[spectre] TODAY LIVE: Geert Lovink & Armin Medosch at De Ballie
Tania Goryucheva
tangor2 at xs4all.nl
Thu Jun 7 12:17:42 CEST 2007
Dear Shu Lea, pighed, and others,
I appreciate your responses and I feel that the project's point and
intention should get some clarification.
Initially the idea of Cool Media Hot Talk Show. on Art & Media
project grew out of a concern with the discursive divides and
misconceptions which exist between the (new) media art scene, the
cultural establishment and the broader public. While addressing this
general issue, practice-wise, tactically, the main idea of the
project is to subvert the hierarchical principle behind rendering
mediated public discourse. (Though "on Art & Media" is just the theme
to start with, and we plan to go beyond it.) It is done by providing
people with an opportunity to question directly, without any
authoritarian mediation in-between, the views, ideas, strategies,
approaches of artists, curators, theorists, policy makers, critics
etc. regarding the relations between art, media technologies, and
their socio-political context. Everybody can propose topics,
speakers, questions and vote for the proposals of others in order to
determine the talk show event scenario by using a specially designed
online interface. Whether it can work? Technically it already works -
you can see how by trying the interactive online tools at the web
site and watching the archived video stream of the previous event:
http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/archive.jsp In terms of social
process and discourse production, we are looking forward to
experimenting with it and studying the outcomes.
The project is also very much an exploration of the potentialities of
participatory media models, which can be applied as sometimes
probably substitutions for traditional ways of organising public
events and discussions, but more likely as added, extra possibilities
for people to engage into the public life and public discourse. The
most widely spread forms of participatory media nowadays operate at
the levels of exchange with the information (like Web 2.0 related
tools and services: blogs, vlogs, podcasting, etc), commenting (in
particular so much loved by mass media form of invited and then
carefully filtered feedback), and, the one which I find the most
significant - collaboration around production of shared resources of
different sorts (e.g. Wikipedia, open source software, etc). What I
am particularly interested in is whether a participatory media model
can be successfully developed and applied as more specifically
targeting tools to tackle the problem of the mediation in the course
of public discourse production, aiming at questioning the pragmatics,
conventionalities, behaviour patterns which are the driving forces
behind the dominant forms of public discourses. In this sense Cool
Media Hot Talk Show does not call for total openness, freedom and
altruism, but rather suggests an alternative scenario for direct
participation in public discourse in order to manifest and promote
own, individual or group, interests. It is important that the project
integrates a few different elements that aim at creating a situation,
within which such objectives can be put to work. First, the
combination of the "cool" internet environment, cool both in terms of
participatory aspect (McLuhan) and psychological distancing from the
other, and "hot" local spot - situation of the real event brought to
the public by the public at the theatre space of De Balie, a
respected organisation, one of the epicentres of public culturo-
political life in Amsterdam and the Netherlands. Second, blending
together serious debates content-wise with an entertaining (to
certain extent) media format of their facilitation, attempting to
introduce new dynamics into the relationships between the Speaker
(supposedly a public personality), the Public (here participants,
questioners) and the Mediator (here a semi-automated cross-media
system, partly based on self-organising principles: selection of
topics, speakers and questions, as well as decision making about the
final event scenario are based on direct voting and negotiations).
So far the idea has been developed empirically, as a sort of
laboratory test of the hypothesis that by adding particular features
to the system of mediation one can influence the qualities of public
discourse in a particular way, implying also an unpredictability
involved.
At the moment we are still working on improving and adjusting
facilitation tools, which allow different degrees of participation.
Further feedback will be highly appreciated.
All the best,
Tania Goryucheva, project curator
http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/
On Jun 6, 2007, at 8:47 PM, pighed wrote:
>
> i agree - its unfortunate to see [spectre] deflate a bit, losing
> the fun o' ye seriously-minded conversations, lo these past years.
>
> but it makes sense in a way. it's been happening as "web2.0" gets
> bigger. as tools of 'communication' get bigger the individual
> voice gets smaller. wikipedia's authority is odd (i've quoted it
> often, and with confidence, but what do i know about the damn
> author or damn source of the damn article?), the voice of any
> publication, when a mass of people are behind it, is tyrranical.
