocracy.The Tories speak about the threats of a “database state” (ConservativeManifesto 2010, p. 79). “We will strengthen the powers of theInformation Commissioner to penalise any public body found guilty ofmismanaging data. We will take further steps to protect people fromunwarranted intrusion by the state” (p. 79). It is no surprise that theConservatives do see privacy threats, problems of surveillance and datamisuse only in relation to public administration and not also in thecontext of private companies that gather, store, assess, and sellpersonal data for economic ends because the Tories have a neoliberal ICTagenda in mind that only considers ICT and Internet companies asharbingers of economic growth, but not as potential threats to consumerand user interests. Economic surveillance is not an issue for theConservatives, but neither is it one for the Labour Party and theLiberal Democrats.The only realm, where the Conservatives see problems of a corporateInternet, is in relation to children. They argue that children should beprotected from online advertising. “Children should be allowed togrowup at their own pace, without excessive pressure placed on them bybusinesses. We will take a series of measures to help reverse thecommercialisation of childhood. We prefer to gain voluntary consent tothese actions but we are prepared to legislate if necessary. We will: *prevent any marketing or advertising company found to be in seriousbreach of rules governing marketing to children from bidding forgovernment advertising contracts for three years; * ban companies fromusing new peer-to-peer marketing techniques targeted at children, andtackle marketing on corporate websites targeted at children; * establisha new online system that gives parents greater powers to take actionagainst irresponsible commercial activities targeted at children; and, *empower head teachers and governors to ban advertising and vendingmachines in schools“ (Conservative Manifesto 2010, p. 43). One wonderswhy only children need protection from online advertising? Alsoadolescents and adults have to fear negative consequences from theactivities of online advertisers and Internet corporations that gatherand commodify personal data for economic ends as well as from employersand managers who look for private information about job applicants andemployees on web 2.0.The Labour Party mentions eLearning in one paragraph, whereas both theConservatives and the Liberal Democrats do not tackle this topic at all.“Because the learning environment itself matters, we will take forwardour Building Schools for the Future programme to rebuild or refurbishsecondary schools, giving our children first-rate facilities that supportinspirational teaching and access to ICT, sports and the arts” (LabourParty Manifesto 2010, p. 3:5). The view underlying this passage is thatmore ICTs are always good for learning, there is no sense for what kindof ICTs and that a blended approach is needed that combinesparticipatory educational institutions with participatory learningtechnologies.66% of British Internet users aged 15-24 say that it is morallyacceptable to download music for free and 70% say they do not feelguilty for downloading music for free (Youth and Media survey 2009,N=1026, Office of Communications: Communication Market Report 2009,278). Refusing and opposing the interests of young people and othercitizens, both the Conservatives and the Labour Party intend to continuethe criminalization of file sharers in order to guarantee profitinterests for the culture industry. No matter which party will be inpower, a tightening of intellectual property right protection and of therepression against file sharers and thereby the interest of the majorityof young people can be expected. The Labour Party has announced: “Wewill update the intellectual property framework that is crucial to thecreative industries – and take further action to tackle online piracy”(Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 7:6). Similarly the Tories have said:“We will ensure that Britain has the most favourable intellectualframework in the world for innovators and high tech businesses. Werecognise the need to tackle digital piracy and make it possible forpeople to buy and sell digital intellectual property online. However itis vital that any anti-piracy measures promote new business modelsrather than holding innovation back” (Conservative Technology Manifesto2010, p. 7).Both parties miss an understanding of the question if free access todigital knowledge is a form of cultural democracy that strengthenscapabilities, communication, the public sphere, and cultural dynamics.They put the corporate interests of the culture industry first and abovethe interests of cultural prosumers. Also alternative policy measures,such as the culture flat rate, are not discussed. The actual orpotential criminalization of a large share of Internet users is simplyaccepted, not questioned. Also the problem of how cultural productioncan be remunerated in an age of file sharing without enhancing thedependency of these producers on large media companies and withoutcriminalizing users is not discussed.ConclusionNo matter if the resolution to the situation of a hung parliament inGreat Britain will be a Conservative or a Labour government supported bythe Liberal Democrats, one thing is for sure: there will not be anysignificant positive changes in the realm of Internet and ICT politicsand policies. The Liberal Democrats have simply ignored this topic intheir 2010 election manifesto, which shows that they consider Internetand ICTs as unimportant. In contrast, the Labour Party and theConservatives compete for which of the two party can create a moreneoliberal ICT policy framework. Both Labour and the Tories stand forthe advancement of the commodification of the Internet and ICTs, theweakening and economization of the cultural commons of society, thecriminalization of Internet users, opposition to the cultural interestsof young Internet users, ignorance towards ICT-enhanced participatorydemocracy, civil society, and citizen-to-citizen politicalcommunication, and the focus on conventional and unoriginal eGovernmentmeasures. In the UK, government will in the coming years pursue Internetpolitics with a backwards-oriented neo-neoliberal agenda. We can expectan extension and intensification of neoliberal Internet policies. Theanswer to the question asked in the title of this contribution is: No!# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

In the newly published, brief conference book or booklet , “Critical strategies in art and media:Perspectives on New Cultural Practices” at one point Ted Byfield (on the panel) asks the sensible question: “I’d like to ask a question to some of my elders here.We’ve heard various references to 1968 here, but what did all those ‘68ers have in 1967?”The transcript continues, “Audience: Drugs!”Byfield then asks ”Any other suggestions about what they had before the efflorescence that apparently surprised even them?” “Jim Fleming [one of the two convenors and moderators]: Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.” Fleming then added something about the relative affluence (of students?) in the ’60’s, -- itself a highly debatable assertion. Fleming’s answer is glaringly incomplete, at best. The fact that the participants and the audience accepted it indicates why the whole enterprise of the conference was virtually meaningless, I submit. I was finishing up my Ph.D. In ’68, therefore older than many if not most of the participants in the events, in which I also had a minor role. Let me try therefore to list in no definite order some of what we had in ’67 or earlier in the ‘60‘s that helped lead to ’68: The feelings against racism and for justice and equality that emerged from reaction to the Nazis after WWII, from the civil rights movement and the anti-colonial movement, all of which were well in evidence before ’68; Un-precedented numbers of young people in the universities and colleges, as the baby-boom generation had begun to reach early adulthood;Television news showing the civil-rights and anti-colonial movements in action along with other demonstrations, offering easy-to-understand and compelling role models of resistance; John F. Kennedy’s inaugural and anti-individualist line “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”, along with the founding of the Peace Corps; The continued opposition to the activities of groups such as the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and, related to that, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in ’64;The Port Huron Statement of ’62 that founded SDS, and called for a variety of democratic socialism; the founding (’66) of the Black Panther PartyThe ’62 publication of Michael Harrington’s “The Other America,” and of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”; the ’63 translation of Fanon’s (’61) “Wretched of the Earth;” Malcolm X’s ‘ 65 “Autobiography.”In the US, at least , the draft, which put all young men in jeopardy of having to go and fight the Vietnam war, which, as it dragged on, along with its repercussions (such as the self-immolation of Buddhist monks) was also seen on TV;New and relatively cheap jet travel, which enabled many semi-affluent young people to mix with their cohort in other countries, thus adding a sense of a single wide youth movement; The relatively recent Cuban Revolution and its aftermath, such as the hunting down of Che, (and the influential pamphlet by Regis Debray “Revolution in the Revolution”) and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which was understood idealistically as democratizing decision making and opposing the stultifying power of bureaucrats and experts. Even LBJ’s ‘ 64 promise of the “Great Society.”Note that neither anything which would have gone under the rubric of art nor the sort of people’s media discussed in the conference played a very strong role, although certainly sermons in the southern black churches or Mario Savio’s impromptu speech from on top of a captured police car in Berkeley in ’64 did do so. The most prominent artform in moving people to take political stances was probably not rock, but rather folk and folk-like music, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, early Dylan, etc. (In derision, Tom Lehrer wrote [in about ’65] : “We are the Folk Song Army, Everyone of us cares. We all hate poverty war and injustice, Unlike the rest of you squares.” But that just proves that those who listened to folk songs in concert or recordings or more informally heard a distinct and intended political message.) Also movies, such as “Dr. Strangelove” and If helped increase opposition to established authority, and probably novels such as “Catch 22’ (’61) and even “Lord of the Rings.”But most of the relevant factors had more to do with the confluence of demographics, new technologies, the lessons of recent history, the examples of other and on-going social movements, etc., and frankly political statements and actions.1968 was to some degree a high tide but also a turning point in all these political movements, in some ways leading directly to a conservative backlash, though also helping to institutionalize certain gains and demands. “Critical strategies” fails to take into account comparatively wide picture of the current situation, instead focusing on “art” as a source of political inspiration and action all by itself. This is of course a narrow and very peculiar branch of art itself, with some of the main examples, being more like, e.g., a kind of people’s science that simply chooses to call itself art for funding purposes. (Incidentally I was one of the founders of “Science for the People” in ’68, and there are more efforts for people’s science of various kinds that don’t label themselves as art still today. ) There appears to be no effort in the book to consider or be informed by, much less co-ordinate with wider present-day political or social movements — or even current social theory, except in a very narrow sense. To put it cynically, the book can be described as follows: A group of self-styled, semi-academic, self-appointed, basically uninformed artistic leaders of a very ill-defined movement with very unclear aims, but its heart possibly in the right place, solipsistically examines itself for strategic ideas. It does not come up with much. I had hoped for something better. Best, Michael

Alliance for Communications Democracy http://theacd.org/PRESS RELEASE Contact: Rob Brading, rob-hs+2TzKxRiQBXFe83j6qeQ< at >public.gmane.org, 503-667-8848 x318COMMUNITY GROUPS URGE FCC TO STRENGTHEN LOCAL, PUBLIC MEDIA CALL FORENFORCEMENT OF LOCALISM RULESWASHINGTON (May 13, 2010) -- Hundreds of community groups and localresidents from across the country urged the Federal CommunicationsCommission (FCC) this week to strengthen local democracy, mediadiversity and public safety by supporting the nation's largest networkof community-based media organizations -- Public, Educational andGovernment (PEG) Access cable TV centers."As local newspapers close, media companies consolidate, and nationalbroadcasters dominate radio & television, PEG Access centers areincreasingly the only source of community news, civic programming,diverse views and local emergency information," said Alliance forCommunications Democracy (ACD) President Rob Brading of MetroEastCommunity Media in Gresham, Oregon.As the FCC takes the pulse on media in America with its Future of Mediaproceeding, ACD, a 22-year-old coalition of local media groups, soundedthe alarm that the FCC must take decisive action today to ensure thattomorrow's media landscape includes local voices and community accessto media infrastructure.ACD called on the FCC to enforce laws that prevent cable and videogiants from discriminating against local PEG channels. ACD specificallyurged the FCC to take action against AT&T's U-verse cable system thatdegrades PEG quality and functionality."There is a very real threat to our democratic institutions and way oflife if there is not a sufficiently broad range of opinions expressedin the media and there is no practical means by which the averagecitizen can participate in the public dialogue." said Dr. Laura Linder,a professor of communication at Marist College in New York.FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski launched the Future of Media proceeding"to assess whether all Americans have access to vibrant, diversesources of news and information that will enable them to enrich theirlives, their communities and our democracy."The Chairman's call for comments was a met by outpouring of voicesdescribing how the nation's 3,000 PEG Access centers are critical tolocal democracy and civic participation in communities nationwide.###ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNICATIONS DEMOCRACY http://theacd.org/ acd-Mb22SrtqE7Q< at >public.gmane.org

