The Rhizome Archive | Rhizome Digest: Highlights from the New Media Art Field

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: 5.14.04
From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 10:51:35 -0700
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org

RHIZOME DIGEST: May 14, 2004

Content:

+announcement+
1. matthew fuller: Freestyle - FLOSS in Design
2. Pau Welder: Ars Electronica in New York
3. Pau Welder: "Access" wins Webby Award in net art category
4. Alessandro Ludovico: Neural n.21 english ed. (Rechenzentrum, Retroyou,
B.Holmes, Telestreet, Plagiarism...)

+opportunity+
5. Rachel Greene: Fwd: updated info on Eurographics 04 art show
6. Jo-Anne Green: New American Radio

+work+
7. Regina CÃ©lia Pinto: Oulipoems and Sporkworld

+scene report+
8. Rebecca Zorach: Version>04:invisibleNetworks

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1.

Date: 5.08.04
From: matthew fuller (fuller AT xs4all.nl)
Subject: Freestyle - FLOSS In Design

Freestyle - FLOSS In Design

A seminar on Free, Libre and Open Source Software in Design

Over the last few years 'Free Libre and Open Source Software' FLOSS,
a form of collaborative software development has proven itself as a
driving force of digital networks, especially the internet. Now this
approach is beginning to open up new approaches in design and visual
culture. This seminar will present clear information on this software
and how it both challenges and provides new opportunities for media
design.

Speakers:
Kit Blake - Silva, content management system, Rotterdam;
http://www.infrae.com

Erik Dooper - Open Source Software Lab, Amsterdam, will demo Scribus,
SodiPodi and Inkscape. DTP and vector graphics applications.
http://www.ossl.org/

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh - Economist and editor of FirstMonday, Maastricht;
http://orbiten.org/rishab.html

Graham Harwood - artist, London, speaking about The GIMP, image
manipulation software;
http://www.scotoma.org/

Jaromil - GNU/Linux developer, South Italy, currently resident at
Montevideo, Amsterdam; Dynebolic,
http://www.dyne.org/

Willi LeMaitre & Eric Rosenzweig - PlayList, software tools for
collaborative video work;
http://www.w----e.net

Roger Teeuwen - Graphic Designer, Rotterdam

Antoine van de Ven - V2_Lab, Rotterdam, presents V2_Jam, research on
combining and integrating open source media software; http://lab.v2.nl

Wednesday, May 19 | 10.30 - 17.00hrs | V2 Eendrachtstraat 10 |
Rotterdam
Fee for the day: 5euro, 2.50euro concessions
Advance Reservations: Eliane Roest (V2_), (010) 206 72 72, eliane at v2.nl

This seminar is jointly held by:
Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/

Interactive Media, Hogeschool van Amsterdam http://www.hva.nl/

V2_Organisation, Institute for the Unstable Media http://www.v2.nl/

STREAM: This seminar will be streamed via http://www.v2.nl/live/

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2.

Date: 5.10.04
From: Pau Waelder (pau AT sicplacitum.com)
Subject: Ars Electronica in New York

Digital Avant-Garde:
Celebrating 25 Years of Ars Electronica

Exhibition, screenings and talks at Eyebeam, American Museum of the Moving
Image and Austrian Cultural Forum

U.S. premiere exhibition of innovative digital media works of the past and
present, sponsored by SAP, the world's leading supplier of business
software.

New York, NY, May 10, 2004 - Ars Electronica, one of the world's most
renowned institutions involved with digital media culture, will celebrate
its 25th anniversary this summer. To mark the occasion, Ars Electronica will
collaborate with the American Museum of the Moving Image, Eyebeam, and the
Austrian Cultural Forum, to present Digital Avant-Garde, a series of
exhibitions, screenings, and discussions in New York City from May 20 to
July 18, 2004. Since its formation in 1979 in Linz, Austria, Ars Electronica
has championed innovative media works that combine art and technology
through the presentation of international festivals and a museum, and
through the Futurelab, a pioneering research facility for developing new
works.

Digital Avant-Garde will showcase fascinating digital-media projects that
include winners from past festival competitions in the Prix Ars
Electronica's interactive art category as well as the latest trends in this
art form represented by installations produced at the Ars Electronica
Futurelab and works that have come out of Ars Electronica's
artist-in-residence program. In addition to these exhibitions, ancillary
presentations such as workshops, chats with the artists, screenings and
symposia will provide background on the history of digital creativity and
current developments in the field. This program is being made possible by
the generous support of SAP, the world's leading supplier of business
software.

