[artinfo] Society of the Query

[Geert Lovink]

Society of the Query conference: 13 - 14 November 2009
Location: Trouw Amsterdam
Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures

More info and material on: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/query/

In the information society the current reality is 
an increasing dependence on technological 
resources to create order and to find meaning in 
a gigantic quantity of online data. Searching has 
surpassed browsing and surfing as main activity 
on the web. This development turned the search 
engine into our most significant point of 
reference. Its focus on efficiency and expansion 
of services tends to veil the nature of the 
technology as well as underlying (corporate) 
ideologies.

In this query driven society, The Society of the 
Query conference seeks to analyze what impact our 
reliance on resources to manage knowledge on the 
Internet has on our culture. The theory of a 
semantic web lurking around the corner revives 
the 'human vs. artificial intelligence'-debate. 
The centralizing web demands to critically 
question the distribution of power, the diversity 
and accessibility of web content, while promising 
alternatives for the dominant paradigm surface in 
peer-to-peer and open source initiatives. 
Finally, the question arises what role politics 
and education, after having invested 
substantially in media intelligence, can play in 
the creation of an informed users' group.

For two days, the Society of the Query conference 
aims to zoom in on some of the essential themes 
surrounding web search by critical analysis and 
the contextualization of developments in 
interface design and the organization of 
knowledge. The Institute of Network Cultures 
seeks to achieve this specifically by uniting 
researchers, theorists, activists, artists and 
professionals working in this area and by 
creating a platform for not only realized 
projects and recent research, but also for open 
questions and predictions.

Conference Themes

Society of the Query
Digital Civil Rights and Media Literacy
Alternative Search (1)
Art and the Engine
Googlization of Everyday Life
Alternative Search (2)

Society of the Query
Because the web lacks editorial monitoring, we 
have become more dependent on technological 
resources when trying to find meaningful content 
within the vast amount of data on the web. 
Traditional methods to decide what information is 
valuable and useful are absent. In recent years, 
people have become increasingly dissatisfied by 
Google's PageRank-algorithm, which is based of 
the popularity of a web page. Also, new semantic 
layers have been added to the principal 
architecture of the web. This conference session 
will focus on 'searching' on the level of the 
software and will discuss the notion of the 
organization of knowledge within the theoretical 
framework of the humanities and computer science.

Questions to be discussed in this session 
include: What is the history of the organization 
of knowledge? Which ideologies make up the 
foundations for  the concept  of 'ontology'? And, 
what role will human expertise play in the era of 
'machine understanding'?

Moderator: Geert Lovink
Speakers:

    * Yann Moulier Boutang (F), editor of 
Multitude's special issue on Google (May 2009).
    * Matteo Pasquinelli (NL), Author of Animal 
Spirits (2008) and Google's PageRank: Diagram of 
the Cognitive Capitalism and Rentier of the 
Common Intellect" (2009).
    * Teresa Numerico (IT), (PhD in History of 
Science) is a researcher in Philosophy of Science 
at the University of Salerno, where she teaches 
New Media.
    * David Gugerli (CH), author of "Suchmaschinen 
- Die Welt als Datenbank" (2009).

Digital Civil Rights and Media Literacy
In 2005, John Batelle characterized Google as a 
'database of intents': a valuable archive of 
individual and collective wishes. As the number 
of services offered by search engines is 
expanding, large amounts of personal information 
are gathered, stored and used for commercial 
purposes. The current technological climate seems 
to be one in which the user is virtually unaware 
of who or what is behind the web applications 
they use on a daily basis.

Questions to be discussed in this session 
include: How does the intermediary function of 
search engines threaten digital civil rights such 
as the right to privacy and freedom of 
expression? What role can politics play in 
protecting these rights? How can the way search 
engines are designed aid to protecting our 
autonomy? How will the legal framework concerning 
search engines be shaped? And, after substantial 
investments in media intelligence, how are these 
matters raised on a national and European level?

Moderator: Caroline Nevejan
Speakers:

    * Nart Villeneuve (CA), Open Net Initiative.
    * Joris van Hoboken (NL), doctoral candidate 
at the Institute for Information Law at the 
University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on 
digital civil rights and the legal framework 
concerning search engines.
    * Ippolita Collective (IT), Italian collective 
that recently published "Luci e Ombre di Google" 
(2007), available in English as "The Dark Side of 
Google".

Alternative Search (1)
In response to a growing interest in alternative 
methods to search the web, this session will 
focus on three 'genres' of alternatives on the 
level of the user, the software and the network - 
represented and compared by researchers. The 
first genre that is attended to will include the 
upcoming 'general purpose'-search engine, a 
search engine designed specifically with large 
audiences and competition with Google in mind. 
The second genre will focus on search methods 
that disregard the 'engine' as dominant paradigm. 
How promising are, for example, peer- to-peer and 
open source technologies with regards to the 
current search conditions and which alternatives 
for commercial and centralizing methods have 
already emerged? The third and final genre 
consists of specialized search engines, mostly 
targeting specific content. What can we learn, 
for instance, from search methods within certain 
web spheres, such as the blogosphere, or the 
flourishing area of mobile search? And, how is 
the field of visual search developing, looking 
beyond the tag as systematizing principle?