Tirana Hunger StrikeDear friends,Douglas, Philippe and I were shocked when we arrived to Albania todiscover the massive protest in Tirana. Following a demonstration of200,000 people, 200 citizens and 22 MPs started a hunger strike to askfor democracy. We launched a live streaming video page to help bringattention to their cause.Below is the letter from the Hunger Strike Committee.?Anri Sala, Philippe Pareno and Douglas Gordonwww.opentheboxes.comwww.opentheboxes.orgwww.opentheboxes.netTirana, May 04, 2010The Hunger Strike CommitteeRe: Letter to the members of International Community and MediaDear Friends,We, 22 members of parliament and 200 citizens of Albania, concernedabout the fate of democracy in our country have decided to engage inthe ultimate form of democratic protest by going on a hunger strike inthe name of the cornerstone of any democracy: free and fair elections.Our demand is simple and democratic: a full and thorough parliamentaryinquiry into the elections of June 28th 2009, including the openingof the ballot boxes and the examination of the electoral materialcontained therein. Our demand is not motivated by a yearning forpower, but by the aspiration that the next elections are guaranteedagainst falling prey to the same machinations and manipulations.For nine months we have tried in vain to realize our constitutionalright to transparency only to be denied in all our efforts throughthe arrogance of a government that is no longer constrained by theConstitution in its actions. Nor has the government reacted to themassive show of support for our cause on the part of the citizens ofAlbania. 200,000 Albanians protested in Tirana in the name of thetransparency of their votes and yet their government turned a deafhear to this most democratic of demands.Prime Minister Berisha speaks of a court decision that stands in theway of transparency but he has never, in ten months been able to showthis decision to the public for the simple reason that it does notexist. We also regret the fact that this lie construed by Berisha asan alibi in order to avoid the transparency of the elections, has beeninstrumentalized by a significant portion of Albania's friends andpartners.Faced with the obstinate, illegal and arrogant denial of ourconstitutional right to transparency, aware of the crucial importanceof our cause to the future of free and fair elections and democracy inAlbania, we have decided to escalate our action by engaging in an openended hunger strike accompanied by protests in every town and villageof our country.

Some more context on the previous postbwo Sarai Reader List/ JeebeshThe occupation is over, the campaign continuesPosted on 15 May 2010 byphallwardhttp://savemdxphil.com/At 8pm on Friday 14 May 2010, Middlesex University management served aHigh Court injunction to end a twelve-day student occupation of theMansion building at Trent Park. The occupation began on Tuesday 4 May,when Philosophy students gathered to protest the management’s abruptdecision to close their unique and successful programmes. Theoccupation quickly succeeded in focusing remarkable levels of nationaland international attention on the scandalous situation at Middlesex.The injunction came into effect at 8am on Saturday 15 May. Thestudents finally decided to end their occupation on Saturday afternoonso as to join a rally, outside the Mansion, in support of the campaignto save philosophy at Middlesex. During the rally, Tariq Ali andmembers of the campaign spoke out forcefully against the management’sdecision to close the programmes, the way this decision was taken, andthe way its consequences and implications have been handled.Today the University management had a clear choice. They could havecontinued a process of negotiation with the students that managementinitiated, belatedly and reluctantly, after immense internationalpressure, on Thursday 13 May. They could have discussed concrete stepsfor the renewal of MA and PhD recruitment. They could have considered,with their enthusiastic students and staff, options for redesigningand relaunching the BA programme in Philosophy.Or else: they could have made an appeal to the High Court in order togain the legal power to drive their students out.True to form, the management has made its decision. Faced withstudents who were determined to protect their subject and the futureof humanities teaching at Middlesex, management decided to treat themlike criminals. Rather than talk to them face to face about therenewal of their programmes, management decided to bully them off thecampus.Middlesex management has been bullying its staff and students for manyyears now. As everyone knows, the power of a bully ends when thepeople he intimidates band together and confront him. Middlesexphilosophy students have taken a first step towards suchconfrontation: we appeal to other students and staff, at Middlesex andelsewhere, to join us in this struggle.This occupation is over; the campaign continues.To protest the management’s decision to expel the students, pleasesend a message to the board of governors and members of the Universityexecutive, to the email addresses below; if you are willing for us topost your letter on our website along with other letters of support,please BCC it to savemdxphil-Re5JQEeQqe9fmgfxC/sS/w< at >public.gmane.orgPlease check this website(www.savemdxphil.com) for future events andregular updates.The Campaign to Save Philosophy at MiddlesexSaturday 15 May 2010www.savemdxphil.comsavemdxphil-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org

This introduction was written for 'Przyszłości Wyobrażone: od myślącej maszyny do globalnej wioski' - the Polish translation of 'Imaginary Futures' which was published by Muza SA: http://www.muza.com.pl/?module=okladki&id=41865=======================I was sitting in a lecture theatre at University College London listening to the speakers at the final session of the Solidarity/solidarities conference on the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. Jan Dzierzgowski had worked hard on this translation and I owed it to him to write a smart introduction for its Polish readers. Where better to find inspiration than at this retrospective look at the demise of the Cold War? Imaginary Futures is a book about the political and cultural impact of the technological prophecies which emerged from this geopolitical confrontation. Computers and the Net are much more than useful tools. For over half a century, they have also embodied utopian dreams in the service of imperial ambition. During the Cold War, the American and Russian empires competed not only to control space, but also to own time. The nation that was pioneering the future in the present could claim leadership over the peoples of the world. The Berlin Wall might have fallen and the Russian troops have returned home, but this technological determinist ideology has proved to be remarkably persistent. The cheerleaders of neo-liberal globalisation have spent the past two decades pointing out American predominance over the computer industry and the Net – and then ordering the rest of the humanity to adopt their socio-economic panaceas of US-style privatisation, deregulation and financial speculation. By painstakingly explaining the history of the imaginary futures of artificial intelligence and the information society, my aim is to equip the readers of this book with the knowledge to refute this passé argument. The next time that someone tells you that the post-industrial utopia is just around the corner, you can reply that this prediction is nothing more than recycled McLuhanism. The Cold War is over – and so are its made-in-America imaginary futures.If I needed confirmation of this book’s relevance, I could find it in the air of melancholy at the Solidarity/solidarities conference. This event was being held to mark the 20th anniversary of the wonderful historical moment when the Stalinist monopoly over political power was breached for the first time: the 4th June 1989 multi-party elections to the Polish parliament. Within a few months, the old order was being swept away across Eastern Europe - and decades of mendacity and oppression had come to an end. Yet, as I sat in the lecture theatre, the closing session of this conference seemed to be as much a memorial service for frustrated aspirations as a celebration of revolutionary victories. One Polish member of the audience ruefully admitted that he and his compatriots now enjoyed that greatest of European privileges: being able to complain in public about how dreadful everything was. The excitement of 1989’s ‘springtime of the nations’ seemed like a distant memory when the region was being battered by the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. Adding to the misery, its governments were still in thrall to the ideological choices that had been made during the transition to national independence and political pluralism. Neo-liberal economic policies didn’t just mark the break with the impoverished Russian empire, but also a commitment to American post-industrial modernity. The new elites of ‘new Europe’ had made the mistake of swapping one Cold War superpower’s imaginary future for that of the other. While I was listening to the downbeat discussion at the Solidarity/solidarities conference, I cast my mind back to when I first realised that our continent was on the brink of a momentous upheaval. The implosion of the Russian empire might have been a big surprise to expert opinion in the West, but it wasn’t to me. A Polish leftie had predicted what would happen in 1984 – and the opinions of someone who is on the side of the workers are always more credible than those who only think what is allowed to be thought. Trust your own, that’s what I say. “It’s all over, you know. No one believes in the system. Not the workers, not the peasants, not even the bureaucrats.” Elcia was a Solidarnösc activist who had fled to London after the 1981 military coup. We’d first met when she and her friends were making a programme for their fellow refugees on Our Radio: 103.8FM. They would knock on the door of the house in Kilburn where the studio of this pirate station was based and proudly announce that the “mad Poles” had arrived to do their show. Yet, beneath this bravado, there was the sadness that they faced long years of exile from their homeland. Scattered across London were the exiles from the 1953 Berlin Uprising, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the 1968 Prague Spring. This new wave of Polish émigrés knew that they might have to wait 10 or 20 years before another attempt was made to overthrow the Stalinist regimes which oppressed the nations of Eastern Europe. They would be condemned to live in limbo - separated from their family and friends back home with their children growing up in England having little more than an exotic name to connect them with their Polish heritage. No wonder my friend was so jubilant. It was only three years after the military coup that had crushed Solidarnösc – and she’d been able to make a quick visit to see her parents without any difficulties. The secret police must have known about her subversive activities in London, but no one seemed to care in Warsaw. She was enjoying a sweet irony: “Remember what Lenin said? The revolution will succeed when the masses can’t go on in the same old way and neither can the ruling class. Well, that’s what it’s like in Poland now. It’s all over, finished, done with. Once Poland goes, the whole rotten structure will collapse across the East. We’ve won, we’ve won!!” Elcia had read the historical conjuncture correctly. She could now move back to Poland with her son in anticipation of what was to come. Five years later, it really was all over. For those who weren’t around at the time, it is difficult to explain the liberation that we felt when the Cold War finally ended. I’d spent all of my adult life with the nagging fear that a stoned American pilot or a dodgy piece of Russian technology might accidentally launch a nuclear weapon which would start a conflagration that wiped out a large percentage of the European population. What made matters worse was how the institutionalised hypocrisy of the two superpowers had colonised the minds of people trapped on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This was a looking-glass world where the American bastion of democracy overthrew elected governments and the Russian champion of socialism sent in the tanks against the proletariat. Of course, it was easy to see the ideological corruption of this imperial duplicity in others. Our Polish friends from Solidarnösc were horrified when English leftists carried banners of Lenin and Trotsky on their demonstrations. We were disgusted when the workers of Gdansk gave a hero’s welcome to Margaret Thatcher so soon after she had brutally smashed the National Union of Miners’ strike at home. But, trying to get each other to understand that these acts of stupidity were symbolic gestures of defiance was almost impossible. Convinced that your enemy’s enemy must be your friend, too many dissidents on both sides had forgotten that they were united in a common struggle for freedom and dignity. In 1989, when the Polish elections began a chain reaction which swept away the Stalinist regimes across Eastern Europe, there was the brief moment of euphoria when it seemed that the doublethink of the Cold War might be exorcised. Jacek Kuron joked in an interview that he was on the verge of accomplishing his mission in life: restoring the rationality of politics in Europe by making the Left on the left and the Right on the right. The crowds in the streets of Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Berlin and Bucharest chanted the slogan: “We don’t want any more social experiments.” They weren’t like their parents who’d been fooled by fascists who spoke like communists. This was Georg Hegel’s ‘end of history’ when utopian dreams are transformed into pragmatic solutions. On that magic evening of 9th November when the Berlin Wall came down, we celebrated in style in London with expensive champagne and strong weed. Power hungry US Presidents and Russian General Secretaries would no longer be aiming nuclear missiles at the major cities of Europe. The common people had shown that - with enough courage and determination – it was possible to overcome the violence and lies of a modern state. This time, the good guys were the winners. Two decades on, the participants at the Solidarity/solidarities conference faced the hard task of explaining what one contributor called the ‘double disappointment’ of the hopes of the 1989 revolutions. Radicals in the West had expected that the collapse of Stalinism would lead to the emergence of a reinvigorated socialism in the East – and instead witnessed the nations of ‘new Europe’ embracing neo-liberalism in its most brutal forms. Oppositionists in the East had anticipated that the adoption of a free market economy would lead to consumer plenty for all like in the West – and instead saw the divisions between rich and poor within their societies growing ever wider. Of course, it is now all too easy to blame the shabby deals that allowed the Party bosses to plunder the state’s assets in return for relinquishing their grip over political power without bloodshed. What is more difficult to understand - twenty years on – is why there was mass support for the ‘shock therapy’ of privatisation, deregulation and cuts in welfare. Having rejected the failed social experiment of Russian-style Communism, sane and sensible people had voted in overwhelming numbers for a new social experiment: US-style neo-liberalism. It wasn’t as if there weren’t any other options. Just across the Baltic, there were the prosperous and egalitarian societies of Scandinavian Social Democracy, but, unfortunately, they lacked the ideological magic of the free market model. Above all, the American empire had seized the ownership of the imaginary future of the information society. As the transition gathered pace in the early-1990s, the arrival of the Net confirmed the correctness of this US-led path of modernisation for the nations of the East. In the same way that their parents had admired the industrial combines of Stalinist Russia, these ‘new Europeans’ were convinced that the dotcom entreprises of neo-liberal California represented the future in the present. No wonder that ‘double disappointment’ was the leitmotif of final panel at the Solidarity/solidarities conference…In 2009, the Polish community in London is thriving. Unlike Elcia and her friends, a new wave of exiles has come here voluntarily to earn money, learn English and experience life in a foreign country. They take it for granted that they can move and back forth across Europe with no problems. The only thing that they’re escaping from back home is the conservative morality of the Church. You can move in with your partner without getting married as long as you do it abroad. Tellingly, most of the Polish students who I teach at Westminster University choose the ‘liberal’ option for Political Views on their Facebook profile – and they mean it in both the social and economic senses of the term. These are the children of the defeat-in-victory of the 1989 revolution. Solidarnösc smashed the Stalinist bureaucracy – and then the neo-liberal regime destroyed the organised working class in Poland. As this generation came to adulthood, the dream of dissidents like Elcia of founding the Self-Managed Socialist Republic of Poland must have seemed like a relic from a long forgotten theological debate. Let’s remember that – for them - Francis Fukyama had reinterpreted the ‘end of history’ to outlaw any alternative to US-style capitalism. There was only the American path to modernity.The aim of this book is to help its readers to refute this ideological claim to imperial hegemony. On 15th September 2008, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers marked the end of the neo-liberal ascendancy. George W. Bush – one of the most reactionary presidents in US history – was soon implementing the 5th demand of The Communist Manifesto: public ownership of the financial system. In such strange times, it is necessary to rediscover the complex history of the imaginary future of the information society. Here’s an interesting fact which is overlooked in the official accounts of the West. One of the first prophets of post-industrialism was Oscar Lange in the 1950s – and he was Polish. This visionary believed that the advent of the Net would provide the technological foundation for participatory democracy in both politics and the economy: cybernetic communism. With intellectual property withering away in cyberspace, his prediction does seem more prescient than it did a decade ago at the height of the dotcom bubble. If nothing else, Lange is telling us that the future is not necessarily neo-liberal California – and that the Polish Left can find its own path to a better future. The reformers of his generation opened the way for their successors to begin the process of dismantling of totalitarian rule. What they could have never envisaged was that one evil empire’s imaginary future would be replaced with that of its rival. As the last public act of his eventful life, Jacek Kuron wrote an open letter in support of the people protesting against the 28th–30th April 2004 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Warsaw. Castigating the neo-liberal orthodoxy with the same contempt that he once directed against Stalinism, he called upon the dissidents of the 21st century to ‘create a new conception of social cooperation, realise the ideals of freedom, equality and social justice.’ What more needs to be said? I hope that the Polish translation of my book can make a small contribution towards fulfilling this goal. You can use the tools of the Net to invent new futures for humanity. Enjoy the book – and be inspired! Richard Barbrook,London,England,12th June 2009http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2010/05/18/imaginary-futures-introduction-to-the-polish-edition# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

