[spectre] Newsletter of the Institute of Network Cultures

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Newsletter of the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, NL).
May, 2007

URL: http://www.networkcultures.org

Upcoming Events:

New Network Theory
On June 28-30 2007, the Institute of Network Cultures, Media Studies
(University of Amsterdam) and the Amsterdam School for Cultural
Analysis (ASCA) will organize the New Network Theory conference.
Please see http://www.networkcultures.org/networktheory/ for the full
program and additional information. Registration for the conference
has opened at
http://www.networkcultures.org/networktheory/index.php?onderdeelID=12&paginaID=73.
Due to limited capacity of the venue, we kindly advise you to register
shortly. The New Network Theory discussion list has been set up in
preparation of the conference. The list is meant for all those
interested in the topic, and will possibly continue after the event
in June 2007. To subscribe to the list, go to
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/networktheory_listcultures.org.

Recalling RFID
September 20-21 2007, in collaboration with De Balie, Rob van
Kranenburg and Oliver Leistert. Seminar and workshops on the social,
cultural and political implications of RFID (radio frequency
identification). Speakers include people from the industry,
researchers, artists, and programmers. They will address questions
such as: What happens to privacy? How safe is a tag? What is the role
of the designer in a smart environment? And is there something like
RFID etiquette? More information: info at networkcultures.org.

Urban Screens Manchester
October 11-12 2007, in collaboration with BBC Public Space
Broadcasting, Cornerhouse Manchester, MDDA. The next Urban Screens
Conference focuses on the development of non-commercial content for
big urban displays such as LED, LCD, plasma screens, media facades
and projections onto buildings. What characterizes these huge
displays as media platforms in urban space and which particular
spatial and social situations do they create? How are they perceived?
How does creative content flow from this? At the two-day international
conference media experts, designers, artists, architects and
broadcasters will present and explore the vast spectrum of potential
content. Conference homepage:
http://www.manchesterurbanscreens.org.uk/.

Video Vortex: Artist Responses to YouTube
On November 30 and December 1 2007 the INC, in collaboration with
Seth Keen and Vera Tollmann, will organize the Video Vortex
Conference at PostCS 11 in Amsterdam. The Video Vortex conference
aims to contextualize these latest developments through presenting
continuities and discontinuities in the artistic, activist and
mainstream perspective of the last few decades. Unlike the way online
video presents itself as the latest and greatest, there are long
threads to be woven into the history of visual art, cinema and
documentary production. The rise of the database as the dominant form
of storing and accessing cultural artifacts has a rich tradition that
still needs to be explored. The evening program will feature live
performances under the banner of video slamming. We will trace the
history from short film to one-minute videos to the first experiments
with streaming media and online video, along with exploring the way
VJs and media artists are accessing and using online archives. Please
join the email discussion list on this topic:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/videovortex_listcultures.org.
For additional information, see
http://www.networkcultures.org/videovortex/.

Publications:

Media Archive
All audio and video documentation from our past events and
conferences is currently available at the INC Media Archive. The
November 06 MyCreativity documentation includes Video On Demand and
podcasts of all sessions, and a PDF version of the newspaper. Also
check the archive for audiovisual material on Urban Screens 05, The
Art and Politics of Netporn, Incommunicado 05 and A Decade of
Webdesign, at http://www.networkcultures.org/archive/ (VLC player
recommended).

Just out:
Network Notebook nr.1
Network Notebooks is a series of publications on recent new media
theory. INC proudly presents: Network Notebooks nr.1 by Rosalind
Gill: Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in
Amsterdam a decade after the web.
To order printed copies, please send an email to info (at)
networkcultures.org. For more information and a freely available pdf
of the book, visit http:// www.networkcultures.org/networknotebooks.

Accounts of new media working draw heavily on two polarised
stereotypes, veering between techno-utopianism on the one hand, and a
vision of web-workers as the new 'precariat', victims of neoliberal
economic policies and moves to flexibilisation and insecurity on the
other. Heralded from both perspectives as representing the brave new
world of work what is striking is the absence of research on new
media workers own experiences, particularly in a European context.
This report goes beyond the contemporary myths of new media work, to
explore how people working in the field experience the pleasures,
pressures and challenges of working on the web.

Illustrated throughout with quotations from interviews, this research
examines the different career biographies emerging for
content-producers in web-based industries, questions the relevance of
existing education and training, and highlights the different ways in
which people manage and negotiate freelancing, job insecurity, and
keeping up to date in a fast-moving field where software and
expectations change rapidly. The research is based on 35 interviews,
held in Amsterdam in 2005, and contextually draws upon a further 60
interviews with web designers in London and Brighton. The interviews
were carried out by Danielle van Diemen and Rosalind Gill.

Published in November 2006:
Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks. Media Theory, Creative Labour, New
Institutions.
First publication in the series 'Studies in Network Cultures',
published by NAi Publishers, Rotterdam and Institute of Network
Cultures, Amsterdam.
Paperback, sewn, 250 pages, Size: 16 X 23 cm
ISBN 90-5662-526-8 / 978-90-5662-526-9, Û 23.50
Order online: https://www.naipublishers.nl/ordering.html
More information: http://www.networkcultures.org/naiseries

About the book
The celebration of network cultures as open, decentralized, and
horizontal all too easily forgets the political dimensions of labour
and life in informational times. Organized Networks sets out to
destroy these myths by tracking the antagonisms that lurk within
Internet governance debates, the exploitation of labour in the
creative industries, and the aesthetics of global finance capital.
Cutting across the fields of media theory, political philosophy, and
cultural critique, Ned Rossiter diagnoses some of the key
problematics facing network cultures today. Why have radical
social-technical networks so often collapsed after the party? What
are the key resources common to critical network cultures? And how
might these create conditions for the invention of new platforms of
organization and sustainability? These questions are central to the
survival of networks in a post-dotcom era. Derived from research and
experiences participating in network cultures, Rossiter unleashes a
range of strategic concepts in order to explain and facilitate the
current transformation of networks into autonomous political and
cultural 'networks of networks'.

Table of contents
* Whose Democracy? NGOs, Information Societies and Non-Representative
Democracy * The World Summit on the Information Society and Organized
Networks as New Civil Society Movements * Creative Industries,
Comparative Media Theory and the Limits of Critique from Within *
Creative Labour and the role of Intellectual Property * Processual
Media Theory * Virtuosity, Processual Democracy and Organized
Networks *

About the author
Australian media theorist Ned Rossiter works as a Senior Lecturer in
Media Studies (Digital Media), Centre for Media Research, University
of Ulster, Northern Ireland and an Adjunct Research Fellow, Centre
for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia.

About the book series
'Studies in Network Cultures' investigates concepts and practices
special to network cultures. Exploring the spectrum of new media and
society, we see network cultures as a strategic term to enlist in
diagnosing political and aesthetic developments in user-driven
communications. Network cultures can be understood as
social-technical formations under construction. They rapidly
assemble, and can just as quickly disappear, creating a sense of
spontaneity, transience and even uncertainty. Yet they are here to
stay. However self-evident it is, collaboration is a foundation of
network cultures. Working with others frequently brings about
tensions that have no recourse to modern protocols of conflict
resolution. Networks are not parliaments. How to conduct research
within such a shifting environment is a key interest to this series.

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Institute of Network Cultures
Amsterdam New Media Research Centre
Director: Geert Lovink
Manager: Sabine Niederer
Producer: Shirley Niemans
email: info(at)networkcultures.org
phone: +31 20 595 1866
http://www.networkcultures.org

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