The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.

Subject: RHIZOME DIGEST: 5.26.02
From: list@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 17:40:49 -0400
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org

RHIZOME DIGEST: May 26, 2002

Content:

+editor's note+
1. Mark Tribe: Rachel Greene Returns & Site Renovation

+query+
2. US Department of Art & Technology: Request for Acts of Mediation

+opportunity+
3. Curt Cloninger: the 5k
4. Steve Dietz: Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium 3--Call For Proposals
5. Lars Gustav Midboe: Electrohype 2002--Deadline May 31st

+report+
6. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: the 6th International Browserday

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1.

Date: 5.23.02
From: Mark Tribe (mark AT rhizome.org)
Subject: Rachel Greene Returns & Site Renovation

Dear Rhizomers:

I'm writing to let you all know that Rachel Greene will be our new
Editorial Coordinator, starting June 3. We had 36 applicants for this
position, many of them very qualified, and it was an extremely difficult
decision. In the end, experience became the deciding factor: as many of
you know, Rachel was Rhizome's editor from 1997 through 1999. Hard to
beat that. She has also written about contemporary art for several
magazines, including Artforum, Frieze and Bomb, and is now working on a
book on new media art for Thames & Hudson's world of art series. Her
Artforum feature, "Web Work: A History of Internet Art" (a 7.8 Meg PDF
file) is available online at http://rhizome.org/info/artforum.pdf.

I want to say a sincere word of thanks to all of the applicants.
Rhizome.org would have been lucky to have any of you.

+ + +

Also this week, we will start launching a bunch of new features and
services at Rhizome.org. It all started last year when we sent out a
member survey to figure out what you like most and least about the site
and what you would most like to see. Twelve months and a zillion
keystrokes later, we're ready to launch. The rollout will take place
gradually over several weeks. We want to warn you in advance that some
features, like Rhizome Rare, will be temporarily unavailable, and that
there are sure to be lots of bugs. We want your feedback and need your
help discovering bugs, so we have set up an email address for this
purpose: feedback AT rhizome.org.

Here's an outline of the changes to come:

This week:

+ Redesign: new interface, new site structure (hopefully easier to
navigate and less confusing for newcomers).

+ Post: members can post texts via the web site, respond to other posts.
Threaded discussion.

Next week:

+ Calendar: a global new media art calendar for exhibitions,
performances, panels, festivals, etc.

+ Opportunity Listings: jobs, grants, commissions, residencies, calls
for work, etc.

+ Member Directory: create your own directory page with contact info,
bio, statement, etc. Search for other members.

+ Slashdot-style filtering system: members rate content, post something
people like and you get good karma, members with good karma become
superusers, superusers decide what goes on the home page and what goes
to the Rare email lists.

+ Web Hosting: sign up as a beta tester for our new web hosting service
offered in partnership with a commercial web host. This fee-based
service will hopefully generate much-needed revenue for Rhizome.org.

Mid-July:

+ Shareware Membership System: making a gift to support Rhizome.org will
become part of the membership process. If you decide not to make a
contribution, you'll still have full access, but, like shareware, we'll
ask you again from time to time.

August:

+ Online Education: sign up for online courses on things like Java,
Information Architecture and Media Theory through a partnership with an
online university. As with web hosting, this is a fee-based service that
will help support the organization.

These last three initiatives (Web Hosting, Shareware Membership System
and Online Education) are part of our strategy to become more
financially independent. As you probably know, Rhizome.org is a New York-
based nonprofit organization. Because we are based in the US, we don't
have access to the kind of generous government funding that most
European nonprofits take for granted. The foundations and government
agencies that have funded Rhizome to date have sent us a clear message:
Rhizome needs to find a way to become more financially self-sufficient,
or it will not survive. Our goal, over the next four years, is to cover
at least 50% of our costs with community-based revenue. Rhizome.org
exists to support the global new media art community. By making a gift,
signing up for a web hosting account or taking an online course, you can
help ensure Rhizome's survival.

http://rhizome.org/info/artforum.pdf
http://rhizome.org

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2.