May 6, 2010FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEOIL PAINTING: THE SUPREME DISCIPLINE OF ART. THE OIL SLICK, THE SIZE OF PUERTO RICO, IS BEGINNING TO PAINT COASTLINESDigital Oil Paintings: http://UBERMORGEN.COM/DEEPHORIZONThe supreme discipline of art - oil painting - is back. It has been 13 days since a BP oil and gas exploration well blew out, setting fire to the drilling rig, which sank, killing 11 people. Ever since, crude oil has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, raising the prospects of a historic environmental disaster. Winds from the southeast have nudged the slick northward, where it floated Saturday near the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi and has begun to paint the coastlines.Finally oil painting has evolved into generative bio-art, a dynamic process the world audience can watch live via mass media. Never before has this art form been as revelant and visible as today - only 9-11 was nearly as perfect, but in the genre of performance art. An oil painting on a 80.000 square miles ocean canvas with 32 million liters of oil - a unique piece of art.We exclusively use aerial images from the oil spill. The files are ready-mades but we waived our right to use them "as is" and decided to use a special digital technique to produce a statement about the disconnection of form and color and about contemporary and futuristic imaging procedures. We use a compressor (sorenso codec) and consumer video editing-software and manually loop 2 frames, the image becomes liquid, transforms and deformes. These visualisations represent the "Verkuenstlichung" of nature and the "Vernatuerlichung" of art. Unedited oil-paintings of the event can be found via search-engines, on boston.com or on the NASA Earth Observatory website.UBERMORGEN.COM are well known for similar projects. What they wanted to achieve with these alienating and retro-visual "web-paintings", as they call it, is not clear. "Since we work for digital penetration of the art market " declared Hans Bernhard "we should get used to radical changes of our networked point of view and in particular about new forms of digital painting"."I saw the NASA earth observatory images and I was blown away", lizvlx stated "Finally traditional painting made its comeback as a high-tech innvovative art form and not as the starving grandparent of photography, video, digital art and performance. As a former painter I am thrilled and as a digital artist I want to work this material until it bleeds"."We're breaking new ground here. It's hard to formulate a defense for an artwork exploiting a human caused desaster that has no precedent, which is what this is," Curator Felix Vogel said, defending the artist duo UBERMORGEN.COM against not writing a response for "what is just a shift of perspective what you couldn't anticipate, but possibly with big impact on the art business."After the images and the video circulated online the feedback hit hard on UBERMORGEN.COM: "It is perverted and sick to compare a mass media spectacle and natural desaster with the century old tradition of fine art painting" comments a curator who chose to remain anonymous "it is obvious that this comes from the ice-breaking european techno-art avant-garde. They step onto our fine tradition without the slightest idea of the consequences - and i am not talking about the butterfly effect"!UBERMORGEN.COM have a record of experimental projects and radical positions. In 2001 they broadcast a live-webpainting "Attack on Democrazy" during the first 8 hours of the 9-11 attacks. They intuitively understood that the attack was a mass media intrusion, a "Media Hack". They are infamous for their Vote-Auction Media Hack, featuring the buying and selling of individual votes during the presidential election Al Gore vs. G.W. Bush in the year 2000. Since 2001 they work on different series of web-paintings, by definition non-functional websites serving as images rather than interactive document-structures.Digital Oil Paintings: http://UBERMORGEN.COM/DEEPHORIZONUBERMORGEN.COMDEEPHORIZON2010Digital Oil PaintingDEEPHORIZON_1_MILLION_LITERShttp://www.ubermorgen.com/DEEPHORIZON/deephorizon_1_million_liters.htmlVideo Betahttp://www.ubermorgen.com/DEEPHORIZON/video/deephorizon_h264.mov

Americahttp://www.alansondheim.org/america.mp4Second of the completed films in Second Life; this is part of the onlineresidency I have through HUMlab, Umea University (thanks in particular toSachiko and Jim). This is the first time that language is really dominantin the work - and in such a way that it becomes materialized, in relationto the virtual which is its habitus and mode of production. Do check thisout, ignore the earlier URLs if need be. Thanks, Alan

