[artinfo] a voice for new media in open systems

[Geert Lovink [c]]

>From: "Kelli Dipple" <Kelli.Dipple at tate.org.uk>
>Date: 17 June 2005 1:45:08 AM
>Subject: a voice for new media in open systems
>
>Hello -
>This is an email to a small set of personal contacts and collegues,
>who I though may have some vested interest in a discussion that is
>currently live on the Tate site titled C0dE 0f practice (until july
>18). Discussing issues relevant to 'open systems', 'curatorial
>control', 'new media', 'generative, distributed and collaborative
>work'.
>The panelists, have expressed a keeness for other people to add input
>into the discussion at large. This online forum format is somehow the
>opposite of those events you go to, that for one reason or another,
>end up skimping on the discussion time at the end of all the
>presentations, when often it is the discussion that becomes the most
>interesting interchange. Here you have a discussion that lasts for 5
>weeks. It will only address the issues it needs to address, if people
>offer input and engage in a dialogue.
>If you do have input - I would really like to see some of you jump in
>and comment via the public forum. I actually think there are quite a
>few people out there that might have something to say about the topics
>under discussion - but it will take some brave soldier to break the
>ice and make the first post before we will see activity in the public
>forum.
>I am not trying to bang you all in the head with marketing or self
>promotion here - I just think that it is important some spaces are
>made for these debates.
>Do redistribute this to any peers or students, you feel may have an
>interest or stake in the direction of this discussion, which will
>remain published / archived on the Tate site afterwards.
>Here is a direct link to the panel discussion - to post a message
>follow the [forums] tab at the top and go to the public forum ...
>http://www.tate.org.uk/contact/forums/onlineevents/thread.jsp?
>forum=3D45&thread=3D2932&tstart=3D0&trange=3D45
>
>C0dE 0f practice
>http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/code_of_practice/=A0
>(overview for umbrella online season)
>In response to the Tate Modern exhibition Open Systems Rethinking Art
>c 1970 and the Curating, Immateriality, Systems conference.
>
>How do we identify, sort, search and locate ourselves amidst the
>dynamic instability of immaterial culture and its artefacts?
>
>In a data based landscape of self organization, automation and agency,
>and further through the use of social, networked, location aware and
>ID specific - tools, systems and software, where is the
>curator/artist/audience placed in the 21st Century? Under what
>conditions do we collaborate, participate and appropriate?
>
>What social, political and cultural reference points inform legacies
>of new media, activist, interventionist, net, code, software and sound
>art? What tendencies, behaviours and practice evolve?
>Here is a cut and paste from one of Charlie Gere's posts, inviting
>response:
>"Just a couple of quick thoughts in response to Sarah's post. Firstly
>I think there is an important distinction to be made between
>collaboration and consensus. The former need not and often does not
>involve much of the latter. Nor, necessarily, should it always, though
>this opens up a big can of worms.
>Secondly I am intrigued to know if anyone other than the six of us is
>actually attending to this forum. Nothing has been posted on the
>public forum, yet.
>
>Apart from hoping that people are reading the posts and will respond
>this also raised intriguing issues in relation to the themes of the
>forum.
>In a sense this forum is not just bound up in a number of systems,
>legal (invited participants sign a document agreeing to certain duties
>and limitations), economic (we get paid in exchange for our
>participation), technological (it is made possible by the on-line,
>internet technology), cultural (what we say and how we say it is
>governed by protocols and expectations), but it is also a kind of
>system itself, which, in the absence of more than the originally
>invited participants, is closed. Of course the presence of other
>'public' participants is unlikely to change things greatly, especially
>given that those who might participate will almost certainly be
>self-selecting.
>I suppose the question is how do we open up what appears to be a
>closed system to elements which exceed it. This is a kind of mirror of
>much of what is at stake with 'new media' art."
>
>Regards
>
>Kelli Dipple
>Webcasting Curator
>Digital Programmes / Education & Interpretation
>Tate
>www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents