Simon was the lead Artist involved in the Archimedia building project http://www.archimedia.org.uk tasked with facilitating the participatory development of a new home for the Knowle West Media Centre – A centre based in the Knowle West Area in Bristol – that aims to develop the creative, educational and social potential of people within a historically underprivileged area. The Archimedia project assured that the local youth were involved with every step of the development of the new centre.

A complete list of Simon’s project are available at simonpoulter.co.uk.

His most recent work includes an essay in a collection published by the Knowle West Media Centre called Collapsing the Gap. The collection explores ‘the increasingly complex relationship between culture and regeneration’ and Simon’s essay At Risk provides a critical analysis of the way public funding for ‘Creative Industries’ is skewed toward the development of landmark buildings and the importation of ‘culture’ or ‘creative industry’ into areas deemed as requiring regeneration.

Simon writes that;

‘The artistic work commissioned as a
part of a regeneration programme is an opportunity to
develop an encounter, not limited to a street bollard or
bauble. This encounter can offer both the artist and the
community the opportunity to expand their understanding
of the ‘whole scene’ and is a two way process.
When it stops being an encounter, and becomes an
imposition of the state or other agency, then it becomes
meaningless and unhelpful.’

Simon’s practice, consultancy, and advocacy might be best summarised as facilitating this ‘two-way process’ – as providing for an an encounter between community members (including the artists) in the service of developing, valuing, and extending local cultures rather than simply the imposition of funded cultural or creative industry as a means of cultural ‘regeneration’.

Delib see a potential for ‘apps to act as the interface between government and citizens, seeing government as a platform which is enabled and optimised by an ecosystem of innovative apps.’
(Delib.co.uk)

Delib espouse the notion of government as ‘platform’. They figure government should identify problems and challenge the public to come up with solutions. Under their model the government then uses a series of applications facilitating open and participatory engagement in the problem solving process. These applications facilitate the crowd sourcing of solutions, open policy consultation and development, and budget simulation apps that demonstrate the pressures of competing revenue demands while the gauging public preferences for future spending. These and other custom applications provide an interface between interest groups and the bureaucracy who formulate and deliver policy and programs.

Delib began with the production of political satire site for the 2001 UK elections called spin.co.uk. In 2002 they worked on the first UK e-voting pilots in partnership with BT and Accenture allowing people to vote in local elections using the internet and SMS. In 2007 they won the BBC’s innovation awards for their argument visualisation application called aMap http://www.amap.org.uk/. In 2008 they worked with NAPA and the Office of Management and Budget in Washington DC. In 2009 the Obama Administration used ‘Dialogue App’ to run their first Open-Gov crowd sourcing project.

The Delib team have also produced a ‘Open Gov the Movie’ a documentary about the first 12 months of the Obama administration’s Open Gov initiative.

So far the Delib Suite of Applications include:

Opinion Suite : An open sourced suite of applications for managing and publishing information about every public involvement exercise, build consultations, and increase participation.

Dialogue App: Policy and Idea Crowd sourcing and ‘Ideation’ tool.

Budget Simulator: A tool for simulating the revenue demands and priorities in the development of governmental budgets and for facilitating budget consultation.

Quick Consult: Tools for building and running consultations and surveys.

Citizen Space: A tool for managing , organising and publicising consultations in one system

aMap: A beautifully designed online argument mapping application.

Delib is a business of ‘Team Rubber’ a private Creative Industry Incubator.

Galloway describes her research as ‘driven by a desire to understand how objects, images and stories shape—and are shaped by—people’s personal relationships, social activities and cultural values.’

Galloway’s primary interest is in the adoption and development of pervasive, mobile and locative media technologies and the complex multilinear and ‘fed-back’ relation between our fears, expectations and presumptions and the affordances of emerging technologies.

In her paper in Aether : The Journal of Media Geography titled ‘Locating Media Futures in the Present : Or how to map emergent associations and expectations’ she moves toward a reading of Actor Network Theory that pushes beyond a ‘Sociology of Association’s and toward a more dynamic, affect-aware and speculative ‘Sociology of Expectations’ that acknowledges that ‘tomorrow’s expectations and today’s associations are bound up in rather complex ways’. She argues that this complex binding requires affect and expectation ‘be approached from two interconnected perspectives: one of technological ‘becoming’ and one of ‘hope’ for particular technological futures. (Galloway 2010 in Aether Spring 2010: 34)

Galloway’s current research centres on the New Zealand merino wool industry and the adoption of RFID technology for tracking cattle and sheep. Her research is concerned with the affordances and adoption of RFID technology for  identifying, accrediting, and tracking merino wool as it moves through the production cycle from the back of the sheep to the back of the consumer.

That research looks at the way governmental, industrial, consumer hopes and expectations become instrumental in the development and adoption of RFID technology on the farm and how this alters the relation of the consumer and product, government and industry, but also of farmer and animal. Where the ethical production of merino wool has become and important point of market capitalisation for the New Zealand wool industry Galloway explores the way the development and deployment of RFID might both, be facilitated, and facilitate new modes of association, and alternative narratives of ethical production and management.

Luciana was first introduced to EEG after studying with the cybernetic art pioneer Roy Ascott in the late 90′s.  The artist is using the relatively simple 3 contact ‘consumer ‘ grade array  produced and marketted by the artist’s company IBVA. Medical grade EEGS array use in excess of 16+ contacts and this provides sufficient localisation to  provide a topology of brain activity while limiting the noise inherent to the EEG method. Haill presented work at Future of Sound festival in 2008 and is the head of ‘Augmented States of Consciousness’ at the Institute for Unnecessary Research.

Rosling is Professor of International Health in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Karolinska Institute – the highest ranked university in Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy in Europe – and eighth in the world. He has been a health adviser for the World Health Organisation and UNICEF and was involved with the starting a division of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Sweden. He served for three years as a District Medical Officer in the Mozambique.

Roslings most recent TED presentation used the Gapminder software to provide a stark demonstration of the link between population growth and improved infant mortality rates and standards of living. The graphic generated by the software shows the dynamic by which population growth subsides as infant mortality improves – a somewhat counter intuitive argument and suggested model for sustainable development. While the Trendalyzer visualisation is a key element in Rosling’s presentation the bulk of his time on stage is spent demonstrating the complex of affects of health and wealth on population using plastic Ikea tubs to represent population in first, developing and third worlds and a pair of thongs, a model bike, car, and airplane signifying standards of living. This is a man completely in command of the statistics and an extraordinary communicator – to some extent the Gapminder/Trendalzyer software is a manifestation of that command rather than its simple instrument. There is perhaps a lesson for developers and designer here as we move into an era of we development that focuses on the production, exploration, and manipulation/visualisation/mediation of large datasets.

His work as co-manager (with Kaj Grønbæk) of the Interactive Spaces research centre involves; The design and implementation of IT systems that are designed with a specific focus on ensuring the seamless integration of information architectures and the physical environment (Info Gallery, Echoes of the City, Wisdom Wells), The potential presented by pervasive computing for new forms of sporting interaction and extension (iSport) and The potential for context aware computing presented by pervasive computers ubiquitous networking and mobile sensor, capture and positioning technologies (Urban Web).

Peter’s research publications are concerned with the both theoretical and pragmatic exploration of new approaches to interaction design and have, for example explored the innovative concepts of ‘Collective Interaction’ (with M.G. Petersen Designing for Collective Interaction in Randall, D. (ed) From CSCW to Web 2.0 European Developments in Collaborative Design, Springer Verlag -in Press.) and ‘Frame Shifting’ (with Thomas Markussen, Mapping Cultural Frame Shifting in INteraction Design with Blending Theory 2008 -www.ijdesgn.org). Peter is the Conference Chair (with Olav W. Bertelsen) of the DIS2010 conference. He sits on the board of the Nordic Design Research Network Nordes.org.