[digested < at > nettime --mod(tb)]Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> plato's cave of reflections and mirrors, maybe medusa, the real My sound files are in a new archive - please check it out! Growing up here and having children here: for Rwanda Homeless and inworld thinking about Second Life - please comment * essay: deliberately mistaken ontologies of life-worlds 2 Histories New Video Release: Okukin within iii (last of the series) Baghdad SL - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:19:04 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: plato's cave of reflections and mirrors, maybe medusa, the real plato's cave of reflections and mirrors, maybe medusa, the realinside the body of the avatar-with-attachmentswithin the invisible body of the avataroutside the attachments remaining invisiblebeyond the shadows of the body have disappearedbelow the reflections of attachments are visibleinto the water reflections having fallenabove the water reflections coming into playthroughout reflections among the invisible bodyout there treating us to reflection's afterthoughtsunder the air the water containing recognitionsamong the recognitions attachments appearing clearlybeside the attachments no body nothing residingon the attachments memories of visibilityin the attachments segments of missing bodyjulu twine out of luck and imagejennifer's attachments' reflections' distortions coming into their ownsomething about material cultures and absent centers, erasuressomething else, julu and jennifer forgothttp://www.alansondheim.org/platoscave.mp4- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 01:42:20 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: My sound files are in a new archive - please check it out!Hi -My sound files are in a new archive - please check it out!ESP-Disk has given me server space for my sound/music works (solos andcollaborations). I won't have them any longer at - www.alansondheim.org,but do check out -http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/The following has the latest at the top - at this point, however, itdepends only on upload order -http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/?M=DEventually there will be about 550 or more files up. They're almost allmp3s. Please enjoy, and let me know if you have questions about individualworks. (There are about 240 up now; it's a long upload.)When I make newer pieces, I'll announce them with the new URL; they'll beat the top of the list. Note this work is all for free, but you can still support the musicians!I want to thank everyone at espdisk.com for giving me this space. Needlessto say, ESP-Disk, like every alternative recording company, needs yoursupport!Thanks, Alan- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:34:54 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Growing up here and having children here: Growing up here and having children here:I grew up here:http://www.alansondheim.org/growingup.mp4All my children are here:http://www.alansondheim.org/allmychildren.movNew project here - either Well or Brane here -The first refers to something that is low/beneath the surface - butreflects the sky, tapping into something hidden here.The second references an n-dimensional object in string theory that mayor may not exist here.Think impossible or inconceivable objects, objects nonetheless that may befundamental to the cosmos - think fundamental ontology here.Goals:1. To further explore dance/choreographic/behavioral issues in SecondLife here.2. To further explore these within complex negotiated environments here.3. To explore media-modified environments with contradictory video/audiomaterials here.4. To explore narratologies and performances here in these environments.5. To relate all of this to a developing philosophy of difference andcontradiction here.(+growing up here) - (+all my children here) = philosophy of differenceand contradiction here.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:13:36 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: for Rwanda for Rwandahttp://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/modern2.mp3query="Somalia" query="Russia" query="Gabon" query="Malawi"query="Britain" query="East Timor" query="mexico" query="america"query="tajikistan" query="india" query="slovenia" query="vatican"query="rwanda"winking poverty isolation grief rwanda new heights terrifyingKosovo, Rwanda, and there's a whole litany here, even within say half athis is for PNGers and East Timorese and Lebanese and Rwandans, orthis is for Rwandans and Americans and South Africans and Tahitians, orthis is for PNGers and East Timorese and Lebanese and Rwandans, orthis is for Rwandans and Americans and South Africans and Tahitians, or"If Rwanda never happened, Sudan were prosperous,the happening of a nation, occurrence of a nationof a legacy, punctum, special holocaust, Rwandan, Jew, Armenia,Tasmanian orwhat is a name that calls a name, that calls forth a namethis is for PNGers and East Timorese and Lebanese and Rwandans, orthis is for Rwandans and Americans and South Africans and Tahitians, orIf Rwanda never happened, Sudan were prosperous,Dallas. I have met you in Montreal. I will meet you in Rwanda. That isRwanda, may not be exactly new on the planet, but its world-wideconnects plutonium AIDS, Rwanda Foucault death. Everything silencesof isolation and despair, grief over Rwanda,body-without-organs / Rwanda"If Rwanda never happened, Sudan were prosperous,for whom is the name called, and for whom is the callingand for whom is the memory, and the calling,to the Ming; reading about the Rwanda genocide; NY Times depressingDallas. I have met you in Montreal. I will meet you in Rwanda. That isRwanda, etc. may not be exactly new on the planet, but its world-wideconnects plutonium AIDS, Rwanda Foucault death. Everything silencesof isolation and despair, grief over Rwanda, and depression.body-without-organs / Rwandawho is calling whomand where is the calling, the calling forth by day or nightof the name whose uttered history, unutterable, return of the erased,the walking, the papersfor whom the papers, who collects them: what borders, what is allowedto pass, what passes:for every text is a permission, and every text a denialIn the far future, every happening will not be a happening,every occurence will not happen, every happening will not occurin the far future, in the future farther from the futurein the future farther- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 15:13:38 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Homeless and inworld Homeless and inworldLost my place in SL a while agoJust happened when permissions changedDistrust land, land gets you nowhereCarry your stuff with you, wherever you goThere's no place to rest, no place to stretch outMe, I like to stretch out, talk with anyone aroundNo one's around in these vacated landsNo one's got permissions, least of all meEveryone's bellies are full of primsThey don't even have to put them away,Me, they're just what I got on my backLook at me, falling from the skyEmpty's the world, the first and the secondThey're one and the same, busy hands at workThey take pennies from the little guyThe rich get rich, the poor get you know whatThe coffers overflow in first and second livesAll money's virtual, wherever it's keptI've never seen a coffer, wouldn't know if I didBut if something overflows, you can bet there's money thereWait, I've got a few more lines to goWearing the stuff I own slows me up a bitWant a glowing prim, just give me foodOr shelter from nothing at all, I'm just tired of fallinghttp://www.alansondheim.org/homeless.mov- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 23:20:18 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: thinking about Second Life - please comment * * I know the outline's vague - working this into a paper of sorts -please comment if it makes any sense at all to you - thanks, Alan -(thinking about SL, not in terms of RL or extrapolation -if such bepossible - a crude, close to useless, outline below)deliberately mistaken ontologies of life-worlds"The SL space is almost always treated as a simulacrum of real life - bythe creators as well! But as an abstracted mathematical topology, it's farmore than that; others will take it farther in the future, already are. Ialso want to discuss being-in-mathesis, beyond the SL 'standard' represen-tation."SL: [describe] = 2 [split choice]0:RL: [explain] = 1 [given]---------------------------------------0: neutral1: obdurate, there is, idiotic real2: choice / intentionality0: neitherness, not both A and B, neither A nor B (a priori mathesis)1: fragility of the good: computer program error, intrinsic2: error extrinsic, deferment0: null set1: universal set2: split tending towards as-if1-2: leakages between themproblematic metaphor [0/1/2]: numbers as markers of inscriptions, multiplicities, neutralities (the idiotic)RL: 1: immersive, fundamentally dynamic (potential stases) - internal: operated _in_SL: 2: definable, fundamentally static (real mobility) - external operators: operated _on_Attacking the metaphor: misplaced quantification and ordering among'plexa,' misplaced mathesis (plexus, from plico, plicatum, to fold,to knit - Lynd's Class-Book of Etymology, 1861)Intentionality:suturing in RL: cohering subjectivity, harmonic continuity, incoherent and dynamic inscribingsuturing in SL: coherent physics, discordant continuity, coherent inscribing (it's inscription that holds it together)Problematic ontology of SL: mathesis/inscription = what is; the world is a world only by virtue of its (visible, sensed) manifestation, information clarified and lost, backup of SLProblematic ontology of RL: virtual particles, information entanglement and conservation, no backupOff the map i -Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka - emptiness and dependent origination /dependent arisingOff the map ii -SL: Think of root originations in server farms, permissions and specificies of addressRL: Think of fundamental ontologies under erasure, feynman diagram probabilities: what constitutes dependency under probability distributions -Off the map iii -Physical ontology is always abstracted, as-if (SL and anti-conventionalist argument)There is no _fundamental_ physical ontologyOff the map iv -Mathesis and Badiou's position - relation to surreal numbersOn the map -Thinking of SL as abstracted, split, chosen, programmed: anything that isprogrammable is possible. Thinking of RL as given, born-into: thought asconceiving. Consider SL _not_ as subset of RL - as fulcrum; consider SLas the visual counterpart of the space of Mathematica.Psychology, psychoanalytics of SL in this case: matrix, borromean knot, meta-level jumping (collocation of constructing, dwelling-in)The body as entangled projections/introjections (jectivity) independent of traditional physical constraint or representationThe locus of the body in the physical body (SL as perceptual organ)The traditional/narratological function of SL = equivalent to cinematic diegesisThe non-traditional functioning of SL (above) = processes of dynamic suturing- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 00:21:36 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: essay: deliberately mistaken ontologies of life-worlds (preliminary)==========================================================================deliberately mistaken ontologies of life-worlds{ SL = Second Life, used somewhat interchangeably for virtual worlds; RL =real life, or 'first life,' used somewhat interchangably for physicalreality. }=========================================================================="The SL space is almost always treated as a simulacrum of real life - bythe creators as well! But as an abstracted mathematical topology, it's farmore than that; others will take it farther in the future, already are. Ialso want to discuss being-in-mathesis, beyond the SL 'standard' represen-tation."RL: [explain] = 1 [given] The real world is given, inert, obdurate, one ormany - it's still one, presenced. The real world possesses at least fourfundamental forces, various constants from fine-structure to gravitation-al; these things - static or dynamic - are given. Physics is explanatory,attempting coherent and agreeable structures in depth. David Finkelstein:physics is fucking the real. There is always the potential of deep error.SL: [describe] = 2 [split choice] The virtual world is described; itsdescription is its fundamental ontology. It is split; constants are byconsensus. There are no basic forces at work; motion is the result ofredraw, rewrite. The physics is the result of an attempt to constructcoherent and agreeable structures in depth. David Finkelstein: pure mathis masturbation. There is always the potential of surface error.0: Neither description nor explanation, but a postulate of a neutralbackdrop, perhaps the Madhyamaka backdrop, the problematic of the existentin relation to logical falsification. But perhaps here, or perhaps here inthe sense of a diacritical mark:0': the psychoanalytics of the subject lies, a psychoanalytics deeply andpermanently entangled in perceptual modalities. This is the locus ofpeering-out, or not peering-out.0, 0': neutrality - neutrality appears and disappears.1: obdurate, there is, idiotic real. The thetic, demonstrative, occurs inthe 1: which is the real; 1 is not a number, but a condition. 1 is not achoice, but within 1, there are always choices, splits: frames ofreference, wave or particle functions. One is 'like that'; the real has acertain style.2: choice / intentionality. The virtual world is chosen; it is also in-tended, intended against the backdrop of 0 and 0'. Now this is important:the virtual world lies within a potential well; it has both internal andexternal boundaries: it _runs_ at a designated clock-tine; it is aconstruction within the social; it is, in other words, a fabric.0, 0': neitherness, not both A and B, neither A nor B (a priori mathesis).Neitherness and its dual may be taken as the two fundamental operations ofthe propositional calculus (elementary logic); they're the Sheffer strokeand its dual. But they are also expulsions, abjections, avoidances, theloci of subjectivities in relation to spewing-forth in real or virtualworlds. Neti neti: neither this nor that, neither the one nor the other,the one or the two, the one or two and the Other.1: fragility of the good: computer program error, intrinsic. Within the 1,there is, as Leibniz might unfurl himself, the potential for the catas-trophic, in the sense of catastrophe theory. And while there are infiniteerrors, there may be, as in chaos theory, only one viable solution -surrounded by problematic others, mutations which produce nothing, whichcorrupt. Or not, as some extend themselves. Nonetheless, it is within theone that the computer program error appears, as error - as somethingneeding correcting, something turning away from the coherently expectedanswer, something which doesn't survive the rituals of debugging. In thissense, the physics of the computer program in general parallels thephysics of the real; both are open to contradiction or falsification intheir running explanations/processes. These errors are intrinsic toprograms and theories which are aligned with pre-determined goals, as ifthere were design (not intelligent design to be sure) involved.2: error extrinsic, deferment. Think of computer program errors which areextrinsic - produced results leading elsewhere, the result of choice ordecision, not necessarily an error, but an extension - one finds a con-tinuous deferment, one error leading to novelty, the plateau of novelty,the tendency of the plateau towards another error or another extension,and so forth. This is the result, the habitus, of intention; this is thedwelling of distinctions where, utopia-like, any error may be no error atall, and anything at all might be intended, willed, to survive.0, 0': null set. Thus 0 is the set of all those objects not equal to them-selves, but let us consider 0' to be the division between two distinctpopulations, X and not-X: that is, the intersection. However this inter-section is impure; it exists in-relation-to-X and not-X; it is the nullset, but the null set in-relation, and therefore of and within/without thesubject.1: universal set. Thus 1 is the universal, cosmological, set - totality,however defined; in a sense 2: virtual worlds, are subsets within it. Fromwithin and without 0, but not within and without 0', which is almostsomething else altogether.2: split tending towards as-if. Virtual worlds are always split: splitfrom the real (guided, protected, within the literally circumscribed,circumprogrammed, potential well), and split in terms of decision trees(this - and not that - gravitational constant employed, for example.) Andvirtual worlds are always already as-if; there is nothing else to them.As-if what? As if they're dynamic, as if the illusions were real. Realhow? As-if one might turn away from the screen, unplug everything, andfly.1-2: leakages between them. Neither polarities nor entirely independent:the body, inscribed, is already virtual; the virtual world, embodied, isalready real. The bridge between them is the uncanny; both reals areimaginary. Leakage is abject - as if there were leakage, as if there werevirtual/real polarities.The metaphoric 0,0',1,2: numbers as markers of inscriptions, valuable interms of thinking about multiplicities, neutralities (the idiotic),inscriptions. Within 0,0' inscription is primary; everything is inscribedbut inscribed differently. And inscription is necessarily circumscription,the symbolic bounded by the symbolic, the sememe tending towards theappearance of closure. (Attacking the metaphor: misplaced quantificationand ordering among 'plexa,' misplaced mathesis (plexus, from plico,plicatum, to fold, to knit - Lynd's Class-Book of Etymology, 1861).)So we might say:Real life: 1: immersive, fundamentally dynamic (potential stases) - inter-nal: operated _in._ Immersive: inhabited within the space-time manifold,such that contradiction or contrary is always a process; in the real,nothing contradicts anything. In real life, there is no server roll-back.Second life: 2: definable, fundamentally static (real mobility) - externaloperators: operated _on._ How definable? Every element has been placed,intentionally; every element carries permissions and attributes; everyelement may be removed; every region, every thing, every world, may berolled-back.==========================================================================Intentionality and suturing of the subject:Suturing in real life: cohering subjectivity, harmonic continuity,incoherent and dynamic inscribing: what is inscribed, erodes, corrodes,decays, disintegrates; the subject, subjectivity of the subject, dies.While alive, the body continues, is continuous; there is no teleporting,no disappearance. The body physically moves in and out of presence; inreal life, there are no (space/time) jump cuts. And the body decays;existing in a potential well (clothing, shelter, skin), it is alwayssubject to collapse, death, detritus. The body ingests, excretes.Suturing in virtual worlds: coherent physics, discordant continuity,coherent inscribing (it's inscription that holds it together). In otherwords, in virtual worlds, one's avatar is present or not present, 'alive'or not 'alive' - the inscription is coherent, holding everything together- but the virtual body is not always there. Teleporting disrupts contin-uity for others, not for the avatar 'owner' or the avatar itself. The bodyneed not ingest or excrete (unless it is written into the virtual worlditself); it need not sleep, does not get sick, and so forth. In virtualworlds, the body shape may be mobile, transformable, as well.Problematic issues of ontology of re life: virtual particles, informationentanglement and conservation, no backup.==========================================================================Problematic issues of ontology of virtual worlds: mathesis/inscription -what is; the world is a world only by virtue of its (visible, sensed)manifestation. In virtual worlds, information may be classified, trans-formed, and lost - there is always server roll-back or backup. Backupimplies an epistemological/ontological split between the (visual, aural,etc.) presentation of the data-base, and its physical backup - as bothmedium and data.==========================================================================Off the map i:Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka - emptiness and dependent origination/arising. Isthere a distinction between the ontic emptiness of real and virtualworlds? Between dreams, hallucinations, etc. and a concrete or virtual'real'? (Various phenomenologies here.) The nexus/ cohering of dependingarising seems to be radically different between real and virtual; in theformer, there are causal chains, plexa, Indra's net, and other entangledphenomena, and in the latter, there are entangled phenomena, in the senseof hierarchical data-bases, but virtual worlds can be split (similar tonetsplit in IRC), can split apart, can have objects permanently eliminatedwithin them (in one region) without undue affect elsewhere (in another).Off the map ii -Real life: Think of fundamental ontologies under erasure, Feynman diagramprobabilities: what constitutes dependency under probability distributions- how entangled information should be (ontologically) constituted - thestatus of dark matter, dark energy, the metaverse, additional dimensions,branes, other constructs, etc. etc.. How are these inscribed? Are theyinscribed at all in daily life?Second life: Think of root originations in server farms, permissions andspecificities of address. Are permissions inworld or outworld?Off the map iii -There is no _fundamental_ physical ontology in the real world: or ontologyitself, like causality, may be problematic (certainly in terms of subject-ivity and inscription.In virtual worlds, physical ontology is always abstracted, as-if: thesituation is conventionalist/constructivist, on one hand, and a classicalmathematical hierarchy on the other.Off the map iv -Mathesis and Badiou's position - relation to mathematical ontology orsurreal numbers. Is there entanglement between cosmological origins andmathesis? Is mathesis the fundamental operation in virtual worlds?==========================================================================On the map -I'm thinking of virtual worlds as abstracted, split, chosen, programmed:anything that is programmable is possible. Think of the real world asgiven, born-into: thought as conceiving. Consider virtual worlds _not_ assubsets of real life - as fulcrums; consider virtual worlds as the visualcounterpart of the space of Mathematica.Again, the psychology, psychoanalytics of virtual worlds: borromean knot,matrix, meta-level jumping (collocation of constructing, dwelling-in). Andin virtual worlds, the body as entangled projections/introjections (jecti-vity) independent of traditional physical constraint or representation Thelocus of the body in the physical body (second life as perceptual organ)Finally, think of the traditional/narratological function of virtualworlds as equivalent to cinematic diegesis (editing, jump-cuts, multipleviewpoints, etc.) and the non-traditional functionings of virtual worlds(above) as processes of dynamic suturing.==========================================================================So we cover, however roughly, the mathematical, epistemological and onto-logical groundings of real life and virtual worlds: I want to argue thatthis is a basis for being in virtual worlds, a basis for theorizing them.In other words, we need not, necessarily, move through either the socialor simulacra of real world physics; we can start elsewhere, as Being orthe problematizing of beings, in a fantasm of mathesis. And that mayexpand our considerations elsewhere - from more than three-dimensionalmanifolds, to spaces without gravitation or with several gravitational(positive, negative, neutral) fields, and so forth. There need not beobjects, weathers, plateaus, height from a planar origin - perhaps onlyflows or diffused light, or nothing at all. Nothing need be taken forgranted: It's all open.==========================================================================25c25: The error-sheetbackdrop, perhaps the Madhyamaka backdrop, the problematic of the existentchoice, but within 1, there are always choices, splits: frames of loci ofsubjectivities in relation to spewing-forth in real or virtual extrinsic -produced results leading elsewhere, the result of choice or decision, notnecessarily an error, but an extension - one finds a con- from the real(guided, protected, within the literally circumscribed, nal: operated_in._ Immersive: inhabited within the space-time manifold, specificitiesof address situation conventionalist/constructivist.==========================================================================- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 23:14:43 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: 2 Histories2 HistoriesHighschool Reunion Yearbook Pagehttp://www.alansondheim.org/AlanSem.rtfNetflix Rental List (for classes and personal viewing)30 Days: Season 1: Disc 1 # 8 1/2 # 8 1/2: Bonus Material # A Fool ThereWas # A Throw of Dice # Across the Universe # Aelita, Queen of Mars # Ali:Fear Eats the Soul # Assunta Spina / The Last Diva # Beauty and the Beast# Beauty and the Beast # Beowulf: Director's Cut # Biograph Shorts #Bjork: Medulla Videos # Bjork: Volumen Plus # Blood Shack # Body Fever #Capitalism: A Love Story # Cassandra's Dream # Children of Paradise # Cityof Women # Conductor 1492 # Contempt # Coraline # Corner Gas: Season 4 #Coup de Grace # Diary of a Lost Girl # Different from the Others # DonkeySkin # Dracula # Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary # Duplicity #Electric Edwardians # Eraserhead # Eros # Erotikon # Fellini's Roma #Ginger & Fred # Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life # Hackers # HarlanCounty, U.S.A. # Hiroshima Mon Amour # Howl's Moving Castle # I HaveFound It # I Love Lucy: Season 1: Vol. 8 # Intervista # La Dolce Vita #Landmarks of Early Film # Lon Chaney: Ace of Hearts # Lost in Austen # MadLove: The Films of Evgeni Bauer # Man with the Movie Camera # Master andCommander # Memoirs of an Invisible Man # Metropolitan # Michael Clayton #Miss Potter # Mother of Tears # Nate and Hayes # Night and Fog # NoCountry for Old Men # Persuasion # Regency House Party # Roger & Me #Roswell: Seasons 1-3 # Salome / Lot in Sodom # Secrets of a Soul # Shutter# Sir Arne's Treasure # Small Change # Smoke Signals # Solaris #Thanhouser Collection # The 3 Penny Opera # The Battleship Potemkin # TheBlue Bird # The Business of Fancydancing # The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari #The Darjeeling Limited # The Doll / Lubitsch in Berlin # The Duchess # TheFall # The Gods Must Be Crazy # The Harder They Come # The King of Comedy# The Lemon Grove Kids: Meet the Monsters # The Lost Honor of KatharinaBlum # The Man Who Laughs # The Mechanical Man / The Headless Horseman #The Ogre # The Phantom of the Opera: Special Edition # The Piano Tuner ofEarthquakes # The Tempest # The Woman in White # Thirst # Titus # Tout VaBien # Traffic in Souls # Transformers # Trilby # True Blood: Season 1 #Videodrome # Wilder Napalm- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 00:43:32 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: New Video Release: Okukin New Video Release:OkukinOkukin is a short, 9'23" video created from my recent work in Second Life.There is a narrative among objects, slabs, planets, voices, bodies, andimages, some old, many new. The objects themselves have been created forOkukin, which is filmed using the Beta 2 Second Life viewer release, inorder to take advantage of a number of new features.The video opens on a scenic pouring-forth which changes in a few secondsto planet surfaces and constructions which defy the laws of gravity,opening on occasion to untoward vistas. The rest of the video developsthese vistas through symbolism and spoken or sung narrative that tendstowards a future anterior. The second video is a short test of emissionsthat wasn't used in the final production, but is of great interest itself.Perhaps I am becoming too literal; perhaps I am disappearing in theseworks, which always seem on the verge of emergence, but never quitecoalesce into Being.I hope to show this work at the June ELO conference in Providence, andelsewhere of course. Participants, witting and unwitting, include Foofwad'Imobilite, Blue Carter, Kira Sedlock, and myself. Thanks to FauFerdinand as well, for the use of the land in East Odyssey, as well asLizsolo and a number of people who helped with scripting.http://www.alansondheim.org/Okukin.mp4http://www.alansondheim.org/testrelease.mp4(Please note, because of space limitations, some older work had to betaken down from the website.)- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 00:05:47 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: within iii (last of the series) within iiihttp://www.alansondheim.org/within3.mp4section 1: colors of the skinsection 2: entranced embeddingsection 3: objet a- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 13:12:11 -0400 (EDT)From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Baghdad SL Baghdad SLhttp://www.alansondheim.org/baghdad.mp4 baghdad.mov 11-Jul-2005 18:17 5k baghdad.txt 16-Jul-2005 04:07 3k baghdad2.mov 11-Jul-2005 18:17 5kbaghdad and addresses of the invisible [TXT] baghdad.txt 05-Nov-2007 12:38 3.0K [VID] baghdad2.mov 06-Nov-2007 14:59 4.9Kbaghdad and capital was gold silver leftin new york and in baghdadnew in york new baghdad in capitalbonjour of in debris, mourning, baghdad dawn baghdad another the shifting,mourning, baghdad baghdad mourning, dawn dawn bonjour another in debris,baghdad mourning, dawn another debris, sand shifting, sifting, evolutions,baghdad you are lovely and nakedbaghdad you are pure and beautifulbaghdad you are lovely and nakedbaghdad you are pure and beautifulbaghdad standardbaghdadbab! oo: baghdad baghdad o : baletbaghdad and addresses of the invisiblewho are taking offf to baghdadb s baby baby baghdad baghdad BALLET ballet beam BEEB bee B BI DELtxt/baghdad.txtbaghdad.movan ap a avatars baghdad ba bb bkreviewaw ashur baby aw backhoe baghdad bathingbeauties backhoe bbbb baghdadbackhoe baghdad baghdad bathingbeauties bbbbback-suck backhoe-suck baghdad-whip s-goof sac-suck said-slitrdingnidr-suck rdingnidr-pee baghdad-love basin-suckbaghdad obvserver scratches curve rubber remnants trails paints los hugesiggraph mist screen # baghdadmov # fukuoka second hand kimono # indexsbcglobal.net password animals flow speeches baghdad.mov scaf transformalikely part of a conspiracy to kill the president, ... .html true baghdad,april -- two sedans loaded with gunmen sped through the streets of baghdadcouncil does not want to ... militants kill in baghdad parking lot (: ambackhoe.jpg baghdad.mov baghdad.txt baghdad2.mov basin.jpg bb.txthi-rez streets of Baghdad. I feel both anguish and cool distance towardsfrom Baghdadschordinger case for example or the observers in Baghdad - that's what itthe storm clouds of Baghdad the stormclouds of dying maddened elephantsus, our disappearance, the ash of Auschwitz-Baghdad, A-B, the Phoenician BaghdadLebanon Beirut Iraq Baghdad Khmer Phnom Penh Sri LankaSudan annihilate States Baghdad. will Dirty Dirty Egypt Egypt Syria.living.Baghdad.EgyptSyria.CityStreetWallIraq, Lebanon, Beirut, Baghdad, Khmer, Phnom Penh, Sri Lanka.The oaks of Baghdad shall bend to the Victors! Arduous is the task!prevail! road long difficult! winding shall is of task! to Baghdadprevail! road difficult! winding shall Baghdadfor the foreseeable future. The only reason we are "bombing Baghdad backmourn for them, Baghdad is lost...us, our disappearance, the ash of Auschwitz-Baghdad, A-B, the Phoenicianlatest news orig from Baghdad orig from Baghdad orig have you heard origBaghdad orig from Baghdad orig have you heard orig have you heard the onemx:us, our disappearance, the ash of Auschwitz-Baghdad, A-B, the PhoenicianBelsen, Baghdad, Saigon. The others, Les Autres, are alwaysnumbered. Regardez-moi: not 650000 dead in Baghdad, les mortes,- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I haven't read this yet, but I see that Tiqqun's The CyberneticHypothesis has been translated into English recently. It might be ofinterest to people on this list.http://cybernet.jottit.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiqqunJoss

