INC Newsletter Summer 2006 The Institute of Network Cultures (INC), set up in June 2004, caters to research, meetings and (online) initiatives in the area of Internet and new media. In this newsletter: 1. MyCreativity: convention of creative industries researchers 2. Urban Screens Berlin and Urban Screens Manchester 3. Publications 4. Netporn talkshows at Impakt Festival 5. Incommunicado documentation 6. INC events calendar summer-autumn 2006 1. MyCreativity: Convention of Creative Industries Researchers Date: 17-18 November, 2006 Venue: Club 11, Post CS Building, Amsterdam MyCreativity is an international convention of creative industries researchers. The programme will kick off with an event produced by the All Media Foundation and the Sandberg Institute, titled ‘Paradise by the Laptop Light. This will take place on Thursday evening November 16 in Paradiso, Amsterdam. The next two days the convention will be held in the PostCS building in Amsterdam. This international conference will be used as a first meeting of an emerging network of researchers and creatives that critically engage with the 'creative industries' field. November 16 at Paradiso, Amsterdam: Paradise by the Laptop Light November 17-18 at PostCS, Amsterdam: MyCreativity Organisation: INC and Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster in collaboration with Sandberg Institute Amsterdam and the All Media Foundation Concept: Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter Programme: Geert Lovink, Ned Rossiter, Mieke Gerritzen and Sabine Niederer Producer: Shirley Niemans Design: Hendrik-Jan Grievink More information and registration: http://www.networkcultures.org/mycreativity MyCreativity mailinglist: http://idash.org/mailman/listinfo/my-ci 2. Urban Screens BERLIN The Berlin-based IEB is working on a Berlin issue of Urban Screens, the event initiated in 2005 by the INC in collaboration with Rietveld Academy and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Curator and researcher for the 2005 project was Mirjam Struppek, Interactionfield Berlin. For the Urban Screens Berlin event, the IEB is working with curator Ingken Wagner. The Berlin edition will have a main focus on the commercial potential of urban screens, with presentations of various business models and best practices. http://www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens/ MANCHESTER Urban Screens 2007 is a joint project of BBC Public Space Broadcasting, Cornerhouse Manchester, MDDA, and the Institute of Network Cultures. Urban Screens 2007 (Manchester, October 2007) will focus on the issues surrounding the production and display of media content for Urban Screens, as well as the adaptive reuse of 'old' content for new media. http://www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens/ Urban Screens Mailinglist: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/urbanscreens- l_listcultures.org 3. Publications In collaboration with NAi Publishers, the INC will publish a series of books on new media theory and practice. The first book in the series is by Ned Rossiter. Ned Rossiter (2006), Organised Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. 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. 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”. Ned Rossiter is senior lecturer in Media Studies at the Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster. Geert Lovink, founding director of the INC worked as a research fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where he finished his upcoming book titled Zero Comments: Kernels of Critical Internet Culture. Zero Comments will be published by Routledge (New York) in 2007. Geert Lovink (2007). Zero Comments: Kernels of Critical Internet Culture, New York: Routledge. In Zero Comments Geert Lovink upgrades worn-out concepts and inquires the latest Web 2.0 hype around blogs, wikis and social network sites. In this third volume of his studies into critical Internet culture, Lovink develops a ‘general theory of blogging.’ Instead of celebrating ‘citizen journalism’ blogs are analyzed in their ‘nihilist impulse’ to empty out established meaning structures. Blogs bring on decay of the 20st century broadcast media, and are proud of their in-crowd mechanism of linking, tagging and ranking. The book also deals wit the silent globalization of the Net in which no longer the West but countries like India, China and Brazil are becoming the main drivers of new media culture. Zero Comments upgrades concepts such as global Internet time, tactical media, the crisis of new media arts and the problematic relationship between architecture and the Net, and ends with speculative notions on concepts such as organized networks, free cooperation and distributed aesthetics. 