With queries please contact:
________________________________________________
Wolfgang A. Bednarzek
AEC Ars Electronica Center Linz
HauptstraÃ?e 2, 4040 Linz, Austria
tel ++43.732.7272-38
fax ++43.732.7272-638
wolfgang.bednarzek AT aec.at

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3.

Date: 5.13.04
From: Pau Waelder (pau AT sicplacitum.com)
Subject: "Access" wins Webby Award in net art category

"Access" by Marie Sester, is the winner of the Webby Awards in the net art
category. Presented in Ars Electronica in september 2003, this interactive
installation lets web users track anonymous individuals in public places, by
pursuing them with a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system. The project
website now displays information, photos and videos of past exhibitions.

The people's voice winner was Dragan Espenschied's "Gravity", presented at
Olia Lialina's online gallery art.teleportacia.org

Nominees for this category included Anne-Marie Schleiner's "Velvet Strike"
project and Johannes Gees' "Communimage".

Links:
Access - Marie Sester
http://www.accessproject.net/index.html

Gravity - Dragan Espenchied
http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/GRAVITY/

Webby Awards winners
http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html

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purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow
participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without
having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering
subsidized memberships to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded
communities.) Please visit http://rhizome.org/info/org.php for more
information or contact Rachel Greene at Rachel AT Rhizome.org.

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4.

Date: 5.14.04
From: Alessandro Ludovico (a.ludovico AT neural.it)
Subject: Neural n.21 english ed. (Rechenzentrum, Retroyou, B.Holmes,
Telestreet, Plagiarism...)

The second printed English edition of Neural is out.

(this is a quarterly message.
If you don't like it, reply with
remove in the subject. Thanks)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
:: http://www.neural.it/n/n21e.htm
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
:: 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION!
:: 3 issues + 1 electronic music cd
:: Europe 19,60 euro.
:: World 28,60 U.S: Dollars.
:: http://neural.it/subscribe/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[Neural n.21 contents]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
<hacktivism>
. Brian Holmes interview, Telestreet,
. Chaos Communication Camp, Hackit 03
. news (Hippies From Hell, Superbot,
MindGuard, CopVision, Domain Name
Anarchy).
. reviews: (Lovink-My 1st Recession,
Cyber Rights, Tactical Reality Dict.,
World Inf., Safe Distance,...)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
<e.music>
. Rechenzentrum (interview),
. C505 (interview),
. Ryoichi Kurokawa (interview),
. Audiopad (interview),
. Donna Summer (interview),
. P2P as liberated memory of sound,
. news: (Ping Melody, Audiogame,
Clustering of Music, Bass-Station,
Electronic Music Urban Robots,
Cyberinfinity)
. reviews: (Farmers Manual, AT c,
Ryoji Ikeda, Acoustic Space)
. reviews cd: (Ultrared, Ehlers,
Blechdom, Matmos, Morricone,
Yoshihiro Hanno, Takeo Toyama,
Riccardo Villalobos...)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
<new.media.art>
. Matthew Fuller (interview),
. Retroyou.org (interview),
. Read_Me 2.3,
. Mass Culture of Plagiarism,
. news (Nike Ground, Radical Software,
Dictionary of Primal Behaviour,
Molecular Media Project, Portret Series).
. reviews (Deaf03, Information is Alive
Counsciousness, Writing Machines,
Debates and Credits, Rules of Play
The New Media Reader...)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NEURAL http://www.neural.it/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
--

Alessandro Ludovico
Neural.it - http://www.neural.it/ daily updated news + reviews
English content - http://www.neural.it/english/
Suoni Futuri Digitali - http://www.neural.it/projects/sfd/

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5.

Date: 5.10.04
From: Rachel Greene (rachel AT rhizome.org)
Subject: Fwd: updated info on Eurographics 04 art show...please distribute

(please pardon cross-posting)

EUROGRAPHICS 2004Â -- ART SHOW -- Deadline is June 1

Flash: John Lansdown Award:
Â
The prestigious John Lansdown Award will be selected by the Art Show jury.
The award will be dedicated to an interactive web site or CD-ROM that works
technically and artistically and that is innovative in its use of
interaction. It should reflect on the quality of work that would be worthy
of the John Lansdown award. The Awardee will receive 500 Euros.

