[spectre] DEAF03_SYMPOSIUM: INFORMATION IS ALIVE - FEB28/MAR01

[stephen kovats]

DEAF03_SYMPOSIUM: INFORMATION IS ALIVE 
Friday Feb 28 and Saturday Mar 01

Dutch Electronic Arts Festival - DEAF03
organized by V2_,Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
25 February - 9 March 2003

*INFORMATION IS ALIVE*
Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum
Time: 10:45  17:00 hours.
Location: Auditorium, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museumpark 18-20,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Lectures and presentations by:

Manuel De Landa =AD Foucault and the Archive
Brian Massumi =AD The Archive of Experience
Sadie Plant =AD Mobile Knitting
Arjun Appadurai =AD Archive and Aspiration
Scott Lash =AD Information Flows and Involuntary Memory
Simon Conway Morris =AD The Deep Pattern of Life
Winy Maas =AD Permanent Testing (interview)
Ingo G=FCnther =ADTo Be is to Perceive

*INFORMATION IS ALIVE*

Since the dawn of recorded history, social and cultural memory have been
organized in two ways: either in a material form (tablets, books, objects)
or as immaterial =8Cinformation=B9 (personal memories, collective stories,
songs, dances, rituals, celebrations, games). Ever since the invention of
writing, the logic of material memory-systems, such as historical archives
and administrative records, has prevailed. These archives were ordered
linearly =ADeither hierarchically or through a grid =AD and were aimed at
control =AD both of the recorded items and of the people and processes that
these recorded items stood for. Next to these stiff and stable archives
there have always been flexible and unstable archives of what we called
=8Cimmaterial information' that followed a different rationality =AD the
labyrinthine, fuzzy logic of oral culture, that is, a culture without
written records. Stories change when told, and they keep changing as long a=
s
they are told, just as with personal memories. Songs and dances are rather
stable, but allow for personal interpretations also.
 With the recent introduction of digital databases we seem to be witnessing
a shift. What used to be material archive-systems have become immaterial
information-banks. Unlike classical archive forms, recent digital databases
need not be ordered linearly =AD grid-like and hierarchically. They are made
accessible through complex linking technologies which no longer work
linearly, as they still did in old-style computers, but as random and
non-linear as you like. Search engines can be designed to find the
proverbial needle in the haystack, or even to create a haystack where there
are only needles, that is, build patterns where there seemed to be only
fragments. Intelligent agents, or knowbots, can link information in a way
you never thought of yourself, while expressing your very own interpretatio=
n
of the world. As soon as new information enters a networked database, the
structure of the database can reorganize itself, just like old songs change
over time with changing audiences and changing social, political or cultura=
l
circumstances. Flexibility and instability have become technical qualities
instead of problems to be controlled. Digital archives are unstable,
plastic, living entities, as stories and rituals were in oral cultures.
 The value of what is stored in databases lies in how it can be used in the
present, and in its operationality rather than its meaning. We reuse and
recombine our past to create the world as we know it. Memory is a process
that functions in the present and is continually updated through that mode
of functioning. Research into the neurological, social, cultural and
evolutionary functions and processes of memorization and information storag=
e
can provide models and tools for understanding the possibilities and
limitations of nonlinear archiving, because all this research is about live=
d
archives of habits and practices that are continuously being broken down an=
d
rebuilt. The atomization of the archive in the database has made the whole
Art of Memory into a technological, interactive art that suddenly becomes a
highly urgent topic. In the first place, for all those institutions that
feel the need to =8Copen their archives=B9, secondly for all those who describe
and study modes of being, and thirdly for all those who design and use our
new archives, be it books, websites, cities or the like.
 The central theme of Information is Alive is the exploration of
artistically significant and technologically unexpected developments that
may arise through the storing, linking, reprocessing, transforming and
complexification of data (or perhaps material) which otherwise would simply
have remained as raw information. This book plunges into data flows from al=
l
kinds of disciplines that study archives: paleontological, cultural,
political, sociological, historical, artificial, neurological, artistic ...
In an information society there is no position outside of the flows, an
external position from which you can criticize or transcend the flows. But
joining in different flows at the same time creates the possibility of
networking streams of material and immaterial data, so as to create an
awareness of where we are and what we can do. We do not live in a society
that uses digital archiving, we live in an information society that is a
digital archive. Understanding the world means understanding what digital
databases can or cannot do.

Admission: euro 80,- for two days, euro 50,- for one day, discount (student=
,
cjp, RotterdamPas, 65+): euro 60,- for two days, euro 40,- for one day.
Tickets and reservation: On line via http://deaf.v2.nl (Direct Payment
procedure only) or by phone (from 21 February on) +31 (0)10 750 15 15

Publication "Information is Alive"=92
V2_, in cooperation with NAi Publishers, will release a publication
'Information is Alive'; accompanying 'DEAF03 Data Knitting'. The book
features descriptions of the installations of the =91DEAF03=92 exhibition and
essays and interviews by Arjen Mulder, Manuel DeLanda, Brian Massumi, Sadie
Plant, Arjun Appadurai, Scott Lash, Simon Conway Morris, Antonio Damasio,
George Dyson, Winy Maas, Boris Groys, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Ingo G=FCnther.
Price: =80 22,50 (during the DEAF03 festival =80 20,-). This book is available
at a discount in bookshops on presentation of the action coupon (action
number 00000 743-7371). This offer is valid from 25 February until 9 March,
2003.
ISBN 90-5662-310-9

More information can be found on =91DEAF03 Online=92: http://deaf.v2.nl
=91DEAF03 Online=92 offers the possibility to view the symposium online and to
participate in various festival activities.

For educational programs and/or guided tours during DEAF03 please contact
Valentijn Webbers, valentijn@v2.nl or +31 (0)10 750 15 18