To witness the exhibition “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present” at the Museum of Modern Art – the institution’s first major performance art retrospective – is to experience both the ultimate victory and the last gasp of Titoism. A 40-year retrospective look at Abramovic’s work, it couldn’t be anything other than the zenith of her career, a kind of ultimate, brilliantly-lit endorsement by the US art world’s inner-circle nomenklatura. And as a gilded platform for her work, in which videos and stills of her original events have here been interlarded with “reperformances” by younger collaborators, the show is a weird compound creation—a retrospective centering on a live event (the artist is in fact present); a look back staffed by naked young bodies; and all in all, a remarkable sight for those accustomed to MOMA’s usually more decorous halls. It’s also, unmistakably, an Event. Because whatever you think about Abramovic’s gestures, which are as suffused with self-absorption (some would call it egotism) as Rembrandt’s canvases are with dark tones, they’re undeniably worthy of attention. Equally undeniably, there’s something undeniable about them, if I can put it that way. How does this represent a victory for Titoism? Let’s set aside that Abramovic continues to identify herself as a Yugoslav, making her almost as rare a bird as the Dodo. Let’s set aside, also, the hagiolatry lurking behind the scale of the gigantic black and white photo of the artist which stands at least 8 meters high at the entrance of the show, looking astonishingly like a latter-day manifestation of communist-era personality cults. (Is it possible that Abramovic doesn’t recognize this?) As this retrospective eventually makes clear, the Yugoslav regime reacted to the unrestful events of Europe in 1968 in a way diametrically opposite that of kindred regimes elsewhere in Eastern Europe. It’s difficult to imagine the authorities of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Romania reacting to the arrival of what could only be described as radical ideas among their young people (even if “only” within the context of art) with anything other than consternation, surveillance, intimidation, and sometimes, arrest and prison time. To take one of many examples, the rock band Plastic People of the Universe formed in Prague within months of the Soviet Invasion in 1968. But it didn’t take long for them to be forced into the underground and forbidden to perform, with some of their members sentenced to prison terms.At first, and directly proximate to that gigantic portrait of a serenely self-suffused Abramovic, MOMA’s curators attempt with words on the wall to position her as belonging to a quasi-dissident tradition. After reading that she is a pioneer of performance art, which is indubitable, viewers are informed “In the 1970’s she introduced her body as the object, subject, and medium of her work, starting with a series of performances antithetical to the political climate of socialist Yugoslavia.” While this is true as far as it goes, you could say the same thing about the radical art experiments taking place at more or less the same time in the United States, the UK, France, and other western countries, sometimes with more dire consequences than Abramovic ever had to contend with. In fact if you take even a cursory look at the history of New York City’s Living Theater, a radically experimental theater group founded in 1947 by actor Judith Malina and painter-poet Julian Beck, you will discover a history of arrests and harassment by the authorities, particularly in the 1960s and 1970’s, either on trumped-up charges of tax evasion or equally ludicrous accusations of “indecent exposure” – as though they were producing pornography, not art. Contrast this with Abramovic’s work, which was also frequently conducted unclothed. By the time visitors to the show pass the text quoted above and enter the first gallery room, there’s no hiding that many of her most radical gestures took place unmolested and in full public view in Belgrade. Some, in fact, unfolded in a student cultural center converted for that purpose by the Titoist regime from a secret police barracks – talk about symbolism! – after student protests in 1968. Fast forward, then, to 2010 and New York City. What we have, for the next two and a half months, is an implicit continuity between that evaporated Yugoslavia and MOMA, in which a first stage provided and subsidized by a vanished regime extends – voila! – trans-Atlantic more than four decades later, having dissolved long since in its home country, now becoming part and parcel of MOMA’s polished floors. From nomenklatura to nomenklatura. Call it metempsychosis.In Abramovic’s 1974 performance “Rhythm 5,” which unfolded on the ground of the courtyard behind the Student Cultural Center, the artist drenched a large wooden five-pointed star shape with 100 liters of auto gas. Here’s what followed, in her words:"I set fire to the star. I walk around it. I cut my hair and throw the clumps into each point of the star. I cut my toe-nails and throw the clippings into each point of the star. I walk into the star and lie down on the empty surface. Lying down, I fail to notice that the flames have used up all the oxygen. I lose consciousness. The viewers do not notice, because I am supine. When a flame touches my leg and I still show no reaction, two viewers come into the star and carry me out of it. I am confronted with my physical limitations, the performance is cut short."A number of her performances end this way – they are “cut short” for one reason or another, either due to “physical limitations” or to avoid violence. When I see a DVD of “Rhythm 5” at MOMA, I picture the Marshall chuckling to himself somewhere else in Belgrade; Dedinje, for example. Seated in a chair rife with gold braid, he has a Cuban cigar in one hand and snifter of cognac in the other. Perhaps he is informed, days later or even on that very evening, that this event by the daughter of two Partisan heroes centered on a five pointed star, the very symbol of Communism. His chuckle turns into open laughter. It isn’t malicious in the least, this laughter; rather it’s suffused with enjoyment at the skill with which he’s playing his own game. Because in providing a sand-box for the kids to play in, in effect, he has achieved so much at one stroke. He’s exposed neighboring Socialist regimes as fraudulent and tremulous. He’s simultaneously co-opted and channeled a stream of energy on the part of “his” young people that, if overtly opposed by the state, could in fact have proven dangerous. And not least, he’s proven worthy of both Western open-society admiration (look, he doesn’t throw them in jail – he gives them a student cultural center!) and that of his own citizens (for the same reason). It’s brilliant, and five decades later, we have a “Yugoslav” artist endorsed and enshrined for all to see in the central crown jewel of all contemporary art museums. A few years ago another major New York museum, this time the Guggenheim, got this dynamic precisely wrong at their Abramovic retrospective; you could say they bought the wrong party line. Under a photo of “Rhythm 5” on their website, we read to this day Nancy Spector discussing an artist who, as she may not have been entirely aware, came and went as she pleased, commuting from Belgrade to Paris, performing with equal ease in Yugoslavia or the rest of the world. “Though personal in origin,” writes Spector, “the explosive force of Abramovic’s art spoke to a generation in Yugoslavia undergoing the tightening control of Communist rule.” If this is tightening, one is entitled to ask, bring on the straight jacket! None of which is to diminish the magnitude of Abramovic’s achievements. To walk through the many halls at MOMA representing her life’s work is to encounter a creative force both prolific and consistently provocative, even if the State felt no need to rise to the occasion. It can also be an experience of nostalgia, not of the Yugonostalgic kind – after all, most of her work was conducted abroad, despite the observations above – but rather for a vanished era of 1960’s and 1970’s experimentation. It was a highly fertile period long since buried under waves of subsequently defunct “-isms,” with even post-Modernism expiring on top of the heap well before the turn of the century. There’s an eerie quality to the recreations of some of her work, which are staffed by a committed group of 36 people trained by Abramovic in what NY performance artist Laurie Anderson recently called “Marina boot camp” in the countryside north of New York City. While these restagings can’t recapture the social moment the original works were made within, they do possess their own power. Visitors seeking to move from the first gallery room to the second can chose to pass between a pair of closely positioned naked bodies, for example – a restaging of one of many pieces represented at MOMA that are taken from the decade-plus collaboration between Abramovic and the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, or Ulay. Their 1977 piece “Imponderabilia,” staged in the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, is also best described in Abramovic’s words:"Naked we stand opposite each other in the museum entrance. The public entering the museum has to turn sideways to move through the limited space between us. Everyone wanting to get past has to choose one of us." And there they are, at MOMA, not Abramovic and Ulay at the narrow doorway but two naked women (though at other times it’s a man and a woman, as in the original; shifts rotate throughout the day). Passing between them provides a frisson of reality—a radically opposite sensation from the cybernetic virtuality of so much contemporary art. Elsewhere in the show, a naked man lies under a human skeleton, with the (artificial, we’re told) skeleton “respirating” along with its still-living partner (originally in a 1995 video called “Cleaning the Mirror II,” it was restaged in 2005 as “Nude with Skeleton.” Both times Abramovic provided the living component of the macabre pair). Another gallery presents a startling sight: a young woman, entirely naked, arms outstretched in a cruciform shape, essentially mounted on the wall like an enlarged butterfly specimen. On closer look, it’s apparent that she’s seated on an almost invisible bicycle seat, but because her legs descend on either side of it she seems suspended in mid-air, staring straight forward, her arms unsupported in what clearly must take an enormous effort. (When I described her as being in a “crucifix position” to MOMA press representative Daniela Stigh, who I had called to find out the title of the piece, I was told that “she didn’t mean it to be explicitly a crucifix, though of course many interpretations exist.” Well, ok! Glad we sorted that out. Called “Luminosity,” the piece was first staged in 1997, with Abramovic, of course, in the starring role.)As one may expect, not just from the name of the show and the gigantic personality-cult photo at the entrance (titled “Portrait with Flowers,” 2009), the centerpiece of “The Artist is Present” is in fact the Artist, indubitably Present. Clad in a bright red gown, at least on the day I went, illuminated by four vast film lights shining through diffusion gels, Abramovic is seated at a table across from a chair in which any visitor is invited to sit for as long as he or she wishes—during which time the Artist will gaze serenely into their eyes. And she will be so seated for every day of the show’s 10-week run; seated, in fact, for what we are told will be 700 hours, in what’s being billed the longest-running performance piece ever staged. (See it, live, at http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/marinaabramovic/)Despite featuring the Artist in present tense, this center-piece is also a restaging or reinterpretation of a collaborative work first performed with Ulay in 22 cities between 1981-1987, under the title “Night Sea Crossing.” In the original, which was performed about 90 times, it was Ulay and his lover Abramovic who gazed into each other’s eyes, for hour after hour—until pain or exhaustion forced them to stop. In 1988, evidently for much the same reason, the couple broke up after twelve years of intense collaboration. Their final performance involved walking towards each other from opposite end of the Great Wall of China, he starting from the Gobi Desert and she from the Yellow Sea. Three months after starting this bipolar journey, they met for the last time and parted ways. Since then, her career has prospered, while he has largely vanished from the scene – though he did, of course, have a recent retrospective at SKUC, in Ljubljana, curated by Tevz Logar. When I arrived for the preview of “The Artist is Present” in March, Abramovic had already been sitting at her table for several hours, and a line had formed of people intent on pulling up a chair across from her. But three hours previously the crowd had been much sparser. As New York-based Bosnian-American artist Soba Seric described it, around that time a tall man with a frazzled beard and dark clothing entered the vast atrium space in which Abramovic will sit for the next two and a half months. Striding over on long legs, he eased himself down in the chair opposite the Artist. It was Frank Uwe Laysiepen, a.k.a. Ulay. After a moment of recognition, Abramovic began to weep. Reaching across the table, she grasped his hands. He soon rose and vanished into the growing crowd. Her 700 hours of sitting had begun.