4. Netporn talkshows at Impakt Festival August 25, 17.00h, Central Museum, Utrecht Realcore Couch.Club More info: http://www.impakt.nl Realcore is the term journalist, musician and researcher in technology Sergio Messina has given to a new genre in online pornography. Realcore is about the attraction of reality in sexuality. By using new technologies, there has been a revolution in pornography. It’s not about an objective presentation of lust anymore, but about the subjective experience of this lust. August 26, 15.00h, Central Museum Utrecht DIY Porn Couch.Club More info: http://www.impakt.nl Internet and pornography are still two peas in a pot. But in what ways do individuals actively make use of the interactive possibilities in regard to their own pornographic experiences? At the DIY Porn couch.club at the Impakt Festival Sergio Messina and ‘Show-n-Tell’ will present their work and discuss the role of the individual in the world of online pornography. Sergio Messina is a journalist, musician and internet researcher; he is the founder of the term ‘realcore’. He will talk about DIY porn online. People create their own porn in which desire is more important than beauty, and reality is better than artifice. Porn becomes personal. ‘Show-n-Tell’ is the creator of Webaffairs, an artistic review of her experiences in the world of webcam erotica. She started out as a voyeur, but later on became a participant in this digital erotic world. A world in which individual users performed their sexual desires in front of the camera or in chats. 5. Incommunicado.05 Documentation Documentation of the Incommunicado conference (June 15-17, 2005) has recently been completed and includes audio and video files, transcriptions, photos and reports, all available online. A book has been produced at INC, including a CD-ROM with 12 hours of interviews that were conducted during the event. This publication can be ordered free of costs at INC. More information: info(at)networkcultures.org. Incommunicado: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado Incommunicado online archive De Balie (text & video): http://www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jspdossierid=38576 Incommunicado Reader (downloadable as a PDF): http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/ index.phponderdeelID=2&paginaID=7 Incommunicado interviews: Overview: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6 Interview with Sally Burch: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=39 Interview with Beatriz Busaniche: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=38 Interview with Enrique Chaparro: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=37 Interview with Steve Cisler: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=35 Interview with Muthoni Dorcas: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=29 Interview with Anriette Esterhuysen: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=36 Interview with Felipe Fonseca: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=34 Interview with Michael Gurstein: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=33 Interview with Ednah Karamagi: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=32 Interview with Thomas Keenan: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=30 Interview with Monica Narula: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=28 Interview with Tracey Naughton: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=27 Interview with Jan Nederveen Pieterse: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=26 Interview with Sylvestre Ouedraogo: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=21 Interview with Richard Rogers: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=25 Interview with Ned Rossiter: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=24 Interview with Shuddhabrata Sengupta: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=20 Interview with Bernardo Sorj: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=19 Interview with Ravi Sundaram: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=18 Interview with Robert Verzola: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=6&itemID=17 Incommunicado credits: http://www.networkcultures.org/incommunicado/index.php? onderdeelID=2&paginaID=3&itemID=40 Incommunicado 05 was organised by the INC, Waag Society and Sarai, and supported by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hivos and IICD. 6. INC Events Calendar summer/autumn 2006 August 25 & 26: Netporn Couch.club at Impakt (www.impakt.nl) http://www.networkcultures.org/netporn September – June: lectures Nieuwe Media in Nederland (in Dutch) In collaboration with Amsterdam Creativity Exchange (www.acx.nu) http://www.networkcultures.org/lectures October 26: Databodies event at Paradiso and De Balie, Amsterdam (www.paradiso.nl / www.debalie.nl) November 16: Paradise by the Laptop Light at Paradiso, Amsterdam November 17-18: MyCreativity at PostCS, Amsterdam http://www.networkcultures.org/mycreativity Institute of Network Cultures Amsterdam New Media Research Centre www.networkcultures.org info(at)networkcultures.org Mailing list: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/networkcultures- l_listcultures.org