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: 3.18.05
From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:21:21 -0800
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org

RHIZOME DIGEST: March 18, 2005

Content:

+announcement+
1. Lucy Kimbell: Pindices: project launch

+opportunity+
2. olia lialina: 1000$ PAGE CONTEST 2005
3. mark cooley: Join the De-Tourism Center and rework the circuits of
bucolic tourism!
4. M. Takeo Magruder: NET:REALITY (call for proposals)
5. Francis Hwang: Rhizome.org seeks software consultant
6. matthew fuller: DIGITAL FINE ART POST LANCASTER UNIVERSITY
7. Julian Bleecker: ISEA 2006 INTERACTIVE CITY CFP

+work+
8. Marius Watz: Project: Universal Digest Machine
9. rick silva: working title

+comment+
10. Jon Ippolito: Re: Internet2: Orchestrating the End of the Internet?

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1.

Date: 3.15.05
From: Lucy Kimbell <inbox AT lucykimbell.com>
Subject: Pindices: project launch

Pindices: Personal Political Indices

A project by sociologist Andrew Barry and artist Lucy Kimbell
--Website, gallery work and live research

Part of 'Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy', an
interdisciplinary exhibition curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel at the
Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany, March 20-August 7, 2005

How political have you been this week, based on acts you have performed? How
much of a citizen? Pindices seeks to make individual political activity
visible, but not in the ways typically measured by polling agencies or using
the normal methods of social science. Rather than looking at political
ideologies, institutions, groups or identities, in our project we start with
the individual and their acts, and invite participants to make public a
reckoning of their everyday political or citizenship activity by creating
their own personal political indices during 'Making Things Public'.
Somewhere between a public art project and bad social science, Pindices
offers ways of thinking about what matters to individuals and how this is
made visible.

Set up your own pindex at http://www.pindices.org from 20 March

http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de/

Andrew Barry is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, Director of the
Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process and the author of
Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society. Lucy Kimbell is an
artist and designer and AHRB research fellow at The Ruskin School of Drawing
and Fine Art, University of Oxford. The project is supported by the Arts and
Humanities Research Board, ZKM, Goldsmiths College and The Ruskin School of
Drawing and Fine Art.

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Rhizome.org 2005 Net Art Commissions

The Rhizome Commissioning Program makes financial support available to
artists for the creation of innovative new media art work via panel-awarded
commissions.

For the 2005 Rhizome Commissions, seven artists were selected to create
artworks relating to the theme of Games:

http://rhizome.org/commissions/2005.rhiz

The Rhizome Commissioning Program is made possible by generous support from
the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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2.

Date: 3.12.05
From: olia lialina <olia AT profolia.org>
Subject: 1000$ PAGE CONTEST 2005

http://art.teleportacia.org/1000$/

Art.Teleportacia is calling again for personal web site submissions.
You can submit your own page or a page you like. Your own comments are
welcome but not required. Submissions will be accepted till the end of
June 2005.

The winner will be announced early July 2005. The site, time and the
form of the award ceremony are open and will depend on the location of
the winner and the political situation this summer.

Notice that this year plus to the main prize we announce a special 79,50
English Pounds prize for a great Musician Self-Promotion Page. Sponsored
by Lektrolab.

And a prize for the Best Site of a Couple, made possible by the E8Z.org
team.

During the submission period all the submitted links will appear on the
website. The most interesting links will be reviewed weekly by jury
members.

1000$ prize is made possible by Art.teleportacia's savings and cash
contributions from the jury members.

http://art.teleportacia.org/1000$/

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Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships
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 Kevin McGarry at Kevin AT Rhizome.org or Rachel Greene
at Rachel AT Rhizome.org.

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3.

Date: 3.13.05
From: mark cooley <mgc868f AT smsu.edu>
Subject: Join the De-Tourism Center and rework the circuits of bucolic
tourism!

Join the De-Tourism Center and rework the circuits of bucolic tourism!

Organized by Nato Thompson

Calling all miscreant mailers, drunk walking tour guides, peripatetic
monster truckers, wayward window displayers, hand-me-down postcard makers,
failed theme park conceivers, bad news bumper sticker makers, and all ye who
just have their doubts about the tourist economy....

Cultural tourism has been heralded as the saving grace of post-manufacturing
towns, but what exactly are people touring? What is worth seeing and what
isn't? Why would one travel three hours to feast ones eyes? What role do
artists have in these efforts and what roles are boring? "What," asks the
Detourism Center, "is interesting about touring?" And maybe even more
importantly, who wins, who loses, who is worth looking at and who isn't? The
Detourism Center is unorthodox in that it isn't interested in booming
economies or pragmatic functionality. It won't get you from here to there
and it won't necessarily find you the best vacation package. From field
guides for divining water to alternative maps for finding love in North
Adams, the Detourism Center is almost mystical in its anti-intuitive,
pro-meander methodologies.