Date: 5.24.02
From: US Department of Art & Technology (press AT usdept-arttech.net)
Subject: Request for Acts of Mediation

Dear Rhizome Community:

I have a very special request to ask of you as part of your commitment
to advancing cultural dialogue worldwide.

On June 19th, 7pm, at the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes in Washington,
DC, the US Department of Art & Technology is organizing the World
Mediation Summit, which is convening under the theme, "The Artist as
Mediator on the World Stage." The scheduling of the event has been timed
to honor the opening of Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, which this year
is concerned with socially engaged "platforms" that explore the public
communicative process.

It is in this spirit that the World Mediation Summit has been conceived
as a "ceremonial cultural exchange" in which I will present to the US
Department of State an artist-generated, collectively-authored
proclamation consisting of imaginative methodologies and acts of
mediation for intensifying intercultural dialogue in these troubling
times of crisis. This ceremonial presentation of the proclamation to a
representative of the State Department will be conducted in the presence
of US Department of Art & Technology staff, as well as a consortium of
cultural officials from Washington embassies representing at least six
nations. It is our intent that this document, a critique of the
Administration's handling of the "war on terror" since 9-11, be
transmitted within the State Department to Secretary Powell, who will in
turn submit it for final transmission to President Bush.

I am asking the Rhizome Community to contribute to the collective
authorship of the proclamation by submitting a brief statement to be
included in the document. Think of this as a manifesto for reforming the
Administration's ignorance and lack of appreciation for cultural
concerns! This is an important opportunity for all of you who are deeply
entrenched in artistic expression, cultural issues, and the general
state of humanity, to offer new methodologies based on your artistic and
critical practice for confronting the violence and turmoil that is
rapidly spreading throughout the world. We intend to provide the State
Department with effective and creative tools for strengthening the hand
of its cultural officers. Unfortunately, President Bush, along with the
Department of State and the Security Council, are clueless - they
desperately need the help of the arts community, which is why I am
turning to you now. The US Department of Art & Technology strongly
believes that in our society, the artist and cultural critic is a
largely untapped, yet powerful force for understanding and resolving
differences that have lead to recent acts of aggression and violence.

To guide the writing of your statements, the following is a list of key
recommendations to the Administration's approach and policy that our
proclamation seeks to state:

(1) to deepen its attentiveness to the richness and complexity of the
world's many distinct cultures, particularly in areas of conflict;

(2) to avoid what is being perceived in the world as a tone of
aggression;

(3) to adopt and project a nuanced view of the world's social conditions
beyond a misleading division into "good and evil;"

(4) to reiterate the value and power of meaningful cultural dialogue in
its overall foreign policy.

I am deeply concerned with the Administration's lack of interest and
ability in bringing about a meaningful cultural exchange to solve
international conflicts, and it is my hope, through your input, to
expand upon the hope and possibility of a peaceful, more culturally-
engaged world, and to redefine the role of the artist (and cultural
critic) as a mediator on the world stage.

Each of you who submit a statement (keep them short, approximately 1 to
3 sentences) will be appropriately credited (unless you wish to remain
anonymous) and will receive a copy of the completed proclamation prior
to the World Mediation Summit. Please return your statement in a timely
manner (within one week), and please don't hesitate to write if you have
questions.

For more information on the World Meditation Summit visit the Department
Website: http://www.usdept-arttech.net

As André Breton said, "perhaps the imagination is on the verge of
recovering its rights!"

http://www.usdept-arttech.net

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+ad+

IT IS necessary to buy "Not Necessarily 'English Music,'" Leonardo Music
Journal Volume 11. Not only is it curated by David Toop, but it includes
a double CD. Tune in and turn on to the LMJ website at
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/

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3.

Date: 5.24.02
From: Curt Cloninger (curt AT lab404.com)
Subject: the 5k

http://www.the5k.org

For the third year running, we are having a competition. The deal is,
you have 5 kilobytes to make the best web page or site you can. We'll
organize the entries and make them public so people can admire and learn
from them.

And then people will rate them, and discuss them. And then special
judges will judge them, and we'll calculate the score and award some
lucky winner 5k cents (US): $51.20. Finally, about six months later, we
will do it all over again.