bwo Geert Lovinkoriginal at: http://bit.ly/aJOkjEThe secret life of Wikileaks founder Julian AssangeJulian Assange, the man behind the world's biggest leaks, believes intotal openness and transparency - except when it comes to himself. NikkiBarrowclough tracked him down.May 22, 2010 - 10:03AMJulian Assange has never publicly admitted that he's the brains behindWikileaks, the website that has so radically rewritten the rules in theinformation era. He did, however, register a website, Leaks.org, in 1999.''But then I didn't do anything with it.''Wikileaks appeared on the internet three years ago. It acts as anelectronic dead drop for highly sensitive or secret information: the purestuff, in other words, published straight from the secret files to theworld. No filters, no rewriting, no spin. Created by an online network ofdissidents, journalists, academics, technology experts and mathematiciansfrom various countries, the website also uses technology that makes theoriginal sources of the leaks untraceable.In April the website released graphic, classified video footage of anAmerican helicopter gunship firing on and killing Iraqis in a Baghdadstreet in 2007, apparently in cold blood. The de-encrypted video, whichWikileaks released on its own sites as well as on YouTube, caused aninternational uproar.The Baghdad video has been Wikileaks' biggest coup to date, although anextraordinary number of unauthorised documents - more than a million -have found their way to the website. These include a previously secret,110-page draft report by the international investigators Kroll, revealingallegations of huge corruption in Kenya involving the family of the formerpresident Daniel arap Moi; the US government's classified manual ofstandard operating procedures for Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, whichrevealed that it was policy to hide some prisoners from the InternationalCommittee of the Red Cross; a classified US intelligence report on how tomarginalise Wikileaks; secret Church of Scientology manuals; an internalreport by the global oil trader, Trafigura, about dumping toxic waste inthe Ivory Coast; a classified US profile of the former Icelandicambassador to the US in which the ambassador is praised for helping quellpublicity about the CIA's activities involving rendition flights; and theemails leaked from the embattled Climate Research Unit at East Anglia inBritain, last November, which triggered the so-called ''climategate''scandal.That's one leak which might have bemused those conservatives convincedthat Wikileaks was run by ultra-lefties. In the blogosphere, meanwhile,conspiracy theories abound that Wikileaks is a CIA cyber-ops plot.Two years ago a Swiss bank in Zurich, Julius Baer, succeeded intemporarily closing down the website with a US District Court injunctionafter Wikileaks published documents detailing how the bankers hid theirwealthy clients' funds in offshore trusts (the banned documents reappearedon Wikileaks ''mirror'' sites in places such as Belgium and Britain).The Australian government, too, has made noises about going after thewebsite, after the Australian Communications and Media Authority's list ofwebsites it may ban if the Rudd government goes ahead with its proposedinternet censorship plan turned up on Wikileaks last year.To say that the list of rattled people in high places around the world isgrowing because of Wikileaks is an understatement. The fact that thewebsite has no headquarters also means the conventional retaliatorymeasures - phones tapped, a raid by the authorities - are impossible.Intense interest in Julian Assange began well before the Baghdad video wasreleased, and viewed 4.8 million times by the end of its first week. Theformer teenage hacker from Melbourne, whose mystique as an internetsubversive, a resourceful loner with no fixed address, travellingconstantly between countries with laptop and backpack, constitutes whatyou might call Assange's romantic appeal.But then there's the flip side: a man who believes in extremetransparency, but evades and obfuscates when it comes to talking abouthimself in the rare interviews that he gives. In the past, at least, thesehave hardly ever been face to face.The secretiveness extends to those close to him. One woman who speaks tome on the condition of total anonymity lived in the same share house inMelbourne as Assange for a few months in early 2007, when Wikileaks was inits incubation period. The house was the hub, and it was inhabited bycomputer geeks.There were beds everywhere, she says. There was even a bed in the kitchen.This woman slept on a mattress in Assange's room, and says she wouldsometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find him still glued tohis computer. He frequently forget to eat or sleep, wrote mathematicalformulas all over the walls and the doors, and used only red light bulbsin his room - on the basis that early man, if waking suddenly, would seeonly the gentle light of the campfire, and fall asleep again. He also wentthrough a period of frustration that the human body has to be fed severaltimes a day and experimented with eating just one meal every two days, inorder to be more efficient. ''He was always extremely focused,'' she says.Well before meeting Assange, I'd thought how much he seemed like acharacter from Stieg Larsson's trilogy of blockbuster novels. One ofLarsson's brilliant computer geniuses, taking on the world's wicked andpowerful. Or a more youthful Mikael Blomkvist, with an Australian accent.Larsson died six years ago. But could the Swedish crime writer and Assangehave met?Assange first visited Sweden in the 1990s - and Wikileaks is hosted on amain server in Sweden, where the identities of confidential sources areprotected by law.This doesn't prove anything, of course - and Wikileaks only moved its mainserver to Sweden two years ago, after the Julius Baer Bank tried to closedown the website. Even so, I email Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's widow, toask if the two of them ever met Assange - explaining that he helpedresearch a remarkable 1997 book, Underground, about the exploits of anextraordinary group of young Melbourne hackers, written by the Melbourneacademic Suelette Dreyfus. The hackers all had monikers in the book:Assange is said to be the character Mendax. Assange convinced Dreyfus torelease the book online, and according to one source I spoke to, there wasgreat interest in the book in Sweden - and in China.''About Julian Assange - well, why don't you ask him?'' Gabrielsson emailsback.It isn't the most urgent question I have for Assange, who I meet in earlyMay, the day after he slips back into Melbourne, his home town. He arrivedon a flight from Europe, via the US. Or so I understand from the personacting as our inbetween.The same contact provides a Melbourne address, and instructions. ''Don'tcall a cab, find one on the street; turn off your mobile phone before youcatch the cab and preferably, remove the batteries.''And here he is - a tall, thin, pale figure with that remarkable whitehair, looking very tired, and wearing creased, student-style dark clothesand boots, and backpack.As we shake hands, he inclines his head slightly in a courtly, old worldmanner, at odds with his youthful, student-traveller looks. When I remarkthat there's a lot to ask him, he replies, ''That's all right - I'm notgoing to answer half of it.''Is Assange his real name? Yes, he replies, then says it's the name in hispassport. ''What's in a name?'' he then adds mysteriously, casting doubton his first answer.At the time of writing, his passport status was apparently back to normalafter immigration officials at Melbourne Airport said that his passportwas going to be cancelled on the grounds that it was too tatty.It has been in a couple of rivers, Assange allows of the state of hispassport. The first time, as he recalls, in December 2006, when he wascrossing a swollen river during heavy rain in southern Tasmania, and wasswept out to sea. He swam back in. ''My conclusion from that experience isthat the universe doesn't give a damn about you, so it's a good thing youdo.''Why did he have his passport with him? He had everything he needed forthree weeks of survival, he replies. He needed his passport for ID when heflew to Tasmania.Doesn't he have a driver's licence? ''No comment.''How true is the image of him as the enigmatic founder of Wikileaks,constantly on the move, with no real place to call home? Is this reallyhow he lives his life?''Do I live my life as an enigmatic man?''No - is it true you're constantly on the move?''Pretty much true.''Does he have one base he'd call home?''I have four bases where I would go if I was sick, which is how I thinkabout where home is.''He has spent the best part of the past six months in Iceland, he says. Andthe next six months? ''It depends on which area of the world I'm neededmost. We're an international organisation. We deal with internationalproblems,'' he replies.Assange mentions four bases, but names only two. The one in Iceland andanother in Kenya, where he has spent a lot of time, on and off, in thepast couple of years.The Kroll report, released on Wikileaks, reportedly swung the Kenyanpresidential election in 2007.When he's in the country, Assange lives in a compound in Nairobi withother foreigners, mainly members of NGOs such as Medecins Sans Frontieres.He originally went to Kenya in 2007 to give a lecture on Wikileaks, whenit was up and running. ''And ended up staying there,'' I suggestencouragingly.''Mmmm.''As a result of liking the place or …''Well, it has got extraordinary opportunities for reforms. It had arevolution in the 1970s. It has only been a democracy since 2004 … I wasintroduced to senior people in journalism, in human rights very quickly.''He has travelled to Siberia. Is there a third base there?''No comment. I wish. The bear steak is good.''Why did he go to Georgia?''How do you know about that?''I read it somewhere, I reply. It was a rumour. ''Ah, a rumour,'' he says.But he did go there? ''It's better that I don't comment on that, becauseGeorgia is not such a big place.''Living permanently in a state of exile, which can become addictive, meansthat you always have the sharp eye of the outsider, I suggest.''The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures givesyou I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see thestructure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense ofmental independence,'' Assange replies."You're not swept up in the trivialities of a nation. You can concentrateon the serious matters. Australia is a bit of a political wasteland.That's OK, as long as people recognise that. As long as people recognisethat Australia is a suburb of a country called Anglo-Saxon.''Could he ever live in one place again? A brief silence. ''I don't thinkso,'' he says finally.''I don't see myself as a computer guru,'' he remarks at one point. ''Ilive a broad intellectual life. I'm good at a lot of things, except forspelling.''At one point, thinking about some of the material leaked on Wikileaks, Iask Assange how he defines national security. ''We don't,'' he sayscrisply. "We're not interested in that. We're interested in justice. Weare a supranational organisation. So we're not interested in nationalsecurity.''How does he justify keeping his own life as private as possible,considering that he believes in extreme transparency?''I don't justify it,'' he says, with just a hint of mischievousness. ''Noone has sent us any official documents that were not published previouslyon me. Should they do so, and they meet our editorial criteria, we willpublish them.''Assange isn't paid a salary by Wikileaks. He has investments, which hewon't discuss. But during the 1990s he worked in computer security inAustralia and overseas, devised software programmes - in 1997 heco-invented ''Rubberhose deniable encryption'', which he describes as acryptographic system made for human rights workers wanting to protectsensitive data in the field - and also became a key figure in the freesoftware movement.The whole point of free software, he comments, is to ''liberate it in allsenses''. He adds: ''It' s part of the intellectual heritage of man. Trueintellectual heritage can't be bound up in intellectual property.''Did being arrested, and later on finding himself in a courtroom, push himinto a completely different reality that he had never thought about - andeventually in a direction that eventually saw him start thinking along thelines of a website like Wikileaks, that would take on the world?''That [experience] showed me how the justice system and bureaucracyworked, and did not work; what its abilities were and what its limitationswere,'' he replies. ''And justice wasn't something that came out of thejustice system. Justice was something that you bring to the justicesystem. And if you're lucky, or skilled, and you're in a country thatisn't too corrupt, you can do that.''In another life, Assange might have been a mathematician. He spent fouryears studying maths, mostly at Melbourne University - with stints at theAustralian National University in Canberra - but never graduated,disenchanted, he says, with how many of his fellow students wereconducting research for the US defence system.''There are key cases which are just really f---ing obnoxious,'' he says.According to Assange, the US Defence Advance Research Project Agency wasfunding research which involved optimising the efficiency of a militarybulldozer called the Grizzly Plough, which was used in the Iraqi desertduring Operation Desert Storm during the 1991 Gulf War.''It has a problem in that it gets damaged [from] the sand rolling up infront. The application of this bulldozer is to move at 60 kilometres anhour, sweeping barbed wire and so on before it, and get the sand and putit in the trenches where the [Iraqi] troops are, and bury them all aliveand then roll over the top. So that's what Melbourne University's appliedmaths department was doing - studying how to improve the efficiency of theGrizzly Plough.''Assange says he did a lot of soul-searching before he finally quit hisstudies in 2007. He had already started working with other people on amodel of Wikileaks by early 2006.There were people at the physics conference, he goes on, who were careerphysicists, ''and there was just something about their attire, and the waythey moved their bodies, and of course the bags on their backs didn't helpmuch either. I couldn't respect them as men''.His university experience didn't define his cynicism, though. Assange saysthat he's extremely cynical anyway. ''I painted every corner, floor, walland ceiling in the 'room' I was in, black, until there was only one cornerleft. I mean intellectually,'' he adds. ''To me, it was the forced move[in chess], when you have to do something or you'll lose the game.''So Wikileaks was his forced move?''That's the way it feels to me, yes. There were no other options left tome on the table.''Wikileaks, he says, has released more classified documents than the restof the world press combined.''That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are -rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How isit that a team of five people has managed to release to the public moresuppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world presscombined? It's disgraceful.''Where does Assange see Wikileaks in 10 years? "It's not what I want theworld to be. It's what I want the rest of the world to be," he replies.He would like to see all media develop their own forms of Wikileaks. Thatwould put his own website out of business, I point out.''We have a proposal to [an American foundation] for a grant to justthat,'' he replies, explaining that Wikileaks could create systems for allmedia organisations.A thought: has he ever met Rupert Murdoch? ''No.''Nor has he met Stieg Larsson, Assange tells me.This story was found at:http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-secret-life-of-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-20100521-w1um.html