Daniel Woo is  also associated with the iCinema project at UNSW a large scale hemispherical ‘cave’ style immersive environment although his work tends to focus of speech and natural languages and interface design and usability research.

Woo was central in establishing a HCI education at UNSW and is considered a leader in the field of HCI education and research. He has published widely on interface design, formal usability testing, speech synthesis and interface, spatial audio interfaces amongst other research interests.

Aaron’s work has often included the conceptualisation and visual design of installations, interactives, web applications, multi-screen displays as well as the subsequent coordination required to see the often multidisciplinary nature of cross-media projects realised with a consistency of visual and interactive design.

Helyer’s work is what his website describes as ‘actively interdisciplinary’- linking creative expression, scientific research and technical development. More specifically Helyer’s work is characterised by an interest in the potential for technical architectures to reveal otherwise unseen or marginalised dynamics that span and interweave the development of culture, environment, history and technology .

Installation is the most common vehicle for Helyer’s work which tends to employ elements of computer and mechanical interaction as the basis for an establishing and exploring the visceral relation between body and ecology that it potentialises.

Helyer’s most recent work has developed out of a collaboration with the Satellite Navigation and Positioning Group and Human Computer Interaction Lab of the University of New South Wales (Most notably with Daniel Woo and  Michael Lake of UNSW). That work is based on the Audio Nomad system that provides for the mapping of geo-tagged media and geospatial information in a interactive system that immerses the user in a sonified representation of the environment. That representation juxtaposes sonified meteorological and environmental data with recorded histories, cultural fragments, field recordings (both visual and sonic) making the relations between these ‘readings’ visceral. The user traverses this sonic topology  produced via an immersive multiscreen and surround sound system and the unique Audio Nomad interface  to explore the transitions and relations between the human, biological, and environmental systems.

The Audio Nomad system is the result of a project Helyer began in 1999 and which continued until 2001 called Sonic Landscapes and which employed the spatial audio systems developed by Lake Technology and the GPS systems developed by the SNAP lab of the University of New South Wales (and in collaboration with both Lake and UNSW). That project allowed for a fictive but nonetheless visceral 3D immersive soundscape to be accurately positioned and explored on/in a physical terrain. The subject and site for that work was the St Stephen’s Graveyard in Newtown, Sydney – a site rich with the kind of lost/invisible histories, that along with the invisible or marginalised dynamics of our ecology, constitute the other principle interest in Helyer’s work.

Two other interwoven streams are apparent in traversing Helyer’s catalogue. The first is an interest in oral and sonic histories that is expressed in the Wireless House (2009) and  GhosTrain (2008) projects both of which work on resounding the forgotten histories that are expressed in the sonic markers of a superceded or evicted heavy industry that once constituted Sydney’s inner city life or the oral histories that recount the human cultures to which it gave rise.

The other stream of Helyer’s catalogue is the design of mechanical and dynamic sculptures that harness wind or other environmental (or differential forces-electromagnetic force for example) forces as a means of modal ‘transduction’ – of converting wind to dynamic form (Zephyr 2010), or electromagnetic potential into sound (Swarm 2005), audio to tactile vibration (Adrift-2009, Transformer 2005), kinaesthetic potential into sound and form (Spinner 2005).

Helyer’s work is extensively and generously documented on the Artist’s web site (http://www.sonicobjects.com/) and farexceeds this rather cursory account of his contribution to media art both nationally in Australia and and internationally – The rise of ubiquitous computing and cheap portable, and embeddable, systems of playback has seen sound art move to the forefront of media and interactive art – Helyer has become a central protagonist in this ongoing exploration.

Jon’s solo work is mostly concerned with installation and performance sound projects. He has explored the potential interaction between old and emerging audio technology -most notably between the theremin and the sampler (Sheet and Spiral 1997).Sonic Constructions (2004-2008) is a series of live VJ style performance where projected ink blots (and runs) provide a live data feed that generates an accompanying soundscape via Max/MSP/Jitter. His Sounding the Winds project uses a sensor laden kite to provide a live feed of data via bluetooth to produce a soundscape below (Presented at Electrofringe Newcastle NSW 2005)

Martyn Coutts is a Melbourne based ‘live art’ artist – an art practice defined only by the fact that it tends to fall between the categories and discourse of established art practice and the institutional discourses into which they play – live art is difficult to contain or position in terms of intended audience or defined outcome.

Martyn has worked with, and helped to cultivate, a network of artists. He is,involved with an number of projects that experiment with funding and collaborative models for live and marginalised art practice. These projects include the Live Art List (a blog) and Field Theory (a collaborative funding/support model and collaboration -with performative elements).

In the context of this Dynamic Media Network he is notable for his collaborations with Kate Richards on the Wayfarer projects. He was the recipient of the Green Room award for his work on James Saunders’ The Harry Harlow Project (2009) and has experimented with the use of digital and relay video in choreographed performance works Inside (2004) and Bunker (2006). His work with the ‘live art’ collaboration Deadpan (with Willoh Weiland)  and puppetry/new media collaboration Blood Policy (initially with Sam Routledge) are characteristically difficult to place – although he use of media and a mechanism as a mode for generative engagement of an audience or subject marks an intriguing juxtaposition to the bulk of media and new media art documented here.

It’s tempting to package the form of practice that Martyn is engaged with as related to performance art – a form his work occasionally skirts around and engages. Despite the use of performance as a central mechanism in his work its not clear that expression in any sense of the word is key. The diversity of practices that Martyn is involved recall forms of structured improvisation – perhaps more of the musical or dance variety than theatrical in that the process and the object are inseparable and in constant recursion – the performance is exploratory rather than expressive. There are also echoes of a kind of urban and reflective anthropology (particularly with Deadpan) except that the form of the investigation itself implies a kind of open compositional and playful intent.

While its difficult to characterise Kate’s work as the expression of an overarching concern, most of her works explore the potential for frameworks of action and interaction to emerge out of, and then feed into the dynamism of complex systems. New and interactive media becomes a vehicle for exploring, invoking, disorientating, the generative and or affective potential of these frameworks and the social and subjective states they imply.

In ‘Prediction Pieces’ (1981-1991) Jones she explored ‘the way humans arrange the idea of the future within their minds’

The Darwin Translations (1994-99) explores Darwin’s theory of sexual selection across the animal and human and its relation to notions of sexual play.

Deep Water/Aqua Profunda (2001) is a video and sound installation exploring the nature of sexual intimacy (for the Venice Biennale).

The Avoca Project is a sprawling project that explores themes of immigration, subsistance, climate change, and community in the Victorian country town of Avoca.

He is currently working with the Game Studio @ SICS and is the principal developer of the commercialised pervasive gaming platform ‘The Creator’. He was also involved with the Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming.The ‘game creator’ project developed as part of that project is the original  implementation of ‘the Creator’.

Her website tells us Senator Lundy has participated in every Senate enquiry relation to telecommunications and Information Technology over the last fourteen years and that she has spearheaded the governments Gov2.0 initiatives.

What the web site doesn’t tell us is that, unlike many federal politicians with responsibilities in the area of network governance, Senator Lundy is a well respected ‘geek’ – She has been known to quote William Gibson on the fly and has been an active participant in the local and international conference and workshops concerning Gov2.0. She has been a staunch, consistent, and informed advocate for an open, transparent, accesible and networked government.