From right now until 5:00pm pacific time (GMT-8), June 16, 2002, you can
enter the "anything goes" competition, which allows anything you can fit
in a 5k download (no server-side processing allowed).

For more information, visit:
http://www.the5k.org

+ + +

JUDGES:

vicki wong
http://www.meomi.com
http://www.ndroid.com
http://www.beetleblue.com

bruce sterling
http://www.infinitematrix.net/columns/sterling/
http://lonestar.texas.net/~dub/sterling.html
http://www.viridiandesign.org

clement mok
http://www.sapient.com/about/bio.htm?leader=mok
http://aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentID=539

susan kare
http://kare.com

lee feldman
http://www.blastradius.com

steve champeon
http://a.jaundicedeye.com
http://www.hesketh.com
http://www.WebDesign-L.com

dean allen
http://textism.com
http://cardigan.com

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+ad+

**MUTE MAGAZINE NEW ISSUE** Coco Fusco/Ricardo Dominguez on activism and
art; JJ King on the US military's response to asymmetry and Gregor
Claude on the digital commons. Matthew Hyland on David Blunkett, Flint
Michigan and Brandon Labelle on musique concrete and 'Very Cyberfeminist
International'. http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm

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4.

Date: 5.24.02
From: Steve Dietz (sub AT yproductions.com)
Subject: Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium 3--Call For Proposals

EMERGING ARTISTS/EMERGENT MEDIUM 3: CALL FOR PROPOSALS
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/jerome/
Deadline for proposals: July 19, 2002

Gallery9/Walker Art Center (WAC) announces a third round of net art
commissions: "Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium: Translocation" (EAEM3).
With support from The Jerome Foundation, WAC will commission three new
net art projects.

The fee for each commission will be $5,000 plus a budget of up to $4,000
for technical support. A writer will also be commissioned to write a
critical essay in relation to the project, and completed commissioned
works will be presented as part of a global (translocal?), online
exhibition to be presented in February 2003.

The Walker Art Center's Gallery 9 (http://gallery9.walkerart.org) is an
online platform for project-driven exploration, through digitally-based
media, of all things "cyber." Past commissions in the Emerging
Artists/Emergent Medium series have gone to: 0100101110101101.org,
Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin, Auriea Harvey, Ochen K, Diane
Ludin, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, r a d i o q u a l i a, and Vivian
Selbo.

EMERGING ARTISTS/EMERGENT MEDIUM: TRANSLOCATION

The theme of EAEM3 is the "translocal." There is, potentially, an
important difference between what has been termed McGlobalization and
the translocal. If one version of globalization is the transnational
ubiquity of global brands and the dominance of global capital, can the
translocal be a counter-example, specifying an individual, local
environment yet situating it in a global context? If the topology of the
network is one of connected nodes, every node is global. Is any node
local? No node is the center. Is every node is a center?

These and many other questions are raised by the notion of the
translocal. In the spirit of project-driven exploration, EAEM3
encourages proposals that broadly explore and interpret translocal,
particularly in relation to issues of situatedness, embodiment, and
agency in a connective, global context. Projects must be able to be
experienced compellingly online.

RELATED READINGS

Interview with Arjun Appadurai
Anette Baldauf and Christian Hoeller
http://www.translocation.at/d/appadurai.htm

Andreas Broeckman
Networked Agencies
http://www.v2.nl/~andreas/texts/1998/networkedagency-en.html

Tetsuo Kogawa
Two or Three Things I Know About the Streaming Media
http://anarchy.k2.tku.ac.jp/non-japanese/20000926netcongestion.html

ELIGIBILITY

EAEM3 is specifically aimed at emerging artists. At least two of the
three commissions will be awarded to artists or artist groups based in
New York City or Minnesota (USA).

JURY Proposals will be reviewed by a jury consisting of Steve Dietz,
Walker Art Center; Douglas Fogle, Walker Art Center; Gunalan Nadarajan,
Dean, Lasalle College, Singapore; and Yukiko Shikata, Independent
Curator, Tokyo. Selected artists will be contacted on or after August 5,
2002. Each artist will be asked to sign an agreement with Walker Art
Center governing the terms of the commission.

