[LINK] ::fibreculture:: Proceedings contents & Conference program
Ned Rossiter
Ned.Rossiter@arts.monash.edu.au
Thu, 15 Nov 2001 20:20:43 +1100
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS - Peer reviewed
Politics of a Digital Present: An inventory of Australian Net
Culture, Criticism and Theory
Edited by Hugh Brown, Geert Lovink, Helen Merrick, Ned Rossiter,
David Teh, Michele Willson
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Theory
Abstraction
McKenzie Wark
Net Affects: Responding to Shock on Internet Time
Anna Munster
(S)end
David Teh
'Don't send me your saliva': Fantasies of Disembodiment in Email and
Epistolary Technologies
Esther Milne
How to Launder Money: Finance Capital, Value, and Biopower
Brett Neilson
Networks, Postnationalism and Agonistic Democracy
Ned Rossiter
Politics
Grassroots and Digital Branches in the Age of Transversal Politics
Guy Redden
Strengthening Cohesion, Networking Cells: Environmental Activists On-line
Jenny Pickerill
The Lens of Images: Desire, Commodities, Media and Hacking
David Cox
KNOBS and NERDS: What's So Good About Being Networked?
Ann Willis
Hack
McKenzie Wark
Policy
The 'New Empirics' in Internet Studies and Comparative Internet Policy
Terry Flew
New Threats, New Walls: The Internet in China
Kay Hearn and Brian Shoesmith
'Until there's evidence there's no comment': Risk, Fear and the Mobile Phone
Sean Aylward Smith
Intellectual Property: A Balance of Rights
Terry Laidler
The Knowledge Economy as Alienation: Outlines of a Digital Dark Age
Phil Graham
Arts
To Ephemeral Peace
Sean Cubitt
Ephemeral Pieces: An Interview with Sean Cubitt
David Teh
The Human Phenome Project
Kevin Murray
Interview with Kevin Murray
Geert Lovink
Empyrean| soft_skinned_scape
Melinda Rackman
Theatre as Suspsended Space
Andrew Garton
Diagramming Innovation-scapes
Pia Ednie-Brown
When is Art IT?
Scott McQuire
The Art of Real Time
Daniel Palmer
Education
What is New Media Research?
Chris Chesher
Locating Community in the Social: Reorienting Internet Research
Tania Lewis
All Wired Up: Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online
Helen Merrick and Michele Willson
The Dragon Project: Function and Culture in Media Research
Stephi Hemelryk Donald and Ingrid Richardson
Fibrous Amigos: The Critical Pursuit of Democracy
Molly Hankwitz with Danny Butt
Appendix: program of events
List of Contributors
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::fibreculture:: politics of a digital present
6- 8 December, 2001, Melbourne
Noting a vacuum in critical Australian net culture and research,
::fibreculture:: was founded as a mailing list in January 2001 by
David Teh and Geert Lovink. The purpose of the list has been to
exchange articles, ideas and arguments on Australian IT policy and
practice in a broad context.
The inaugural ::fibreculture:: meeting considers four key areas of
net culture and research: theory, policy, education and the arts.
Co-organised by Cinemedia, a public debate on the evening of 6
December will precede the meeting. The debate seeks to address these
issues in dialogue with a wider audience. Both events bring together
a community of critical thinkers engaged with new media/Internet
theory and practice, with a view to constructing a strategic program
of how Australia might better support innovation, R+D and the
applications and culture of new technology.
A reader has been prepared for publication prior to the
::fibreculture:: meeting. It can be ordered from the
::fibreculture:: website www.fibreculture.org. Submissions of 1500
to 3000 word short essays, position papers, or manifestos were
invited that address at least one of the four key themes, and these
were posted to the ::fibreculture:: mailing list and subject to peer
review.
The aim of the ::fibreculture:: meeting is not to present formal
papers, but to circulate papers in advance which can operate as a
point of reference and basis for discussion during the meeting.
We aim to produce more readers, monographs, edited collections and
newspapers. Proposals to the list are most welcome for future
publications. We see this as one key intervention into the current
political economy of commercial academic publishing and the "command
economy" approach to academic production by DETYA.
*****************************
Digital publics: a debate
Thursday 6 December, 7pm - 10pm
Organised together with Cinemedia's Australian Centre for the Moving
Image (ACMI)
Treasury Theatre, Lower Plaza
1 Macarthur Street, East Melbourne
Registration: at the door (approx. $10 or concession)
Introduction
Moderator: Geert Lovink
Session 1 - Net Theory
Key Speaker: Mathew Allen, Associate Professor, School of Media and
Information, Curtin University of Technology; author of Smart Thinking
Respondent: Esther Milne, writer and PhD candidate, Cultural Studies,
University of Melbourne
Session 2 - Policy, Intellectual Property Rights, Commercial Practices
Key speaker: Victor Perton, Victorian Shadow Minister for Technology
& Innovation; Victorian Shadow Minister for Conservation &
Environment; former Chairman, Victorian Government Multimedia
Committee, Data Protection Advisory Council, Electronic Business
Framework Group.