Of his many projects his recent work with telephony systems go some way to documenting the principle concerns of his work. Harwwod has developed a system, the Telephone Trottoire, with which members of the refugee Congolese community in the UK and in the Congo could connect randomly over the telephone in order to share stories and news and choose whether or not to pass that on to another caller. This system routed around the easily traceable nature of mobile telephony and provided a kind of viral mode of  unattributable information exchange and communication. In an interview with Rhizome (http://www.rhizome.org/editorial/2297) Harwood is at pains to convey the fact that not particular concerned with anything but the utility of the system to the community itself – When the project required funding it was developed as an art project that put the telephone switches upon which the system was based on display – a kind of memorial (The Tantalum Memorial) to a lost age of analog anonymity and communality and a powerful metaphor for the way Tantalum the metal derived from the precious mineral Coltan and central to the function of mobile phones has driven the Congolese apart.

Harwood is responsible for the MediaShed (mediashed.org.uk) a public access media production lab of which the Mongrel artists work. Together with Eyebeam a like institution based in the US Mediashed has produced  Gearbox – a collaborative database for low budget and DIY film and video making techniques.

cite: http://www.rhizome.org/editorial/2297

Jonathan Duckworth is an interactive designer/artist based in Melbourne. He is part of the design company ZedBuffer, which occupies an interesting niche between interactive design and art.The objects and installations that he designs are embodied, aesthetic, interactive and functional. Some examples of his work include: ‘The ‘Embracelet’, a prototype  hand bracelet designed to develop and increase hand grip strength for patients recovering from Traumatic Brain Injury (ABI); and ‘Elements’, pictured above.

This latter work is one of his most interesting because he worked with Peter Wilson in Health Sciences at RMIT University, Melbourne. Elements is an interactive tabletop that they both produced in trial with patients suffering from ABI. It provides aesthetic visual, aural and tactile feedback to users, almost dynamically ‘rewarding’ them for skill, progress and level of movement in their upper limbs.

Jonathan’s work now seems to be moving toward the burgeoning field of art and health (See this interview here for his thoughts about working in this area). Interestingly, his background in the late 1990s was in virtual reality design, especially exploring the social interactions of people in VR spaces. He makes the comment in the above interview that: ‘‘I am interested in taking the virtual back into the physical.”. Something that carries over from his previous work in VR design, is to create interactive interfaces such as the tabletop and hand bracelet that leave the participant feeling physically unencumbered by the technology.

Karen Casey is an interdisciplinary artist working across a broad spectrum of the visual arts. Starting out as a painter and printmaker Casey was among a vanguard group of urban Aboriginal artists exhibiting widely in Australia and overseas from the late 1980’s. Since those early years her practice has diversified and expanded to incorporate a range of both traditional and digital media processes.
While her works have taken numerous forms Casey’s thematic interests have focused steadily on the interplay between mind and matter, the physical and the spiritual, referencing both ancient and contemporary modes of thought as she questions and challenges perceived notions of reality, time and space and our collective world view.
Known for her signature light works and earth-encrusted surfaces Casey’s art resonates with a vibrant intensity that elicits intimate engagement, drawing on an indigenous perspective of connection to land.

Some of here projects include:

Zoomorph (in development): Plugin filters for Imaging Software and Smartphones – simulating How Animals See. (launch 2011).

Evidence (Days Following: Difference) – A honest attempt to capture a ghost using simple image filtering. Actually about the space/time in between the sample/digit/perception.

Rosten (the Voice): Visualisation of people’s activities who visit the site in question. As with ‘Evidence’ this is concerned with the space/time inbetween people, event, that constitute the web. Commissioned by the Swedish National Public Art Council .

Professor Suchman runs courses at Lancaster on Virtual Cultures and a graduate course on the Antropology of Cybercultures – she also teachers in Gender studies and feminist theory.

Her work at Xerox ‘combined ethnographic studies of work and technologies-in-use with the in-situ development of new prototype information systems’.

Professor Suchmann has written two books on the human-machine nexus. The first based on her Dissertation, Plan and Situated Actions: the problem of human-machine communication (1987) and the second a reprise or sequel of the first Human-Machine Reconfigurations: plans and Situated Actions 2nd Edition (2007).

He developed and administers runme.org, an online repository for software art, which has given rise to works like dot_matrix_synth, where a dot matrix printer is reprogrammed to play music while it prints its own notations in patterns as it is performed. He forms part of slub, a trio of coders who develop their own software for the creation and performance of process-based improvisations and live generative music. In the same vein, he is also a member of TOPLAP, a group of highly improvisatory programmers who write software while it is being executed to generate music and live visuals during a performance.

Yee-King has many years as a composer and producer of electronic music behind him, and continues to perform and release records. An expert user and teacher of SuperCollider (a programming language for real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition), he also contributes to the Linux open source community.

In 2005 he started Generator.x as a curatorial platform for generative art and design which has since resulted in a conference, a blog, a travelling exhibition and concert tour. Watz practices out of New York City and Oslo, where he is a lecturer at the Oslo School of Architecture and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

He is the founder of Transmute, the interdisciplinary collective behind Intimate Transactions, an interactive installation that has been exhibited all over the world, where two people in geographically separate spaces inhabit and interact in a shared virtual space.

She has performed audio/visual work with artists like Chris Caines, Shannon O’Neill and Ben Byrne. She has curated collaborative performance events like Semaphore and is also Co-Director of the Firstdraft Gallery.

In many of her pieces a live physical presence central to the work, where the audience’s movement and interaction with the installation directly affects the space. In Potential Energy, where a line of sensors on the wall set into movement the line of chains opposite, the audience functions as triggers. In The Real Thing, a large-scale kaleidoscope where the viewer’s body not only triggers the installation but becomes the content for it, the work literally cannot function without the presence of an audience, as it is their body that is captured as an image, processed and projected as the kaleidoscopic content shifts and changes with the person’s movement.

She has collaborated with performers, writers, video artists and sound artists like Talia Linz, Eva Mueller, Young-Ah Noh, Matthias Erian, Muse Me and Nick Mariette, and participated in residencies ranging from CarriageWorks in Sydney to the Transmediale: Digital Culture Festival in Berlin.

Smith blogs at serialconsign.com, he edits and co-curates Vague Terrain and is a contributor to Rhizome.

His books include Microcognition: Philosophy, Cognitive Science and Parallel Distributed Processing Associative Engines, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, and Natural Born Cyborgs.

Pesce’s most recent research focuses on sharing

His research blog  infosthetics.com collects data visualizations and similar projects related to his interest in Information Aesthetics. It takes it’s name from Lev Manovich’s definition of information aesthetics.

See http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~petra/ for links to recent projects and publications including her collaborative work Impossible Geographies.

His research interests include the “biopolitics of network culture, neomaterialist cultural theory, transdisciplinary discourses and practices of knowledge, media anomalies, research/creative practice collaboration.” (ARC Digital)

Research projects include Spam Cultures, a project that “aims to develop tools and concepts for a critical understanding of the accidents of digital culture, and address the media anomalies of current digital culture” and to address the “biopolitics of networked culture”. (ARC Digital, Research @ the Centre) He addressed similar themes in his book Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (Peter Lang, 2007) and in a volume he co-edited The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (Hampton Press, Alternative Communications Series, 2009).

In collaboration with Milla Tiainen, Parikka is creating a conceptual laboratory devoted to Neomaterialist Cultural Analysis. This research will investigate transformations in cultural studies through a series of publications, events and seminars that will engage with trends in media and cultural theory. Forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in 2010 as part of their Posthumanities-series is Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals, Technology and Cultural Theory.

Originally from the USA, fields received a Ph.D. in Media Arts from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2000 before moving to Beijing to assist with the establishment and development of media arts programs and curriculum in some of the country’s top institutions including China’s Central Conservatory of Music and Peking University.

An advocate for research-creation, Field’s own domain of practice lies within the area of telematic arts, specifically digital music, while focusing theoretically on issues related to ontology and the technology of inquiry. As well as write and perform his own electroacoustic compositions, Fields has been involved in several sound installations and networked performances internationally, has developed collaborative online work environments for students, and has published widely. He is also co-organiser of the Musicacoustica Festival, Beijing.