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL*

Notification to the Walker of a proposal for an Emerging
Artists/Emergent Medium commission is accepted via email only. Email
notification will be accepted until 5:00 pm CST on Friday, July 19,
2002. Proposals must take the form of a web site that includes the
following key elements:

+ Project description (500 words maximum) that discusses your project's
core concept, how you will realize your project and your project's
feasibility. If you plan to work with assistants, consultants or
collaborators, their roles and (if possible) names should be included.

+ Project thematic (500 words maximum) that discusses the relation of
your project to the translocal.

+ A production timeline and a project budget. These can be modified on
acceptance, but projects must be doable with available funding. If you
have other funding sources for your project, please indicate this in
your budget.

+ Your resume or Curriculum Vitae. For collaborative groups, provide
either a collective CV or the CV's of all participants.

+ Up to 5 work samples. Note: more is not necessarily better. You should
include only work samples that are relevant to your proposal. Please
provide contextualizing information (title, date, medium, perhaps a
brief description) to help the jury understand what they are looking at.
The work sample can take any form, as long as it is accessible via the
web.

When designing your web-based proposal, please note that the jury will
have limited time; so try to make your site clear and concise. When your
web-based proposal is ready, complete the submission form above.

COMMISSIONS

Winners will be announced on or before August 12, 2002. Commissioned
projects must be completed by January 13, 2003.

QUESTIONS

If you have any questions about the Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium:
Translocation commissions, please contact Steve Dietz at
steve.dietz AT walkerart.org.

*Thanks and acknowledgment to Rhizome for the excellent example of its
commissioning process.

http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/jerome/
http://gallery9.walkerart.org

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5.

Date: 5.21.02
From: Lars Gustav Midboe (lars.midboe AT electrohype.org)
Subject: Electrohype 2002--Deadline May 31st

Last Call for Entries - Electrohype 2002 exhibition

Call for Entries Electrohype 2002
Deadline: May 31st 2002 (on-line or post stamped by May 31st)

The Electrohype 2002 exhibition will be held in Malmö, Sweden, during
ten days in the second half of October 2002.

International as well as Nordic artists are welcome to submit their
work.

Due to the large number of entries, so far, we will ask you to provide
as much info as possible according to the online form or the
downloadable pdf.

Please use one of the above mentioned forms when submitting your work.

Your submission should contain, as a minimum, the following information:

1. Short description of your work, abstract or synopsis.

2. Full description of work, including title, year of production and
exhibition history.

3. Artists presentation, CV etc.

4. Visual presentation of your work, photo, video, url etc.

5. Technical description, including size, weight, technical and spatial
requirements.

6. Financial requirements, including insurance.

The exhibition will include a variety of works ranging from net based
projects to large installations controlled by computers. Therefore we
are seeking works of art that requires a computer (or several) to be
experienced. We are not looking for artworks that relate to linear media
even if they are produced by computers,- like rendered images and linear
video.

Both electronic registration form and printable pdf can be found at
www.electrohype.org

http://www.electrohype.org

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6.

Date: 5.20.02
From: Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah AT coin-operated.com)
Subject: Report from the 6th International Browserday

6th International Browserday
May 17, 2002
Paradiso, Amsterdam
http://www.browserday.com

The Paradiso, an old church turned nightclub in the heart of Amsterdam,
was an unlikely venue to collide with visions of Internet future
presented by over 30 participants during the 6th International
Browserday. After successful past runs in Amsterdam, New York, and
Berlin, Browserday's founder Mieke Gerritzen started the festival on the
simple notion that the Internet is far too rich a medium for expression
to be siphoned through the existing canon of Netscape and IE. Browserday
is an opportunity, challenge, and competition for young designers and
artists to destroy the status quo of what it means to "browse"
information both online and offline and come up with new alternatives
and precedents.

This year, Browserday's theme was "Mobile Minded: Rich Air", a testament
to our increasingly mobile existence and growing dependencies on cell
phones, PDAs, GPS, and wireless networks. A festive "Browser Dinner"
designed by media artist Shulea Cheang took place the night before in a
large greenhouse outside of the city. The dinner featured waiters
dressed as cyborgs and only serving food to hungry guests who made the
most audible bleeps with their cell phones.