Respondent: Tom Worthington, Visiting Fellow in the Department of
Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology,
Australian National University; electronic business consultant;
author of the book Net Traveller; information technology professional
BREAK - 20 minutes
Session 3 - New Media Arts/Culture and the Arts
Key Speaker: Terry Cutler, currently a member of the Australian
Information Economy Advisory Council. He is a member of the
International Advisory Panel of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor,
reflecting his strong interest in the role of, and opportunities for,
Asian countries in the new information era. Terry Cutler is also
Chairman of the Australia Council, having previously chaired its New
Media Arts Board, and he is on the Council of the Victorian College
of the Arts. He has previously served as a director of Cinemedia and
Opera Australia.
Respondent: Amanda McDonald Crowley, currently Associate Director,
Adelaide Festival 2002. Cultural worker, researcher, facilitator,
curator working primarily in the new media/ electronic arts field.
Previous Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology.
Session 4 - Education
Key speaker: Paul James, Senior Lecturer, Political and Social
Inquiry, Monash University; President of Association for the Public
University; author of Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract
Community; editor of The State in Question: Transformations of the
Australian State and Technocratic Dreaming: Of Very Fast Trains and
Japanese Designer Cities; editorial member of Arena publications
Respondent: McKenzie Wark*, media theorist and cultural critic, New
York University; author of Virtual Geography: Living with Global
Media Events; The Virtual Republic: Australia's Culture Wars of the
1990s; Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace: The Light on the Hill in
a Postmodern World
*[to be confirmed]
Closing Panel
**********
::fibreculture:: inaugural meeting, 7 - 8 December,
Organised together with the Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of
the Arts (VCA)
234 St Kilda Road
Southbank, Melbourne VIC 3006
Registration: $50/$30 full; $30/$20 single day (payable at the door -
NOTE cash or cheques only)
Program
Friday 7 December
10.00am - 10.25am
Introduction of ::fibreculture:: facilitators and organisers
10.30am - 12.30pm
Mapping Australian FibreCulture
Round with introductions and 3 minute presentations
* Researchers, critics, theorists, writers, programmers, designers,
developers, consultants: WHERE are you and WHAT are you up to?
12.30pm - 1.25pm - Lunch break
1.30pm - 3.30pm
Session 1: Network Theory/Philosophy
Topics:
* Debating neo-emperical approaches and the return of objective
social science after the exhaustion of post-structuralism
* Crisis of the offline (AI/VR) body centred Deleuzian notions
* Hegemony of digital Darwinism and biologism within new media arts
and IT industry
* Importance of media archaeology, mapping pre-histories of new media
* Global governance debate
* Public Domain vs. the Corporate State
* Problematic relation to Cultural Studies
* Network theories for the future-present
3.30pm - 4pm - Tea/coffee break
Web/video presentations (please submit a proposal - spaces/facilities
are limited)
* screening of Finnish Linux documentary - name?
* special feature of emergent designers/programmers
4pm - 6pm
Session 2: Policy
Topics:
* Telstra, broadband, right of access, bandwidth
* Australia and the censorship tendency (political, pornography,
gambling, etc.)
* Alternative plan for IT Centre of Excellence
* Mapping the policy players
* How to fight the consumerist ethos in IT policy - "access" as cyber
literacy and skill, not high bandwidth data-gluttony
* How can ::fibreculture:: be heard and operate on the policy level?
* Policy futures
6pm onwards - drinks/dinner party
Saturday 8 December
11.00am - 1pm
Session 3: Culture and the arts
Topics:
* Cult of representation, proximity to political power
* Patronage system (cultural state apparatus)
* Primacy of aesthetics
* Lack of game/net.art and e-literature funding
* Deliriating over an (absent) synergy of arts and science
* Generationalism in new media arts
1pm - 2pm - Lunch break
2pm - 4pm
Session 4: Education
Topics:
* Current approaches/paradigms: teaching new media/internet studies
and e-learning
* Corporatisation and the Virtual University - profit obsessions,
confused IT sovereignty, limited teaching and research outcomes
* What constitutes the mode of production?
* Relationship between curricula development and university funding and policy
* Both government and opposition share limited horizons. How can we
explode these?
4.15pm - 6pm
Closing session ::fibreculture meeting::
* Directions of ::fibreculture::
* Discussion about the list
* Legal structures for ::fibreculture:: as formal organisation
* Futures: the place of ::fibreculture:: within policy making,
research funding and practice
Convenors:
Hugh Brown (Brisbane) hughie@onlineopinion.com.au
Geert Lovink (Sydney) geert@xs4all.nl
Helen Merrick (Perth) H.Merrick@exchange.curtin.edu.au
Ned Rossiter (Melbourne) Ned.Rossiter@arts.monash.edu.au
David Teh (Sydney) dteh@arthist.usyd.edu.au
Michele Willson (Perth) M.Willson@exchange.curtin.edu.au
With special thanks to:
Alessio Cavallaro, Producer/Curator New Media Projects
Cinemedia's Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
<alessio@cinemedia.net>
Nikos Papastergiadis, writer and Director of the Centre for Ideas,
Victorian College of the Arts (VCA),
<n.papastergiadis@vca.unimelb.edu.au>
Louise Adler, Deputy Director of VCA
Sponsors:
Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts
Cinemedia's Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Humanities Division, Curtin University of Technology
The Power Institute, University of Sydney
Publications Grants Committee, Monash University
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