> it occurs to me now that maybe advertising and web2.0 (or 'social
> media' or whatever buzzwords we like or detest) are the REAL art
> that we artists, academics, and critics should be paying attention
> to. i'm sure our individual projects are all quite interesting,
> but what causes dialogue to disappear? and in technolo-circles why
> does it seem to be changing so rapidly when for decades BBSs and
> chatboards did so well (and, arguably, still do).
>
> why is spectre so enamoured with announcements? is it because we
> have little to give one another other than our work? ..how
> american that would be, or, more acurately, how a child of a
> culture of automated manufacturing.
>
> but perhaps the cause of the lack - the emerging technologies like
> web2.0 and viral marketing - are the real artforms we need to
> attend to.
>
>
> geert - sorry to hear that you had to answer to the machine!
>
> shu - quite lively of you to notice!
>
>
> mostly sincerely,
>
> - mark stephen meadows / pighed
>
>
> shu lea cheang wrote:
>> hi, okay, not sure if spectre is ever a forum for discussion
>> or forever sink into a platform for evant announcement?
>> lots of happenings, calls posted, events announced,
>> why do i always get the feeling that i am missing out the whole
>> world?
>> (or not really?!) but okay, i did catch this LIVE transmission
>> tonight.
>>
>> I dare myself to post here an impression (and hopefully not get
>> moderated out...
>> as recently just happened !)
>>
>> The event started out with geert quoting armin's write up
>> on transmediale 2006, addressing the sinking ship of new media,...
>> yet, more debate.... all are legitimate and worth round and around
>> discussion.
>>
>> but i can not help thinking how regressive this web platform appears.
>> cool media hot talk brings back the hot pant lady and the machine
>> monotone (woman nonetheless!!) to guide us through 'interactive'
>> web questions which the web participants are offered to 'rate' them.
>> - + fot points and eventually a winner is granted a certificate.
>>
>> Armin and Geert appears a bit lost as they look up to what seems
>> to be
>> flickling screen of posted questions and succumb to this omni
>> machine voice... wondering how the fuck the machine actually got
>> the upper hand at this late date of machine age. but never mind,
>> the machine voice seemed to get reprogrammed
>> in the later half into a more 'sopjiscated' one.
>> There seems to be an attempt to position the talk show a la
>> Tonight show,
>> here comes Johnny (as the teaser suggested)... but why? Is media
>> art so dead
>> that can only be revived by Entertainment industry?
>>
>> Harwood's tranmitted yet from another space comments, while seems
>> to appear
>> from nowhere, brings back some senses to me. Then, It is a relief
>> at the final 20 minutes (about) we got to see A+G chatting with
>> seated balie audienec, well, our dear bosma and garcia and Eric!!
>> bosma defies. a real woman voice, at last.
>>
>> So, media/medium is not so cool here
>> talk is warm, the lady or a reconfigured machine in a lady form
>> adorned in hot pant is not so hot either - with one foot in high
>> heel and another in what looks like a DIY stand alone form of a
>> shoe. what replace her head is yet another media myth.
>>
>> nite nite
>> and trust the talk get picked up at the balie bar is hotter than
>> ever!!
>>
>>
>> sl
>>
>>
>>> TODAY LIVE from De Balie, Amsterdam:
>>>
>>> Geert Lovink and Armin Medosch
>>>
>>> at Cool Media Hot Talk Show on "New Media Art Mythologies"
>>> http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/
>>>
>>> 20.30 CET
>>>
>>> PARTICIPATE ONLINE: http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/livepage.jsp
>>>
>>> ...........follow live video stream...... post your questions and
>>> comments to the speakers: Geert Lovink and Armin Medosch........
>>> vote for the postings of others...... Author of the best posting
>>> will win our Cool Media Prize!.........Join us at De Balie,
>>> Amsterdam: www.debalie.nl.......
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe
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>>
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