[spectre] starting today: FreeBitflows, Vienna June 3 to 4

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

[ab adds: the conference which starts today at 14.oo hrs CEST can 
also be followed via the live-stream; 
http://freebitflows.t0.or.at/f/conference]




THE INTERNET came with a promise that "everybody can be a publisher".
Although not everybody wants to be a publisher, those who actually do,
find it hard to make it work. As it turns out, this promise is only true
in an extremely limited, technical sense.

	Yes, I can set up a website, or put my song on the Net, but
	what next? The problem becomes not so much technical as social
	-- there is a lot of sharing, but little in terms of making
	a living. Money remains squarely in the hands of the old
	industry.

The issue of distribution is not just an economic question. It's also
a political one. At stake is the 'semiotic democracy', that is the
ability of the largest number of people to create and share culture
freely. It is about making sure that despite of heavy-hitting marketing
machines, new, independent content can still fill its audience.

	In short, the question is how do innovative production
	and distribution come together to support each other.
	Free Software seems to have found a way to do just that,
	but what about the rest of cultural production? How do
	we get from technological visions to actual cultures that
	are open yet sustainable in a climate where funding runs short?

FreeBitflows will bring together artists, researchers, activists,
and hackers from Europe and beyond to investigate current strategies
to build sustainable, open and experimental cultures through
electronic media. A conference, workshops, performances and
an exhibition will examine cultures of access and the politics of
dissemination from a broad range of perspectives.

http://freebitflows.t0.or.at

S P E A K E R S

Ian Clarke (IE/US) architect and coordinator of the Freenet project
http://www.freenetproject.org

Marco Deserlis (IT) freelance journalist, Internet critic and media
activist http://www.thething.it http://www.d-i-n-a.net

Volker Grassmuck (DE) researcher at the Humbold University Berlin and
initiator of the Wizards of OS conference.
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck/

Menno Grootveld (NL) co-founder of the former pirate TV channel Robotnik
TV and co-founder of the festival for tactical media, Next 5 Minutes.
http://www.next5minutes.org

Bjoern Hartmann (DE/FR) conceived the Net label textone.org
http://www.textone.org   http://www.bjoern.org

Reni Hofmueller (AT) media artist and activist
http://helsinki.at   http://www.mur.at

Brewster Kahle (US) founder and digital librarian for the Internat Archive
(IA) http://www.archive.org

Paula Le Dieu (UK) project director of the Creative Archive, a BBC
initiative to distribute its audio and video archival content in ways that
allows the UK public to use it to fuel their own creative endeavours
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/03_march/02/on_demand.shtml

Pauline van Mourik Broekman (UK) founding co-editor and co-publisher of
the techno culture magazine Mute, co-founded as "the Arts and Technology
Newspaper" in 1994. http://www.metamute.com/ http://www.openmute.org

Sjoera Nas (NL) works with Bits of Freedom, a not-for-profit privacy and
civil rights organisation http://www.edri.org  or http://www.bof.nl

Istvan Rev (HU) professor of History and Political Science, Central
European University, Budapest  http://www.osa.ceu.hu

Janko Roettgers (DE/US) writes for on- and offline-media about net
culture, net policy and music on the Internet. http://www.mixburnrip.de
http://www.lowpass.de

Thorsten Schilling (DE) founder and president of mikro.org   also
http://www.bpb.de

Pit Schultz (DE) author, artist and computer professional. Co-founder of
Bootlab, Berlin and before that the mailing list Nettime. Currently,
project manager for reboot.fm, a Berlin-based open radio
http://www.Bootlab.org or http://www.reboot.fm

Wendy Selzer (US) staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
where she focusses on intellectual property an dfree speech issues.
http://www.eff.org   http://cyber.law.havard.edu/seltzer.html

Kristin Thomas (US) research director and organizer with The Future of
Music Coalition and works for a DC-based PR firm.
http://www.futureofmusic.org

Exhibitions run from June 3 to 17, 2004. Locations: Semperdepot, K-Hause,
Temporary locations: Karlsplatz, Vienna.

POSTED VIA:
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa, India
f r e d @ b y t e s f o r a l l . o r g
Ph 832.2409490 / 832.2409783 Cell 9822 122436
784 Near Lourdes Convent, Sonarbhat, Saligao 403511 Goa
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