Perceiving the Internet to be more than a conduit of communication, but also a medium for artistic creation, performance, exploration and experimentation, at the University of Calgary Fields focuses on building high-speed networks that facilitate live, real-time interaction between participants operating within various media (be they musical, visual, physical, etc), thus establishing dynamic collaborative environments that are not tied to one location, but exist in multiple places at once.

Courchesne earned a BA in Communication Design from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1974) and a MA of Science in Visual Studies from MIT (1984). In the early 1980s he helped pioneer the field of interactive video when he co-authored Elastic Movies (1984) with Ellen Sebring, Benjamin Bergery, Bill Seaman et al. Throughout recent decades he has continued to produce several interactive installations that combine light, photography, design, sound, film and video.

Courshesne’s installations characteristically encourage participants to enter into an immersion of images and sounds that is triggered and guided by use of their own voice and physical movement; the works attempt to remove all spatial reference to plunge the viewer into an interactive, virtual world within which they are able to transverse landscapes and communicate with real or fictional people. Courchesne’s ongoing interest in socialisation has grown more pronounced from each work to the next as his installations have themselves become more increasingly complex and advanced in their development and presentation mode. In Where Are You? (2005) visitors are invited to operate a joystick to control their flight through a world of several dimensions that are defined by an X,Y and Z scale – the higher the visitor travels to the ‘+’ end of each axis, the more detailed the world they experience is. Here existence is paramount, for the work is dependent upon the visitor’s whims and choices to define itself and reach its full potential.

Courchesne is based in Montreal where he is professor of information design at Université de Montréal. Courchesne is also a founding member of the Society for Arts and Technology.

Erin Manning is an artist and philosopher who currently holds office as assistant professor of film studies and studio art at Concordia University, Canada. Her multidisciplinary activity encompasses painting, sculpture, performance, textiles and writing.

Manning is founder and director of The SenseLab, a laboratory and international network that explores intersections between art practice and philosophy in relation to the sensing body in movement.

As well as serve as a member of the editorial board for the journal Inflexions, Manning is also the author of several books on ephemerality and movement. Her most recent publication Relationscapes (2009) is the latest to be printed in a series titled Technologies of Lived Abstraction, which is co-edited for MIT Press by herself and Brian Massumi.

To view Relationscapes at MIT Press, please click here.

Edmonds is currently Professor of Computation and Creative Media in the Faculty of IT at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Director of the Creativity and Cognition Studios (CCS). The origins of CCS derived from his unique research, which spawned a conference series under the similar title of Creativity and Cognitions. A regular headliner from 1993 onwards on the Association for Computing Machinery’s SIGCHI calendar, concepts explored in these meetings developed into an artist-in-residency program (COSTART) at Loughborough University (UK) from 1996 before CCS was established in its present location at UTS in 2003.

Toni Robertson established the Interaction Design and Work Practice Lab at the University of Technology, Sydney, in 2002. Robertson’s interest in technology design was born out of her earlier career as an artist, printmaker and graphic designer. Today her research interests include understanding how actual work practices can be developed and then used to design information systems that appropriately service their situation of use, and exploring how different metaphors for human cognition and work can affect the design of technology.

Robertson is presently chief investigator in an Australian Research Council funded project that is seeking to establish an empirical framework for designing usable and useful wireless mobile computing applications. Based on the premise that the technological challenges presented in the development of mobile computing devices have overshadowed attention to issues of use and usability that ultimately determine technologies’ success in real environments, the project aims to shape the findings of its ethnographic studies into a reliable conceptual framework that will increase the successful utilization of mobile technology by Australian industries.

Under Robertson’s directorship the Interaction Design and Work Practice Lab is currently committed to two other main projects. The Bystander Field aims to stimulate unprecedented understanding of narrative and affective patterns in our past through investigating new systems for interactive and immersive display of contentious stories found in imagery from heritage collections.  Understanding Quality of Experience in Experience Enrich (Next Generation) aims to provide an approximation of what the phrase ‘quality of experience’ could imply for future networked environments, and how its criteria could be utilised to assist with the beneficial design of network related technology, as well facilitate a decrease of the risks in developing inappropriate products and services.

Anna Munster
School of Art History and Art EducationCollege of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
P.O Box 259Paddington
NSW 2026
Australia
A.Munster@unsw.edu.au
www.dynamicmedianetwork.org
+61293850741

Selected Publications, 2000-8

Books
Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics, 2006 Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England
Book Chapters
‘Welcome to Google Earth’ forthcoming 2008, Critical Digital Studies Reader A and M Kroker eds, University of Toronto Press: Toronto,
‘Outage, Seepage, Blockage: art and cultural praxis in the network’ forthcoming 2008, Place: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice, D. Butt, J. Bywater and N. Paul eds, Cambridge Scholars Press, Cambridge, UK, 78–92
‘Bioaesthetics as Bioethics’ 2008, Art of the Biotech Age, M. Pandolowski ed, Experimental Art Foundation/IMA Books, Adelaide and Brisbane, Australia,14–21.
‘Media Art Zones – But Where’s the Media?’ 2006, Zones of Contact: A Critical Reader, N. Bullock and R. Keehan eds, Sydney: Artspace Visual Arts Centre 55–60
‘Digitality – approximate aesthetics’, 2004, Life in the Wires: The CTheory Reader, A. and M.L Kroker eds, Victoria Canada: New World Perspectives/CTheory Books, (15pp) 415–29
‘Returns of the Diminishing Body’, Future Bodies. Visualisierung von Körper in Science und Fiction, 2002, ML. Angerer, K. Peters and Z. Sofoulis eds, Vienna: Springer Verlag, (21pp) 143–60
‘Net Affects: responding to Shock on Internet Time’, 2001, Fibreculture: Politics of a Digital Present: An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory, H. Brown and G. Lovink, et. al. eds, Melbourne: Fibreculture Publications, (8pp) 9–17

Selected Shows and Work, 2000–8
2007 ‘Struck’, (with Michele Barker) 3-channel DVD installation, Level 2 Contemporary Art Projects, Art Gallery of New South Wales, February 7 – March 22
July 30–September 3, 2007, Kickarts Contemporary Arts Centre, Cairns Queensland
May 17–June 4,
‘Remapped Realities’, March 17–April 30, group show, Eyebeam Gallery, New York.
2006 ‘Struck’ (with Michele Barker) winner National Digital Art Awards, “The Harries”,dynamic category, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, May 17–June 4
December 17 –30, 2006, International Digital Art Exhibition, Beijing Film Academy, Beijing, China
‘Assemblage for Collective Thought’, invited audiovisual remix performance with Andrew Murphie, 13th Intersociety for the Electronic Arts (ISEA2006), San Jose, USA, August 13
2005 ‘The Two of Us’, (with Michele Barker) two channel video and photomedia installation, The Butterfly Effect, group show, Sydney Festival, Australian Museum, January 6-February 28
2002 ‘wunderkammer’, interactive installation Aller Anfang (The Very Beginning), group show, Austrian Museum of Ethnology, Vienna, Austria, April – October
2001 ‘wundernet’, online artwork funded by the Australian Film Commission, http://wundernet.cofa.unsw.edu.au

3 Samples of writing
1. A Pdf file of the article ‘Net Affects: responding to shock on Internet time’,2001, Fibreculture: Politics of a Digital Present: An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory, H. Brown and G. Lovink, et. al. eds, Melbourne: Fibreculture Publications, 9–17
This can be downloaded at http://staff.cofa.unsw.edu.au/~annamunster/people/

This is an article that was published as a print piece in an anthology as its final version. However, the process of writing it took place on the online listserv ‘fibreculture’ during 2001. Regular posters posted and then the list community ‘reviewed’ and provided extensive feedback for development of the pieces into articles. It was an early example of real peer assessment of research writing in practice. The articles were then typeset and a reader was independently published. I have included the Acknowledgements section to give some idea of how the process took place.