Moderator: Eric Sieverts
Speakers:

    * Matthew Fuller (UK), Goldsmiths College, 
will discuss alternative search engines and 
interventions within the field of artists.
    * Cees Snoek/Marcel Worring (NL), University 
of Amsterdam, focuses on visual search engines, 
competitions between universities in the US and 
Amsterdam, assignment for the search engine: find 
the red hat in the movie as fast as possible.
    * Ingmar Weber (NL/FR), post doctorate 
researcher in information retrieval at the Ecole 
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 
Switzerland. His doctoral research focused on 
efficient data structures and applications for an 
interactive search engine called 'CompleteSearch'.

Art and the Engine
Even during the web's early stages, artists used 
this platform to produce and distribute a 
extensive diversity of media such as animation, 
programming, video, audio and games.  While in 
the last decennium we have witnessed a shift from 
the 'directory' towards the algorithm, it is the 
art database that has been refining the directory 
model for years.

What influence does Google's omnipresence have 
over the production and distribution of web based 
art? How does art criticism manifest itself in 
the era of Google? And, how the can online 
artistic experience be preserved and made easily 
findable? While examining these issues, the 
Institute of Network Cultures will invite 
representatives of some of the largest art 
databases, such as the Rhizome ArtBase and the 
Whitney ArtPort, to discuss the latest 
developments in the classification, annotation 
and visualization of web based art.

Concentrating on the latest developments within 
the field of graphic design, art and the 
architecture of information, additionally this 
session will address potential outcomes of search 
result design.

Questions to be discussed in this session 
include: How can we achieve more advanced forms 
of interface design and search result design? 
What role do graphic and visual representations 
play in the conveyance of digital information? Do 
alternatives exist that can challenge the 'ranked 
list' as dominant type of search result 
presentation? And, how would the interface be 
able to stimulate new and progressive ways for 
the user to search, find and analyze data?

Moderator: Sabine Niederer
Speakers:

    * Lev Manovich (USA), UCSD professor, media 
theorist and initiator of Software Studies.
    * Daniel van der Velden (NL), Metahaven Design 
Research is a design and research agency in 
Amsterdam, that researches the potential power of 
'bridging nodes', the peripheral nodes in a 
network, and is implementing this theory into a 
prototype for a new kind of search engine.
    * Christopher Bruno (FR), artist. Produces 
polymorphic art inspired by network phenomena and 
globalization regarding image and language.
    * Allessandro Ludovico (IT), thoughts on the 
aftermath of the Google Will Eat Itself project.

Googlization of Everyday Life
Questions to be discussed in this session 
include: In what way does the hegemony of some of 
the bigger search engines influence the flow of 
information and the diversity and accessibility 
of web content? How does the current division of 
power influence the administration of 
informational sources. And, what are the results 
of the Google BookSearch agreement?

Introduction and moderation by Andrew Keen
Speakers:

    * Siva Vaidhyanathan (US), culture historian 
and Associate Professor in Media Studies and Law 
at the University of Virginia. Authored 
publications include "The Anarchist in the 
Library" (2004) and the forthcoming "The 
Googlization of Everything" (early 2010).
    * Stefan Weber (Vienna) on the dangers of 
plagiarism and Google's role in the decline of 
education.
    * Benjamin Edelman (US), How Google and Its 
Partners Inflate Measured Conversion Rates and 
Increase Advertisers' Costs.

Flarf Performance

Alternative Search (2)
In response to a growing interest in alternative 
methods to search the web, this session will 
focus on three 'genres' of alternatives on the 
level of the user, the software and the network - 
represented and compared by researchers. The 
first genre that is attended to will include the 
upcoming 'general purpose'-search engine, a 
search engine designed specifically with large 
audiences and competition with Google in mind. 
The second genre will focus on search methods 
that disregard the 'engine' as dominant paradigm. 
How promising are, for example, peer- to-peer and 
open source technologies with regards to the 
current search conditions and which alternatives 
for commercial and centralizing methods have 
already emerged? The third and final genre 
consists of specialized search engines, mostly 
targeting specific content. What can we learn, 
for instance, from search methods within certain 
web spheres, such as the blogosphere, or the 
flourishing area of mobile search? And, how is 
the field of visual search developing, looking 
beyond the tag as systematizing principle?

Moderator: Richard Rogers
Speakers:

    * Florian Cramer (Rotterdam), head of the 
Master of Arts in Media Design program at the 
Piet Zwart Institute/ Willem de Kooning Academy 
in Rotterdam. Authored publications include the 
essay "Animals that Belong to the Emperor: 
Failing Universal Classification Schemes from 
Aristotle to the Semantic Web" (2007).
    * Europeana Thought Lab (The Hague), Semantic Search Engine for Europeana
    * Stephen Pemberton (Amsterdam), chairman of 
the XHTML2 Working Group at W3C and researcher at 
the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science 
in Amsterdam.

Project Showcase

This segment of the conference will consist of 
the exhibition of specific projects addressing 
the theme of the search engine, and will be 
divided into two parts. During the conference, a 
display of computers and screens will be 
available on which the latest generation of 
search engines is installed. The Institute of 
Network Cultures seeks to give visitors the 
opportunity to discover search engines such as 
Wolfram Alpha, Quaero, Theseus and Autonomy. This 
will provide them with hands-on experience of the 
range of search methods discussed in the 
conference sessions. Furthermore, the Institute 
of Network Cultures plans to organize a 
concluding evening program to do justice to the 
diversity of artistic and activist projects that 
examine the role of the search engine in 
contemporary society. The works presented in the 
evening program will vary from browser 
extensions, alternative search engines and net 
art projects to videos and VJ performances. It is 
aspired that artists and developers will be 
present during this showcase to discuss and 
elaborate on their work with the audience.