| |------ ----------------------- | O | | //\ | | / | \ | | / | | | \ | | / \ | ----------------------- ------ | |I've been giving collaborative filming workshops since 2003, first inan educational setting at the Parsons New School University at theinitial invitation of Ted Byfield, followed by Mia Makela to the320x240 VJ festival on Vis, Croatia, Keiko Uenishi to ClubTransmediale in Berlin, and Dunja Kukovec to MFRU/IFCA in Maribor,Slovenia. It is not often that activity at the university makes itinto the clubs, but the last several years saw a resurgence of theworkshop at festivals and conferences, largely displacingpresentations. One of the principle reasons for this is the advent ofopen source media tools and subsequent popularity of DIY electronics,circuit bending, complimented by a heavy dose of social engineering.This trend in the arts creates an atmosphere that favors the empiricalrelative to the theoretical.An eventscape is formed when participants collectively participate inthe production of moving images. Each participant embodies a mode ofproduction in real time comme dans le cinema-verite. This allows formultiple subjective visions to a given situation. Filming is non-stop,a direct flight of fancy, transitioning from composition tocomposition immanent to the unfolding situation. The cross-referentialfootage, featuring the dancer Alejandra Martorell, inhabits a publicspace, in this case a spot recommended by Michael Delia, the anarchictraffic pattern on Gansevoort Street in New York City:http://bit.ly/9rxl7E (before street view)http://bit.ly/9wtNIb (after street view)The live cinema performance combines the disparate view points toimpulses in the music into a real-time movement collage. Filmed offthe screen last November to the tunes of lloop, Rich Panciera, atShare in ISSUE Project Room Brooklyn:http://vimeo.com/12071482Muchas gracias por los participantes en Nueva York: Chris G, Chris S,Dalsu, Kirby, Lucy, Tamaki, Yenting, Yousook.