For the next two samples please click on title of posts below

2. A post on my research blog
The Image in the Network. This piece has two comments from fellow research bloggers but also solicited a longer response by one of my fellow research bloggers Andrew Murphie
at Networks, Aesthetics and Aesthesia

3. A post on my research blog
Data Nonvisualisation which forms the background for the proposal for this piece for Networked_art.

Proposal for Networked_Art
Data undermining: the work of networked art in an age of imperceptibility

Abstract
The large quantities of data now being generated via networked communications are also being managed, regulated and interpreted into patterns that are comprehensible to humans. The management of data is undertaken by sophisticated sampling, tracking and automated techniques and the results of these are frequently sequestered to become the property of corporations and institutions such as Google or the US military. Even when data flows ‘freely’ through the net, the operations of search engines, databases, digest and feeds such as RSSs increasingly makes this manipulation of data invisible. Techniques such as aggregation smooth out the differentials of data’s constitution and present us instead with a flattened landscape of information. The sources, processes and contexts, which make information meaningful, are rendered imperceptible.

How have networked artistic practices responded to this emerging terrain of the imperceptible conditions for the generation of data? This ‘chapter’ will examine the work of online and offline networked art practices that seek to undermine the broader flow of data toward a general cultural state of imperceptibility. These artists render visible the real technical and social relations that comprise the production of data in networked culture. I hope to collaboratively think through these projects, zigzagging collectively through a mesh of artistic practice that makes the automatisms and aggregation of data palpably perceptible. A number of projects will be suggested for exploration: Antidatamining by the collective rybn.org; Antonio Muntadas’ ‘On Translation: Social Networks’; Eduardo Navas’ ‘Trace blog’; ShiftSpace. It is hoped that new projects will also come to light through networked participation.

Keywords: datamining; data visualisation;networked data management;imperceptibility; Web 2.0; networked art

1000 Word Proposal
The more data multiplies both quantitatively and qualitatively, the more it requires more than just visualisation. It also needs to be managed, regulated and interpreted into patterns that are comprehensible to humans. The labour of extracting pattern and order from data is rarely visualised for screen display in everyday life. The management of data is undertaken by sophisticated sampling, tracking and automated techniques and the results of these are frequently sequestered to become the property of corporations and institutions. Even when data flows do not become private or hidden property, their remixing and recombination in, for example, the web through the operations of search engines, databases, digest and feeds such as RSSs increasingly makes this manipulation of data invisible.

These mounting reserves of data about data, t
he software used to extract and analyse these and the social and cultural techniques accompanying this increasing trend results in a generalised data nonvisualisation. Whereas data visualisation characterised previous decades of digital culture in terms of tendencies in software development and the importance of the digital image, the invisibility of the processes involved in the manipulation of data is now ascendant. This is not to say that these techniques for aggregating and deciphering data do not use visualisation techniques. In the area of datamining particularly, visual environments can be modelled to make sense of patterns detected in sets of information. What is not visualised are the parameters, relations and arrangements that are used to organise and make sense of data.

The first phase of web development and design from 1995 to 2001 (Web 1.0) required designers and artists to be versed in at least a basic level of the then broadly used scripting language for displaying information online – HTML. In other words, during this early phase of web design there were no pre-packaged methods for formatting the way a web page was displayed. All graphic and stylistic elements had to be laid out in HTML scripting that ‘told’ the web browser how to format the page for online display. For a relatively short period, both artists and designers had a measure of access to the ‘source code’ of the web and this resulted in a lot of play with HTML aesthetics. From the mid-1990s, the artistic duo of Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, known as ‘jodi.org’, became infamous for their collapse of the visual levels of web display into the underlying HTML level of source code.

Jodi.org furnish us with an aesthetic example that resists the contemporary cultural trend toward data nonvisualisation. Rather than using the graphic interface to obscure the underlying operations of computation, jodi.org’s work insists on using visual elements to foreground the complex historical, social and economic factors that lie embedded within contemporary ‘user-friendly’ interfaces. Nevertheless, web design and use has now moved toward less visible engagement – certainly for the everyday user – with the underlying architecture and flow of data through its various nodes and mechanisms.

Web 2.0 is a phrase used to denote the many changes that have taken place in the online environment after online cultures, commerce and everyday users regrouped in the post- dot.com context. At the core of the concept of Web 2.0 is the understanding of the network as an expanded field of interaction, interrelation and semantic generation between users, online infrastructure and software. (See O’Reilly, 2005). Aggregators are a common feature of the information landscape of Web 2.0 as they are: a) automated forms of operations previously carried out by human labour in the Web 1.0 environment; b) methods for dealing with the explosion of online information that followed the growth of blogs from around 2002 onward; and c) able to easily link and function in relation to the straight-to-web publishing environment that has become the mainstay of contemporary online transaction. Hence they provide a veneer of immediacy.

Users deploying such aggregators are usually not aware what the parameters are for extracting and determining pattern. The processes of making data meaningful in particular ways are never visualised or made explicit. Automatic aggregation tends to perform operations that reduce the relations between data to commonalities rather than differences. This may be of crucial importance in the aggregation of news data where conflicting rather than similar perspectives about an item actually comprise the information about it. But techniques such as aggregation smooth out these differentials and present us instead with a flattened landscape of information. The sources, processes and contexts, which make information meaningful, are rendered imperceptible.

How have networked artistic practices responded to this emerging terrain of the imperceptible conditions for the generation of data? This ‘chapter’ will examine the work of a series of online and offline networked art practices that seek to undermine the broader flow of data toward a general cultural state of imperceptibility. These artists render visible the real technical and social relations that comprise the production of data in networked culture. I hope to collaboratively think through these projects, zigzagging collectively through a mesh of artistic practice that makes the automatisms and aggregation of data palpably perceptible. A number of projects will be suggested for exploration: Antidatamining; Trace blog; On Translation: Social Networks; ShiftSpace. It is hoped that new projects will also come to light through networked contributions.

Some of this artistic practice verges on the social-political space of web knowledge generation. Yet it is precisely the question of the aesthetic that is put into play by the common approach of dataundermining the nonvisualised image terrain of contemporary information that these artists and collectives pursue. What these projects demand is a socio-aesthetic domain for data in which users, techniques and flows are not appropriated by a mindless automatism and in which the labour and work of all elements is not rendered imperceptible and, inevitably, irretrievable.

Whilst developing an online studio of work at devoid, together with commercial projects and interactive design and programming for arts organisations, he works extensively with Furtherfield, an London/net based artists collective, using the internet and networked technology as a focal point for creative discourse, events and production. Projects including Visitors Studio and FurtherStudio (an online artists residency programming) and ‘Skin/Strip Online’ (a collaboration between Furtherfield and Completely Naked, commissioned by BBC Shooting Live Artists 2003).

Neil also teaches and held the position of Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media at Bath Spa University (Graphic & Screen Design) from 2000 to 2008.

Visit his website www.devoid.co.uk

Massumi is also known for English-language translations of recent French philosophy, including Jean-François Lyotard‘s The Postmodern Condition (with Geoffrey Bennington), Jacques Attali‘s Noise and Deleuze and Guattari‘s A Thousand Plateaus.

Massumi collaborates with Erin Manning, director of the Sense Lab, a research-creation laboratory affiliated with the Society for Art and Technology. They also co-edit a book series at MIT Press entitled Technologies of Lived Abstraction and are founding members of the editorial collective of the Sense Lab journal Inflexions: A Journal of Research-Creation.