The event itself was hosted by the lively John Thakara of Doors of
Perception fame and began with the presentation, "Klima Kontrolle", a
funny gag where Roel Wouters and Luna Maurer from Amsterdam's Sandberg
Institute plugged in a desk fan and pointed it at a Mac laptop causing
the desktop to gradually blow off the screen. Among the themes
mentioned throughout the evening included technology's relationship to
the body, connections between public and private spaces, data
surveillance and customization, control of information flow, and the
emotional and social structures of human/computer interfaces.

After the presentations concluded, the jury announced a short list of
five nominees and the winner of the event. The finalists included:
"Instinct" - a proposal to color-code our cell phone address books
according to the real-time mood and physical state of our friends.
"Emotional Landscapes" - a future emotional data-layer of an urban space
where people could leave traces of the emotions they felt in distinct
locations via GPS tracking. "Abbreviated Lifestyles" - five timepieces
that attempted to restructure our lives based on time-based systems such
as keeping track of our dreams and aspirations over a lifetime.
"Browsing the Air" - an enthusiastic trio from Berlin who presented a
plan to encrypt SMS messages sent between mobile phones. "My Browser",
by Bob Stel and Lauran Ory also of the Sandberg Institute, which
ultimately won the event, featured a video presentation of a dying old
man describing his personal attachment to his browser. Speaking of the
browser as if it was his only companion, the project emphasized the idea
that in the future our personal attachments to technology will
ultimately become more important than simply using technology.

Other honorable mentions included "Body Mnemonics", a comment on how
information can be ultimately something stored on our body itself where
different locations signify different types of data. For instance, you
might keep your enemies information on your neck and give the phrase
"pain in the neck" entirely new meaning. Also interesting proposals were
"Flesh- Machine", a dynamic tattoo that changes its appearance and
stores information as your body changes, and "Tired to Be Wired, No
Strings Attached" a video presentation about the rise of Internet
telepathy in a not-so-distant future.

Following the student presenters were two guest speakers, along with
short talks by past winners of Browserday including myself, Joes
Koppers, and Victor Vina. Tim Pritlove of Berlin's Chaos Computer Club
(http://www.ccc.de) (the world oldest hackers club founded in 1981),
gave an inspiring presentation on the freedom of information and
accessible public interfaces. After defending the true meaning of the
term "hacker" as philanthropic rather than menacing, Pritlove described
CCC's latest coup/project, "Blinkenlights" (http://www.blinkenlights.de)
as a culmination of the group's 20t year history. The Blinkenlights
project, which turned a 12 story building in Germany's Alexanderplatz
into a low-res computer monitor using high-powered controllable lights
in every window, was the club's attempt at making the first ever
dynamic, multi-user public display. He showed examples of passersbys
playing Pong on the building with their mobile phones, sending in
customized animations created with homemade BlinkenPaint software, and
even adding "hacks" to the open-source software running the
installation.

Between student presentations was also a demo by Jaap de Dulk, the
person responsible for porting Japan's wildly successful I-Mode phones
to KPN (Dutch Telecom) and the European market. Dulk described ways to
implement homemade I-Mode sites and showed some of the features unique
to the platform in Europe such as SPS (Short Picture Service), a new
sibling to SMS that lets you send graphics and animations to other
people.

After the presentations and winners ceremony ended, techno and hip-hop
beats filled the Paradiso's terraced interior. The advent of Browserday
sparked hope that the future of information retrieval, access, and
dissemination will escape the control of mega-corporations or
governments. The "browser" itself no longer holds the same meaning it
did in the early days of the Net. Instead of thinking of a browser as
something that displays information, Browserday is challenging us to
question how the information itself will dictate and adapt its own
delivery mechanisms. Ultimately, the browser is becoming less of a
signifier for the web than a way of manipulating and exploring the
dynamic of social and personal data flow. The next International
Browserday will take place in Montreal, Canada next spring.

http://www.browserday.com
http://www.ccc.de
http://www.blinkenlights.de

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Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard
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the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council
on the Arts, a state agency.

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Alex Galloway (alex AT rhizome.org).
ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 21. Article submissions to
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