John Lansdown, who died in February 1999, was an inspirational leader who
encouraged innovation in others by his own creative works. At Eurographics
2000, a Multimedia prize competition was set up in his honour. John was
known for the way he saw things from a different angle to most of us, often
bringing new insights by an off-beat approach, and for his long term role as
secretary to the Computer Art Society (CAS).Â Â The CAS was formed in 1968 as
branch of the British Computer Society by John Lansdown (architect) and Alan
Sutcliffe (pioneer of computer music) (UK).Â

Travel Burseries: A limited number of travel burseries of â?¬300 each, will be
awarded to selected artists who to make project presentations as part of the
official EG04 programme.

All works selected will be presented during the conference, represented on
the EGÂ 2004 website, and available in a small publication. A poster will be
created with all selected works represented in the show.

All selected artists will get free access to the conference.

EUROGRAPHICS 2004

The annual conference of the European Association for Computer Graphics.
Eurographics 2004 will be held in Grenoble (France) from August 30 until
September 3, 2004.

http://eg04.inrialpes.fr/

Call for Contributions to the Art Show
Â
Topic : artÂ science
Media :Â computer graphicsÂ multimediaÂ animationÂ game
Support : CD-Roms, DVDs, Web-based works

The EG 2004 - Art Show competition is open to all artists and researchers
who explore science through graphics and visual methods: 3D interactive, 3D
environments, games, animation, multimedia or any other graphic process. The
purpose is to bring artists and researchers together, establish new
collaborations and discussion of graphics processes in use and in
development.

A juried Art Show,Â from submitted works of artists working onÂ topics
related to science (medicine, biology, physics) utilising computerÂ and
graphics.

ART SHOW JURYÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Kathy Rae Huffman, Director of Visual Arts, Cornerhouse, Manchester
UKÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â

Arghyro Paouri, Media Artist, INRIA, France Karel Dudesek, Professor on MA
in Interactive Digital Media, Ravensbourne College of Design and
Communication, Kent, UKÂ

Jean-Jacques Bourdin, Professor of Computer Graphics, Paris 8 University,
FranceÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â

Nathalie Magnan, Professor National School of Fine Arts, Dijon, France
Annie Luciani - Director, Laboratorie Informatique et Creation Artistique
(ICA), Grenoble

Important dates

DeadlineÂ June 1st, 2004
NotificationÂ End of June
Instructions:Â Applications and work samples CD-Roms, DVDs,Â must be
received by June 1st 2004,

to the following address :

Arghyro PAOURI
INRIA
BP 105
78153 LE CHESNAY CEDEXÂ FRANCE
Arghyro.Paouri AT inria.fr

Â
Everything will be acknowledged by e-mailÂ
put EG 2004Â Art Show on the subject for questions

**Â PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CIRCULATE THIS CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONSÂ **

Kathy Rae HuffmanKathy Rae Huffman
Director of Visual Arts
Cornerhouse
70 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5NH
+44.161.200.1523
kathy.rae.huffman AT cornerhouse.org
http://www.cornerhouse.org

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6.

Date: 5.13.04
From: Jo-Anne Green <jo AT turbulence.org>
Subject: New American Radio

May 13, 2004
New American Radio

New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. is pleased to announce the
availability of 115 full-length "New American Radio" works for online
listening at http://somewhere.org; and the release of an article about
the series and radio art by Jacki Apple.

"Although avant-garde artists have experimented with radio since its
inception, it was the advent in the 1970s of non-commercial,
listener-sponsored public radio on the FM band, including college and
local community stations that opened up the possibilities of art on the
airwaves, not simply as an isolated incident but as a viable alternative
to rigidly formatted commercial radio dominated by advertising
interests. This new opportunity was augmented by the revolution in both
recording and broadcast technology and easy consumer access to
sophisticated equipment and processes that rapidly changed the nature of
production and distribution. Thus in the 1980s radio and audio
artworks--sound art, experimental narratives, sonic geographies, pseudo
documentaries, radio cinema, conceptual and multimedia performances--a
whole panoply of broadcast interventions that confronted the politics of
culture, subverted mass media news and entertainment, and challenged
aural perceptions, infiltrated the broadcast landscape and acquired an
audience. New American Radio was foremost among the series nurturing
this work, commissioning, producing and distributing contemporary
American radio art nationally and internationally for over ten years."
From "New American Radio and Radio Art" by Jacki Apple.
http://somewhere.org/NAR/writings/apple.htm

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7.