The first, and perhaps most known, concept I worked with, we named social navigation. Bascially, social navigation makes other’s social trails through information spaces visible. This helps users find their way in large information spaces as we typically rely on the judgement of others. After working with the concept of social navigation for a while, some of the colleagues I was working with at the time, figured that we could move this concept out into mobile contexts. Thus, we built a range of social mobile services . This in turn, made us discover the problematic nature of seamlessness, a concept often promoted by the telecom-industry. Instead of seamlessness, we have therefore been working with seamfulness. A seamful design is one where the seams in the network coverage, positioning system, or between different media in a space are not hidden but instead used as a resource in the design, shown to the users so that they can make sense of them, appropriate them and have fun with them.

After working with social navigation for many years, I became really interested in affective computing after listening to Rosalind Picard in 1998. But my take on affective computing is somewhat different from Roz’ direction of research. Together with the affective presence group I have been exploring an alternative view on how affect can be integrated into interaction with end users. Our take is that of affective interaction. In particular, with my research group we have been exploring the idea of involving users both physically and cognitively in what we name an affective loop.

All these “interaction concepts” that I have been working with throughout my research career all belong to the same theoretical foundation: that of embodied interaction (as discussed by Paul Dourish). But instead of being grand theories of life, universe and everything, our aim is to make these concepts carry the grand theory into usable design concepts that anyone can pick up and make use of in their design practice.”

Sher Doruff was head of the Research Dissemination Programma at Waag Society until September 2007. This programme investigated creative processes and research methodologies of projects within Waag Society. It aims to distribute analyses of these processes to a wider public in a variety of ways.

Sher received her PhD in 2006 from University of the Arts London/Central Saint Martins/Smartlab. Her research  focused on situating translocal performance practice enabled by KeyWorx in a conceptual frame that references the affective intensities of diagrams, biograms and polyrhythms.

Berger is trained as an engineer for communication engineering and electronics.
He has a master degree in philosophy with an interdisciplinary subject
combination of mechatronic and philosophy. The master thesis was written about
Epistemolpgical Questions Towards Telerobotics with Prof. Herbert Hrachovec from the University of Vienna/Austria.

From 1996-1999 Berger was working at the Ars Electronica Center, Ars Electronica Futurelab and Ars Electronica Festival in Linz/Austria. In the Ars Electronica Center he was technically responsible for the implementation of the visitor guidance system and the telerobotic art installation TELEGARDEN. In the Ars Electronica Futurelab he was project manager and developer for the telerobotic art installation TELEZONE. 1998 and 1999 he was technical director of the Ars Electronica Festival.

http://www.aec.at

From 1999-2002 Berger was working for the Vienna/Austria based it-company Ideal Communications as a researcher and knowledge manager. His responsibilities included research on the fringes of it-business (science, art, design), employee education and training as well as organizing and assisting the restructuring of the company during and after phases of extensive growth.

Since 2003 Berger gave workshops about physical computing, interaction design and related subjects at various universities, labs and educational institution throughout Europe.

2004 and 2005 he was developing and directing the MAKING SENSE project at the Oslo/Norway based media lab Atelier Nord. MAKING SENSE was a research and education program about physical computing for artists and designers. It included the direction of workshops, the build-up of a physical computing lab and technical and artistic consulting for artists.

http://anart.no/projects/making-sense/

2006 Berger was artistic director and curator for the INTERFACE & SOCIETY project at theOslo/Norway based media lab Atelier Nord. INTERFACE & SOCIETY investigated artistic practices and strategies which deal with the transformation of our everyday life through electronic interfaces. This one year project consisted of workshops, the production of artworks, a conference and an exhibition.

http://anart.no/projects/interface-and-society/

2007 Berger was appointed Chief Curator at LABoral Center for Art and Creative Industries in Gijon/Spain.

http://www.laboralcentrodearte.es/

Since the mid nineties Berger works as an artist. He is interested in information processes and
feedback structures which he investigates with installations, situations, performances and various
interfaces. His work is shown internationally in media-festivals, exhibitions and galleries.
Together with the sound artist PURE he founded the audio visual impro duo TERMINALBEACH (2002).
He received a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction together with the Telezone-Group for the
project TELEZONE (2000), the Intermedium2 Award, Bawarian Broadcasting Station / ZKM together
with the group 92v2.0 for A SOPHISTICATED SOIREE (2002) and a Honorary Mention from VIDA 5.0 Art
and Artificial Life international Competition together with Laura Beloff for the installation
SPINNE (2002).

Watz discovered the computer at age 11 and immediately found his direction in life. At age 20 he defected from Computer Science studies to do graphics for raves, using his programming to create organic shapes in 2D and 3D. In parallel to creating his own work, Watz worked as a graphic designer for many years, probing the limits of design. In the years 2000-2002 he ran the studio Products of Play with Erik Johan Worsøe Eriksen before deciding to focus on his art practice.

In 2005 Watz started Generator.x, a platform for generative art and design which so far has resulted in a conference, a blog, a travelling exhibition and concert tour. The Generator.x conference took place at Atelier Nord in Oslo September 2005, while the Generator.x exhibition premiered at the Norwegian National Museum. The exhibition is currently touring until 2007. A concert tour of Norway with generative sound and visuals took place in April 2006, organized by the National Touring Concerts.

In 2005 Watz received an honorary mention for his project Universal Digest Machine. He had previously received a mention for Sense:less (Pendry / Mork / Stenslie / Watz) in 1996. In 2003 he premiered the public art commission Drawing Machine 1-12, a work that was shown for two years on the home page of the Norwegian Government and Ministries of State. In recent years he has created several animated works for projection on building facades such as Neon Organic, which is currently being projected on the Vattenfall headquarters in Berlin.

Watz currently lives in Berlin. His tools of choice are Java, Processing, VVVV and Flash. He continues to edit the Generator.x blog and prepare future Generator.x events, as well as teach workshops in computational design and generative art.

Marius Watz can be contacted at marius@unlekker.net

Joyce Hinterding’s Recent individual exhibitions include:  AV festival, Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland, England, (2008) Biennale of Sydney, (the world may be) fantastic, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2002), Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Converge: where art and science meet (2002); 7 Istanbul Biennial, Yerebetan Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey, (2001), Joyce’s live solo sound performances include, The NowNow festival (2008) Sound and Electricity, The Performance Space (2006), Audiotheque, The night air, ABC radio national (2005).

David Haines and Joyce Hinterding live and work in the Blue Mountains, NSW Australia and work both collaboratively and independently.

Their collaborative work has produced large scale immersive video and sound works that explore the tension between the fictive and the phenomenal. This work incorporates Joyce’s investigations into energetic forces and David’s concern with the intersection of hallucination and landscape.

Most recently they have exhibited their collaborative work in the exhibitions ; Turn and Widen, The 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seoul Korea (2008), Superlight, The 2nd Biennial 01SJ Art on the edge, San Jose Museum Art, California, USA, (2008), Waves – The Art of the Electromagnetic Society, PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Germany, (2008), (in)visible sounds, Montevideo, The Dutch Institute for Time based Art, Netherlands (2007), V2 Zone, Act interact, The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (2007). ReSearch, The Sendai MediaTech in Sendai, Japan (2006). Under the Radar, FACT, (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) Liverpool England (2006), Waves (Electromagnetic Waves as medium for Art), Riga, Latvia (2006), The 26th Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2004); Liquid sea, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2003); Space odyssey: sensation and immersion, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 2002-01.

David Haines and Joyce Hinterding live and work in the Blue Mountains, NSW Australia and work both collaboratively and independently.

Their collaborative work has produced large scale immersive video and sound works that explore the tension between the fictive and the phenomenal. This work incorporates Joyce’s investigations into energetic forces and David’s concern with the intersection of hallucination and landscape.