The ways of Lord Nicholas Negroponte are impenetrable....Original at:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/gadget-special/Coming-soon-100-Tablet-PC/articleshow/5984155.cms(http://bit.ly/bqyhfn)bwo Sarai Reader List/ Shubhranshu ChoudharyComing soon: $100 Tablet PCSEATTLE: The nonprofit organization that has tried to produce a $100laptop for children in the world's poorest places is throwing in thetowel on that idea -- and jumping on the tablet bandwagon.One Laptop Per Child's next computer will be based on chipmakerMarvell Technology Group Ltd's Moby tablet design. Marvell announced aprototype of the device this year and said it costs about $99.Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, is optimistichis organization will be able to keep the price under $100 in partbecause Marvell plans to market its tablets widely to schools andhealth care institutions."We want to see the price drop, and volume is the key to that,"Negroponte said.The quirky green and white XO laptop sold by One Laptop Per Child(OLPC) to governments and organizations in countries such asAfghanistan and Uruguay wasn't destined for such a broad audience.OLPC had to repeatedly scale back expectations for how many of thelaptops it could produce, and it didn't get the price much below $200,twice the price specified by the device's "$100 laptop" nickname.In 2005, Negroponte envisioned having built 100 million laptops inabout two years. Today, 2 million of the machines are in use.The XO was also more expensive to produce than a tablet would bebecause of its many moving parts and features meant to withstandglaring sun, blowing sand and spotty access to electricity. In somecases, OLPC had to change the XO's design by region. For example, thephysical keyboard had to be customised for students in countries thatdon't use a Latin alphabet. It would be less expensive to change thesoftware behind touch-screen keyboards.Marvell's co-founder, Weili Dai, said the company has also found waysto cut costs in the way it's designing the chips.The new tablets will have at least one, and maybe two, video cameras.They'll sport Wi-Fi connections to the Internet, "multi-touch" screensand have enough power to play high-definition and 3D video. Marvelhopes to make the screens 8.5 inches by 11 inches, the size of astandard sheet of paper. Unlike Apple Inc's iPad tablet, the devicewill also work with plug-in peripherals such as mice.

Discipline & the Moving ImagePresented by Zoe BeloffJune 11th, 2010 < at > 6:30 PMBirkbeck Cinema (www.birkbeckcinema.com)43 Gordon SquareLondon WC1H 0PDOrganized by http://www.minorcompositions.infoObedience, Stanley Milgram, 16mm, 1962, 45 minsFolie à Deux, National Film Board of Canada, 16mm, 1952, 15 minsMotion Studies Application, 16mm, ca. 1950, 15 minsObedience documents the infamous “Milgram experiment” conducted at Yale University in 1962, created to evaluate an everyday person’s deference to authority within institutional structures. Psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a scenario in which individuals were made to think they were administering electric shocks to an unseen subject, with a researcher asking them to increase the voltage levels despite the loud cries of pain that seemed to come from the other room. Milgram saw his test, conducted mere months after Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, as a way to understand the environments that made genocide possible.Tonight, artist Zoe Beloff pairs Obedience with two earlier works dealing with psychosocial control: Folie à Deux and Motion Studies Application. The former, one of a series of films on various psychological maladies produced by the National Film Board of Canada in the 1950s, presents an interview with a young woman and her immigrant mother afflicted by shared delusions that manifest when the two are together. The latter is an industrial film purporting to present ways to increase efficiency in the workplace: explaining, for instance, a means to fold cardboard boxes more quickly. In stark contrast to the nostalgic whimsy typically associated with old educational films, Folie à Deux and Motion Studies Application play as infernal dreams of systemic power and sources of surprising, unintended pathos.The concept of ‘motion studies’ is central to cinema itself. Without the desire to analyze human motion, there would be no cinematic apparatus. But the history of motion studies is freighted with ideology. Its inventor Étienne-Jules Marey was paid by the French Government to figure out the most efficient method for soldiers to march, while his protégé Albert Londe analyzed the gait of hysterical patients. From the beginning, the productive body promoted by Taylorism was always shadowed by its double, the body riven by psychic breakdown. We see this in Motion Studies Application and especially Folie à Deux, where unproductive patients, confined to the asylum, understand with paranoid lucidity that the institution is everywhere, monitoring them always. Obedience stands as a conscious critique of these earlier industrial films, co-opting their form only to subvert them and reveal their fascist underpinnings.Bio: Zoe Beloff is an artist who is particularly fascinated by attempts to graphically manifest the unconscious processes of the mind. She is particularly adept at dreaming her way into the past. Zoe’s work has been exhibited internationally. Venues include: The Whitney Museum, MoMA, The Freud Dream Museum (St Petersburg), Pacific Film Archives and the Pompidou Center--Zoe will also be presenting her work on the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalysis Society in London on June 10th:The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-197210th June 2010: http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/coneyisland.htmlTo celebrate the centennial of Freud’s visit to the great amusement parks of Coney Island in 1909, artist Zoe Beloff will conjure up the forgotten world of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, along with the visionary ideas of its founder Albert Grass, for an exhibition at the Coney Island Museum in New York.Here she will present an overview of the work of the Society, which might best be described as an urban myth. The members, working people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. Beloff will discuss the Sunday lectures, plans to rebuild the “Dreamland Amusement Park” according to Freud’s ideas of dream formation, the controversy over the lost Sigmund Freud figure at the World in Wax Musée and will screen a number of the “Dream Films” in which members of the society recreated their dreams on film in an unapologetic and playful exploration of their inner lives.

Language and ObjectA texture, tested.png, is created with the phrase "i don't understandyou're saying" overlaid with the word "ALIEN". The texture is applied tonumerous objects in the Second Life environment; the texture is alsoinserted in the particle generation script. When an avatar sits on ascripted object, particles spew out, carrying the same text as the objectsthemselves. The result is a fireworks display of tested.png spews fromtested.png emitters. The display is like nothing in physical reality; atthe same time, it's tethered to the "ALIEN/i don't understand what you'resaying" text.The problem, theoretical and practical, is this: How does alienness func-tion, given the self-referentiality of this text? (Or, in fact, any textat all? For it isn't so much the specific content, as the act of scanningand reading familiar graphemes, words, and so forth, that sets the scene.)Does the act of reading take away from the mise en scene (as alien, otherworldly - as elsewhere and elsewise) reducing it to a form of concretepoetry - or does the mise en scene "alienize" the inscription - and, byimplication, any inscription, itself?The former seems to be the case; as relevance theory has it, a determin-ation occurs, creating a steering-mechanism as habitus for the viewingsession. Think of this as a detour or masquerade, the habitus within apotential well, keeping everything in order.In the real world, disguise of anomaly is equivalent to a problematicshift to the familiar. Thus anomaly may be constantly hidden: a bomb aslunch-box, for example - and the real as classical logic, with quantum andcosmological anomalies kept at a distance. This references the phenomeno-logy of nearly autonomous levels, without which life would be, literally,at a loss.In virtual worlds, we can experiment with all of this - keeping the alienor familiar at bay - with (mostly autonomic) gestures whose stakes arehigh in the real, gamed and (presumably) lower online. Thus the virtual isthe safe world/word for the real, until the real overwhelms us all.*http://www.alansondheim.org/tested.pnghttp://www.alansondheim.org/alientalk.mov*And when this happens, inscription disappears, there is nothing furtherto be said; without memory or organism, the flat world shudders to a halt.

. . ... .. . ... ... .. .. . .... . . . ... .. ..... .... ..... ... . . . . ... . .. . . ... .. ... ... .Vuvuzela-EX (R)Stops the Hum of Bees for freeIn nearly every corner of the world people play football today, FIFA says. The victory of capitalism goes parallel to the structures of sports. And yes, swarms win and make all faces equal. Anyhow some of them produce their very own sound in the stadiums. This communistic expression of life sucks. But vuvuzela.org fails. No democratic reasoning will help. Fanfares are permanently disturbing the cup. And as we all know John Cage was wrong. We can't give back the voice to the peoples. Vuvuzelas kill!Vuvuzelas (do not confuse with German Kicker Uwe Seeler) and noisy fan trumpets are disorganised horns. All in all it's a bad black false uproar. They can't be brought into line. In the name of freedom: This new apartheid must be stopped!38317 has developed the perfect tool and instrument against the pest. FREE DOWNLOAD Save your home XXL - Download the 45 min. Vuvuzela-EX (R) mp3 NOW! here: http://www.n0name.de/38317/vuvuzela-ex (82.3 MB, 256 Kbps, 44100 Hz, Stereo)Burn Audio CD, play it loud two times during the football/soccer match on TV (2 x 45:00) and enjoy. Please don't worry, this MP3 is not empty. The incredible unhearable subliminal frequencies on the track will eliminate the hum of bees damn straight!Vuvuzela-EX (R) is a quality product by 38317.tkpowwowered by Fraunhofer Gleichschaltung. And the games can go on.The choice for soccer fanswww.vuvuzela.com(c) 2010 n0name . . ... .. . ... ... .. .. . .... . . . ... .. ..... .... ..... ... . . . . ... . .. . . ... .. ... ... .