Date: 5.15.04
From: Regina CÃ©lia Pinto (reginapinto AT arteonline.arq.br)
Subject: Oulipoems and Sporkworld

Millie Niss is launching her Oulipoems: http://www.sporkworld.org/oulipoems

The six works presented in Oulipoems range from poems, to poetry games, to
tools for writing poetry. They are inspired by the Oulipo movement, a French
literary movement which combines writing and mathematics. Members of the
Oulipo create works of literature that are governed by rules
("constraints"). For example, all words might have to contain only the vowel
'e' or words might be spelled phonetically. Members of the Ouliopo are also
interested in algorithmically generated texts, including, especially,
text-generating machines which can result in an infinite, or at least very
large, number of different texts...
I do recomend this work! Also Browser at: http://www.sporkworld.org/ , an
amazing website.

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8.

Date: 5.14.04
From: Rebecca Zorach (rezorach AT midway.uchicago.edu)
Subject: Version>04:invisibleNetworks

Version>04:invisibleNetworks

In the words of the hardworking organizers of Chicagoâ??s
Version>04:invisibleNetworks (April 16-May 1, 2004, www.versionfest.org),
the festival sought â??to uncover and open channels of discussion, hidden
orders, unseen hands, blackboxes, backdoors, wormholes and access points.
Participants in Version>04: invisibleNetworks will function as nodes and
hubs in this amorphous system and construct this yearâ??s decentralized
convergence.â?? Wait. â??Decentralized convergenceâ??? Is this self-contradictory?
A productive tension between coming together and dispersing, and especially
between publicity and invisibility, was both manifested and critically
explored in a variety of interesting ways throughout Version>04. My own
experience of it was necessarily partial, and my reflections can claim to be
neither comprehensive nor adequate or representative â?? but such is the
nature of the beast.

The past two Versions took place over a few days each and were centered at
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (on the themes of â??the commonsâ??
and â??technotopia vs. technopacalypseâ??). Version>04 was more spread out in
both space and time â?? it took place over three weekends and the intervening
weeks at a wide variety of venues. It comprised a wide range
of media: sound, video, internet, poster, bicycle, performance/intervention,
city walk, presentation, booth, discussion. These were organized into a
variety of threads (VRSN.SCREEN, VRSN.SOUND, ART OF CULTURAL INTERFERENCE,
etc.). Exhibitions included the participatory ZROX at BuddY, in which people
were invited to bring work and/or to use a photocopier to make their own
reproductions of the work hanging on the walls, and In These Timesâ??s â??Paper
Politicsâ?? exhibition of politically-engaged hand-printed media (both
provided an eclectic sampling of the inventive, the visually compelling, the
witty, and the irate). Screenings included â??Cultural Autopsyâ?? with works
providing critical external views of western culture, selected and
introduced by Arjon Dunnewind, director of Impakt Festival in the
Netherlands Fenslerfilmâ??s wickedly funny series of remixed GI Joe PSAs, and
a screening of the soon-to-be released, devastating film The Corporation
(directed by Canadian filmmakers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott). A range
of bicycle-based media included a Zinemobile from Quimbyâ??s that could be
biked around to distribute zines; the Human TV Network with its battery
powered, bicycle-mounted TVs; and Joshua Klinbergâ??s presentation of Bikes
against Bush bicycle-based activist devices. Pink Bloque contributed
(remotely) to the convergence through its rousing performances at the
Washington, DC March for Womenâ??s Lives. Anti Gravity Surprise unleashed
utopian energies by encouraging people to fill in and wear buttons that
read â??I want a president who [blank].â?? On the closing night of the
convergence, the Yes Men made an appearance, fresh from their infiltration
of the Heritage Foundationâ??s annual meeting of rightwing think tanks.