Most recently they have exhibited their collaborative work in the exhibitions ; Turn and Widen, The 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seoul Korea (2008), Superlight, The 2nd Biennial 01SJ Art on the edge, San Jose Museum Art, California, USA, (2008), Waves – The Art of the Electromagnetic Society, PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Germany, (2008), (in)visible sounds, Montevideo, The Dutch Institute for Time based Art, Netherlands (2007), V2 Zone, Act interact, The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (2007). ReSearch, The Sendai MediaTech in Sendai, Japan (2006). Under the Radar, FACT, (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) Liverpool England (2006), Waves (Electromagnetic Waves as medium for Art), Riga, Latvia (2006), The 26th Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2004); Liquid sea, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2003); Space odyssey: sensation and immersion, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 2002-01.

David Haines Recent individual exhibitions include:  AV festival, Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland, England, (2008) Biennale of Sydney, (the world may be) fantastic, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2002), Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Converge: where art and science meet (2002); 7 Istanbul Biennial, Yerebetan Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey, (2001), Joyce’s live solo sound performances include, The NowNow festival (2008) Sound and Electricity, The Performance Space (2006), Audiotheque, The night air, ABC radio national (2005).

Salter studied economics and philosophy at Emory University and completed a Ph.D. in theater+computer-generated sound at Stanford University in 1997.He was awarded the Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt “Bundeskanzler” grants for research/work in Germany between 1993-1995 where he collaborated with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe at the Ballett Frankfurt( Eidos:Telos, 1995, Sleepers Guts, 1997).

In 1997, he co-founded the art+research organization Sponge, an interdisciplinary association of artists and researchers who are exploring the nexus of investigative art, speculative design and techno-scientific research. His work with Sponge has toured internationally to festivals and exhibitions such as Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH 2000, Mediaterra-Athens, the Exploratorium, Mediaterra-Athens, the Exploratorium, Banff Center and V2 Rotterdam and has received recent grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Daniel Langlois Foundation and the LEF Foundation.

The concept of ‘wildcrafting’ of consumer goods in the work of UK artsits Kate Ruch and Kayle Brandon explores the relationship between information access and the production of commodities, art and social networks as an inter-related set of sustainable or unsustainable processes. An emergent, and potentially sustainable network ecology of relations is realised in and through the process of production.

Mark Garret, of UK network/arts organisation Furtherfield describes the work of Kate Rich & Kayle Brandon who produce an ‘open-source’ cola drink and ‘trade’ it through a ‘social media’ distribution network ‘Feral Trade’ that focuses on non-commercial sustainable network ecologies for material goods – (description from Thing.net blog): ‘cube-cola’

“With a hackivist consciousness or attitude, they are exploring the creation of their own version(s) of Coca-Cola. Both are bar managers at the CubeCinema (Bristol UK), and have actively steered away from selling the ‘real -thing’, due to their feelings about the environmental practises of the multi-national company Coca-Cola. “We’d tried Pepsi and Virgin Cola and various others too,” says Brandon, “but they weren’t really a positive alternative. They were acceptable, but they weren’t Coke. And people really want Coke / We are wildcrafting our own cola from an on-line, open source recipe. A process developed through home-lab experimentation, merging domestic and scientific methadology.”

and from Feral Trade website:

“Feral Trade is a public experiment trading goods over social networks. The use of the word ‘feral’ describes a process which is wilfully wild (as in pigeon) as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (wolf). The passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, techniques or individuals can potentially travel. / Products are chosen for their portability, shelf-life and capacity for sociability: feral trade goods in current circulation include the coffee from El Salvador plus grappa from Croatia, mountain-grown antidepressants from Bulgaria and fresh sweets from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

An ‘open-source’ recipe for cola which evokes the principles of hactivism and DIY culture and looks at the role of the prosumer in terms of consumer goods and their relationship to social media networks. By ‘wild-crafting’ their own cola from an online ‘open-source’ recipe, the work presents an analogy between the forms of access and control of ‘data’ that relate equally to both ‘secret recipes’ and ‘software code’ within network ecologies. The work comments on the networks of global capital, consumer goods, marketing, and intellectual property, but also the inevitable laments over a homogenised, mass-produced culture of which Coke is emblematic. The open-source cola project and moreover Feral Trade itself is interesting because they seems to offer both critique of the unsustainable ecologies of global networks of capital / consumer culture as well as a tangible and ‘practical alternative’. Where related practices such as the ‘open-source hardware’ movement in audiovisual culture seek to un-black-box AV technologies and re-mediate them as ‘social media’ (post on this coming soon!) the wildcrafting experiements are notable for their reorientation of the role of the ‘prosumer’ away from ‘hi-tech’ social, cultural and information networks and towards the production of sustainable social network ecologies through the most everyday and material of ‘consumables’ – food and drink.

The Feral Trade / wildcrafted cola experiment might also draw attention to other aspects of ‘network ecologies’ – that of the incredibly complex ecology of relations that on the one hand ‘produce’ the Coca-Cola and on the other position it where it is accessible: psychologically, economically and physically. Rather than a ‘black-boxed’ consumer product, ‘Coke’ is decomposed into an networked collection of elements and flows; precariously structured, yet fiercely guarded data flows within a global network ecology of physical, economic, cultural and informational relations. It brings to mind the network of relations that incorporates a phenomenal flow of energy both material (aluminium production, ingredients, brewing costs, shipping costs etc) as well ‘immaterial’ (marketing, logistics, intellectual property and trademark issues, and the general market-domination of the psychological cola landscape). The ‘unsustainablilty’ of this kind of network ecology in both physical resources as well as its impersonality or asociality is rendered starkly ‘material’ in the practical solution of open-source recipe and the use of a social media / local area / community network for the distribution of cola. The emphasis on the production of sociality in and through the process prosumer craftmaking is made tangible in its drinkable, consumable materiality and raises interesting questions about the sustainability of network ecologies and the flows and stoppages of global and local consumerism and marketing, labour and information access and control.

Furtherfield article : ‘Feral Trade Coffee: A New Media For Social Networks’ http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=142

Thing.net blog post : http://post.thing.net/node/1142

Guardian article : http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/jul/28/foodanddrink.shopping

Feral Trade Website : http://www.feraltrade.org/cgi-bin/courier/courier.pl

Cube Cola website : http://sparror.cubecinema.com/cube/cola/

The concept of ‘wildcrafting’ of consumer goods in the work of UK artsits Kate Ruch and Kayle Brandon explores the relationship between information access and the production of commodities, art and social networks as an inter-related set of sustainable or unsustainable processes. An emergent, and potentially sustainable network ecology of relations is realised in and through the process of production.

Mark Garret, of UK network/arts organisation Furtherfield describes the work of Kate Rich & Kayle Brandon who produce an ‘open-source’ cola drink and ‘trade’ it through a ‘social media’ distribution network ‘Feral Trade’ that focuses on non-commercial sustainable network ecologies for material goods – (description from Thing.net blog): ‘cube-cola’

“With a hackivist consciousness or attitude, they are exploring the creation of their own version(s) of Coca-Cola. Both are bar managers at the CubeCinema (Bristol UK), and have actively steered away from selling the ‘real -thing’, due to their feelings about the environmental practises of the multi-national company Coca-Cola. “We’d tried Pepsi and Virgin Cola and various others too,” says Brandon, “but they weren’t really a positive alternative. They were acceptable, but they weren’t Coke. And people really want Coke / We are wildcrafting our own cola from an on-line, open source recipe. A process developed through home-lab experimentation, merging domestic and scientific methadology.”

and from Feral Trade website:

“Feral Trade is a public experiment trading goods over social networks. The use of the word ‘feral’ describes a process which is wilfully wild (as in pigeon) as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (wolf). The passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, techniques or individuals can potentially travel. / Products are chosen for their portability, shelf-life and capacity for sociability: feral trade goods in current circulation include the coffee from El Salvador plus grappa from Croatia, mountain-grown antidepressants from Bulgaria and fresh sweets from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

An ‘open-source’ recipe for cola which evokes the principles of hactivism and DIY culture and looks at the role of the prosumer in terms of consumer goods and their relationship to social media networks. By ‘wild-crafting’ their own cola from an online ‘open-source’ recipe, the work presents an analogy between the forms of access and control of ‘data’ that relate equally to both ‘secret recipes’ and ‘software code’ within network ecologies. The work comments on the networks of global capital, consumer goods, marketing, and intellectual property, but also the inevitable laments over a homogenised, mass-produced culture of which Coke is emblematic. The open-source cola project and moreover Feral Trade itself is interesting because they seems to offer both critique of the unsustainable ecologies of global networks of capital / consumer culture as well as a tangible and ‘practical alternative’. Where related practices such as the ‘open-source hardware’ movement in audiovisual culture seek to un-black-box AV technologies and re-mediate them as ‘social media’ (post on this coming soon!) the wildcrafting experiements are notable for their reorientation of the role of the ‘prosumer’ away from ‘hi-tech’ social, cultural and information networks and towards the production of sustainable social network ecologies through the most everyday and material of ‘consumables’ – food and drink.

The Feral Trade / wildcrafted cola experiment might also draw attention to other aspects of ‘network ecologies’ – that of the incredibly complex ecology of relations that on the one hand ‘produce’ the Coca-Cola and on the other position it where it is accessible: psychologically, economically and physically. Rather than a ‘black-boxed’ consumer product, ‘Coke’ is decomposed into an networked collection of elements and flows; precariously structured, yet fiercely guarded data flows within a global network ecology of physical, economic, cultural and informational relations. It brings to mind the network of relations that incorporates a phenomenal flow of energy both material (aluminium production, ingredients, brewing costs, shipping costs etc) as well ‘immaterial’ (marketing, logistics, intellectual property and trademark issues, and the general market-domination of the psychological cola landscape). The ‘unsustainablilty’ of this kind of network ecology in both physical resources as well as its impersonality or asociality is rendered starkly ‘material’ in the practical solution of open-source recipe and the use of a social media / local area / community network for the distribution of cola. The emphasis on the production of sociality in and through the process prosumer craftmaking is made tangible in its drinkable, consumable materiality and raises interesting questions about the sustainability of network ecologies and the flows and stoppages of global and local consumerism and marketing, labour and information access and control.

Furtherfield article : ‘Feral Trade Coffee: A New Media For Social Networks’ http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=142

Thing.net blog post : http://post.thing.net/node/1142

Guardian article : http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/jul/28/foodanddrink.shopping

Feral Trade Website : http://www.feraltrade.org/cgi-bin/courier/courier.pl

Cube Cola website : http://sparror.cubecinema.com/cube/cola/

Adam (http://www.xs4all.nl/~adam) is a New Zealander based in Amsterdam. His career has been through many stages including managing radio stations in New Zealand, IT management at XS4ALL (.nl), tactical media (Radio21, HelpB92), and for the last 4 years he has been a professional new media artist.

Adam is now solely focused on managing the development of FLOSS Manuals (http://www.flossmanuals.net). FLOSS Manuals aim is to document the world of free software. The documentation is created by the FLOSS Manuals community and is licensed under the GPL (http://www.flossmanuals.net/license).

The two installations that form the topology of this other space – Memory and Urban Fiction – both depend on maintaining a relation to physical, encountered and imagined spaces outside the refuge of gallery walls. Memory is a restaging of an installation that Gemeinboeck exhibited previously in Singapore, the US and UK. This was its Australian premiere – this alone attesting to the lag we still experience in curating and facilitating access for audiences here to experimental new media arts. Memory captures audience members’ images as we pass into its net of ‘Mission Impossible’ style laser beams. These ethereal bounding mechanisms trigger image captures, which end up both spread across the work’s fractured and layered screens and deposited in a databank. We join up with the ghosts’ of audiences long past and become slot’s in the computer’s memory bank to be accessed according to its algorithmic and rhythmic processing. That space of computational processing – utterly impossible for human memory to inhabit – nonetheless returns on the installation’s screens. For we find our own real time gallery movements conjoined with the traces of previous visitors and with traces of movements we might have made in the gallery only five minutes before.

We expect a mirror, conversation or cause and effect response as we interact with Memory. We are met instead with distribution, fragmentation and tracing of the relations between image/trace, computer/embodied human and processing/thinking. What is delightful and pleasurable about Memory is that these are impossible spaces to navigate, if by navigation we mean to steer or move in a purposeful manner toward obtaining a goal. But this impossibility makes the interaction all the more enjoyable, provoking us to experiment with the relations between virtual and actual space and action. We are also tiptoeing through another impossibility in Memory – time. Although digital media have long been flaunted as ‘nonlinear’, much of our experience of them tends to really be multilinear. We branch through options in an interactive story; we go forwards, backwards, even sideways but advance through levels in gaming. Memory, however, gives us no such pathways: our and visitors’ images from the installation’s past are entangled in a visual dynamic and as the software’s dynamically processes its present and prior captures. There are gaps and syntheses between the present and past here and the installation’s future only materialises from this interplay.. Memory is one of those rare interactive experiences where we momentarily perceive the impossible temporality of the nonlinear.

A fracturing aesthetic and experimentation with dynamic human-machine interaction connect the installations Memory and Urban Fiction, within the gallery. What threads together the two works visually is the distribution and layering of screen spaces. Rather than just a convenient wall to absorb projection, Gemeinboeck treats screens viscerally. They are the fabric and fabrication place of digital production, to be ripped, stitched, piled upon and scattered. In Urban Fiction three screens are stretched in mid-air, catching their projections but also letting the edges of the moving image spill out onto the floor. Everything is beautifully positioned and executed but simultaneously unshackled.

But what are we actually looking at? Pulsations become patterns; dots march imperceptibly across the screen space; deforming lines and grids slowly unravel. This feels like a fragment from a map of planet ‘Information’ or the twisted, skeletal wire-frame of 3D-generated space or computer code run through a visualiser of the imagination. If Urban Fiction is a map, then it is not of familiar territory and it defies all formal cartographic conventions. And yet, the barely moving images are all generated through engagement with the surrounding geography of Darlington. Participants use customised mobile phones to walk in the vicinity of the gallery. The installation also logs signals from unwitting mobiles on the same network within specified parameters surrounding the gallery. These signals aggregate via custom software into forces and tensions that interfere, are sutured into and deform the images.

As we stand in the gallery, we begin to realise we are watching the formation of vast movement-patterns beyond singular instances of navigation through urban space. We keep time instead with collective city rhythms beyond immediate visibility. Indeed we see more than we would when looking at a map or image of the city. For here the surrounding buildings block, refract and lose network signal and these processes affect the absorption of signal into the data capture process. An image scape emerges of the urban landscape we think we know but to which many histories, forces and traces also belong. What emerges is not cartographic but topological – the nonphysical yet ever-present ground of shifting relations between people, between people, buildings and urban cultures, buildings and signals, signals and signs, all contributing to contemporary urbanity.

Petra Gemeinboeck is one of those rare new media artists whose work is equally aesthetic and intellectual. The sensation of inhabiting her impossible geographies is visceral but also a jolt that provokes thought: the thought of inhabiting the impossible. Like that of Jorge Louis Borges’ writing fragment The Garden of Forking Paths, Gemeinboeck’s ‘impossible’ is actually a space and time of infinite possibilities.