The Yes Men, in that they combine website parody, physical world
interventions, and email announcements, typify (or at least provide the most
celebrated example of) the kinds of tactical relationships to technology
highlighted by Version>04. An obvious emphasis on political action emerges
from the preceding list, though some of these actions are political simply
by virtue of the fact that they deviate from the expectations of regimented
and surveilled daily life. If Version>04â??s decentralized spatio-temporal
orientation also represents a less specific focus on â??new mediaâ?? (and
perhaps, I should say, on â??artâ??) than previous Versions, it also suggests
the extension of networked media and metaphors (rhizomatically, as it were,
both in form and content) into other forms of aesthetic and cultural
production and political action. Apart from facilitating communication on a
basic, pragmatic level, what does the internet offer to creative political
action? It offers its metaphors: the network, the chain of replication, the
virus. It offers the opening up of possibilities for different
temporalities, different broadcast modes, different styles of creating
networks and collaborations. Even the significance of what goes on at the
â??basic, pragmatic levelâ?? â?? the possibility of sending an email to five or
twenty people, writing a blog for an audience of a dozen or a hundred â?? is
not to be underestimated.

Much recent discourse links the notion of the internet as a â??network of
networksâ?? with the emerging â??movement of movementsâ??â?? molecular, networked
resistance to corporate globalization and violence. While on the one hand
this implies deterritorialization, drift, and loosely
affiliated nodes, on the other hand it privileges the real-time, the
face-to-face, the ostensibly more authentic, the one-on-one or n-on-n --
where n is â??small,â?? whatever that means. What constitutes small and how does
such a group conduct itself? (Small enough to fit in a room? Small
enough to sit in a circle?) Modernity and its media, with their
universalizing/singularizing force, their extreme poles of â??privateâ??
individual and mass â??public,â?? donâ??t help understand small-group dynamics (or
see the family as the only model). If postmodernism supplies some of the
theory, it doesnâ??t necessarily follow that it provides tools to guide the
practice. How can collaborations of various kinds foster sustainable
alternatives to dominant culture? As part of the follow-up to Version>04,
co-organizer Daniel Tucker is circulating questionnaires on collaborative
practice that might prove useful to a continuing discussion on this topic.

On this topic and others, a series of conversations emerged at organized
discussions on collaboration and alternative resource spaces at particular
spaces (Polvo and BuddY) and in ways that were both more formal (lectures
and other presentations) and more informal (casual conversation) at the â??nfo
xpoâ?? at the Chicago Cultural Center. Many of the participants in Version>04
staffed booths at the nfo xpo, which provided an informal space in which
exhibitors could network with each other and the public in an unstructured
way, and also attend presentations happening next door in the CCCâ??s
auditorium. Because the CCC is in the heart of downtown Chicago, office
workers on their lunch hour â?? unsuspecting as well as informed â?? also
wandered in and out.

High Schoolâ??s â??Map Roomâ?? exhibition, with a selection of works addressing
â??cartographies of power, satellite maps of secret facilities, left wing
dialectics and investigations of (sub)urban spaces and real estateâ?? This
exhibition framed an important set of issues: an effective metaphor of
â??mappingâ?? emerges as the correlative to the creative network (graphing,
creating alternative spaces and redescribing existing ones, documenting,
recording, situating relationships). This is not a new idea (constituting
something of a trend in recent art) but its proximity to the notion of the
invisible network was a provocative one. Mapping inherently makes something
visible, but alternative maps can make different kinds of things visible,
such as human narratives, memories and emotions associated with particular
places: psychogeographies. Some works sought to render visible the invisible
geographies of power and privilege that construct the urban environment
(such as the critical city walks were conducted by Ryan Griffis of Temporary
Travel Office and Michael Piazza of the Stockyard Institute). Other street
actions temporarily reclaimed public space from consumer capitalism, as in
interventions by UK participants Ange Taggart of My Dads Strip Club and
Richard Dedomenici (acting as â??insecurity guards,â?? altering Starbucks cups
to read â??Fuck Off,â?? and pushing vacuum cleaners to â??clean up after
capitalismâ?? â?? what Dedomeniciâ??s website calls â??poetic acts of low-grade
civil disobedienceâ??). Members of Carbon Defense League (now headquartered at
RPI in Troy, NY, but still engaged in projects in Pittsburgh, where the
group originated) presented and led discussion of their maphub project
(http://hactivist.com/maphub/overview.html). This will create a map
interface that keys narratives, descriptions, discussion forums and user
communities to points on a Pittsburgh map and will also provide kiosks
around the city to make the project broadly available. Finally, map-themed
net art projects in the VERSION_NET thread include [murmur] (an audio
project in which sites in Toronto are linked to audio stories accessible by
cell phone), trace route, kmuni city project, and radial
(links all available at the dolphin icon at http://www.versionfest.org).

Invisibility has a lot of potential valences. As the Notes from Nowhere
collective (some of whom were on hand to present their work) writes in We
Are Everywhere, â??Clandestinity can be the key to our survival, or it can be
our downfall.â?? The clandestine can be the way in which the communicative
modes and styles and technologies of corporate culture can be unobtrusively
used against it through mimicry and culture jamming. Secrecy can mean
escaping surveillance and detection. Invisibility can mean submerging
individual identities into a powerful collective force. It can also result
in restricting oneself to solipsism and inefficacy -- not having an audience
or not feeling recognized. Elements of invisibleNetworks confronted the
governmental deployment of secrecy and surveillance, the secret histories of
covert action by (for instance) the CIA, the absolute demonization of the
secrecy of the â??enemy.â?? As Jack Bratich pointed out, in his talk on â??Secrecy
as Spectacle and as Strategy,â?? the putative WMDs donâ??t need to be found if,
by racist definition, Iraqis are so cunning and secretive that they must
have hidden them with absolute success. Using a series of film and video
clips, Mary Pattenâ??s talk, â??The Romance of Clandestinity,â?? usefully
contrasted the allure of the idea of secrecy as tinged by celebrity culture
(in which concealing necessarily implies some form of revealing), with
unromantic practices of clandestinity, anonymity, and unobtrusiveness in
struggles both historical and present. Invisibility can also be the way in
which some stories donâ??t get told and some people(s) remain unrepresented.
Secrecy can lead to paranoia â?? sometimes quite appropriate, sometimes
corrosive. Thus, the theme requires rigorous, if provisional and flexible,
distinctions.

Within these distinctions â?? while remaining clear-sighted about the risk of
â??solipsism and inefficacyâ?? â?? a crucial lesson, I think, is not to expect
direct political impact ALL the time. One question that arose in
conversations in and around Version>04 is the role of surplus aesthetic
investment â?? aesthetic attention that goes beyond communicative
functionality, or even (in terms of hand-production and small-scale actions)
might restrict potential audience. One of the lessons of Version is that
there is a time and place for both aesthetic surplus and communicative
directness. And activist cultures also need what Marc Herbst called â??radical
group therapy,â?? something that can take a variety of forms, some of them
aesthetic. Creating a sustainable activist culture not just communicating a
political message, but creating a culture that people canâ??t help but want to
be part of.

Finally, the small number of complaints I heard about Version>04 were about
access (some found the schedule a bit opaque and its changes frustrating)
and a corresponding homogeneity of audience (this varied from event to
event, but at many of them, most attendees could be described as young white
artists). The frustration with flexibility â?? when itâ??s someone elseâ??s
flexibility and not oneâ??s own -- and the homogeneity of audience might index
some of the potential downsides of the â??invisible networkâ?? or the
privileging of the small group. Niche markets, the production of highly
specialized consumer identities and the development of more and more
narrowly defined demographics, an emphasis on personal networks and informal
modes of communication â?? these have also been appropriated or promoted by
corporate marketing strategists. The small scale of the collaborative
affinity group is not necessarily an antidote to manipulation or power
relations. The invisible network is a generative concept, but not an
unproblematic utopia.

The temporality of the convergence is further extended by the continued
internet presence, with its series of â??hubsâ?? (websites related by affinity,
influence, or submission to the conceptualization of this yearâ??s theme) and
â??worksâ?? (selected internet works curated by co-organizer jonCates) and an
â??invisible network repositoryâ?? that are all well worth exploring. In terms
of the actual time frame the sixteen days of Version>04 made for a less
concentrated experience. But perhaps the best thing about it for someone
living in Chicago was that it allowed events to enter into the rhythm of the
everyday â?? making the semi-surreptitious, partially-networked,
critically-conscious festival a model for what life could be like all the
time.

Co-organizers: Select Media, Logan Bay, Dakota Brown, jonCates, Dara
Greenwald, Matt Malooly, Ed Marszewski, Rotten Milk, Joe Proulx, Yoshie
Suzuki, Daniel Tucker and a host of co-conspirators.

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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 Kevin McGarry (kevin AT rhizome.org). ISSN:
1525-9110. Volume 9, number 20. Article submissions to list AT rhizome.org
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