The Contemporary Artists Center is a small humble non-profit located in the
foothills of the Northern Berkshire Valley in Western, Massachusetts. Just a
stones throw from MASS MoCA, this benevolent art space and artist residency
consistently produces great low budget exhibitions that at this point are
contributing to the expansion of radical and formal history. Be a part!

Send proposals to:

The Contemporary Artists Center
189 Beaver Street
North Adams, MA 01247

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Rhizome Member-curated Exhibits

http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/

View online exhibits Rhizome members have curated from works in the ArtBase,
or learn how to create your own exhibit.

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4.

Date: 3.17.05
From: M. Takeo Magruder <m AT takeo.org>
Subject: NET:REALITY (call for proposals)

Net:Reality - A UK national touring exhibition of New Media artworks which
simultaneously exist within networked and physical space.

Background:

20-21 is a contemporary visual arts centre, situated in Scunthorpe, North
Lincolnshire. The centre comprises a former church built in the 1890s which
has been extended on its south side to provide a café, retail area,
education room and IT suite. The nave and chancel of the former church are
now the main gallery. The centre opened in May 2001 and since this time,
20-21 has developed a reputation for producing high quality touring
exhibitions.

Q Arts is a leading visual and digital arts development organisation based
in Derby, with a core aim to create an innovative, challenging and socially
engaged programme. Q Arts exhibits contemporary art, media, digital and
lens-based work, seeking to promote and develop emerging fields of practice.
The organisation also engages with new and existing audiences through a core
integrated education, interpretation and commissioning programme.

In January of this year, these organisations secured funding from Arts
Council England to develop a touring exhibition encompassing Internet and
New Media work in conjunction with artist, Michael Takeo Magruder.

Concept:

Indicative of the advance of ubiquitous computing, technology is currently
undergoing an evolutionary shift away from a personal experience towards an
omnipresent framework, where design and form are increasingly characterised
by device convergence and seamless integration into mainstream surroundings
and situations.

Parallel to this development, there is an expanding group of New Media
practitioners who are concerned with blending elements from networked and
physical worlds, in order to reflect upon the perceived â??voidâ?? between
the relational spaces of the data-driven Internet and the organic, physical
presence and interaction of the viewer. Through the creation of mixed
reality constructions, such artists are addressing the nature of the
amorphous connections that bridge these disparate entities rather than their
points of origin.

It is the examination of the â??dotâ?? within net.art.

[excerpt from working text, Jessica Loseby and Michael Takeo Magruder, 2003]

Exhibition:

Net:Reality will exist in two distinct and interconnected strands; an
exhibition of New Media artworks for the physical gallery space and a live
online exhibition of Internet art. The physical and online formats of the
work within the exhibition will be intrinsically linked and will reference
one another in a variety of ways. There be a catalogue and CD Rom to
accompany the physical touring exhibition and documentation of the
Internet-based exhibition of the work will remain online for a minimum of
three years.

Rather than having a â??themeâ?? for the works, the media itself will unite
the pieces within the exhibition. At present five participants have been
selected; Glorious Ninth [Kate Southworth and Patrick Simons], Neil Jenkins,
Jessica Loseby, Michael Takeo Magruder and Michael Szpakowski.

The exhibition will commence at 20-21 on Saturday 23 July 2005 and will run
until Saturday 29 October 2005. It will then travel to Q-Arts [Derby],
Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery and other venues in the UK.

Eligibility:

We are currently seeking a further two artists/artist groups to participate
in this exhibition. Applicants must reside in the UK and demonstrate a high
standard of practice in both Internet and physical space settings.
Submissions from â??emergingâ?? practitioners are encouraged.

Call for Artwork Proposals:

As the media itself is the unifying theme for the exhibition, proposed works
may address any conceptual or aesthetic concerns. The artwork must be
accessible both physically in a gallery environment and remotely via the
Internet. These components of the artwork must be intrinsically linked, in
which one element cannot exist without the other.

The physical form of the proposed artwork must be:
- modular/adaptable to generic gallery space.
- constructed with professional, high quality equipment and materials.
- robust and sustainable for the duration of the tour (min. 1 year - max. 2
years).
- compliant with all UK health and safety requirements.
- able to be set-up/maintained by gallery staff without the artist being
present.
- able to function on a shared, standard broadband connection (e.g. no
static IP addresses and bandwidth must be shared with other artworks).
- equipped with both G band wireless and 10/100 wired network facilities
which can be used to connect to a host router/server for Internet access.

The Internet form for the artworks must:
- be cross platform (Windows 98/2000/XP and Mac 0S9/X).
- be cross browser (IE, Firefox, etc.).
- utilise free, easily installed plug-ins which are cross platform/browser.

Commissioning Fee:

The budget for each commission is £2,000, and must include:
- artist fee
- all materials and equipment for the artwork (including any consumable
items)
-the delivery and set-up of the artwork at 20-21
- resolving major breakdowns or technical problems with the artwork during
the exhibition tour

Submissions:

All applications must include:
- Artwork Proposal
- CV/Bio/Artist Statement
- Supporting Visual/Sonic Materials

Proposals must be submitted via email to Michael Takeo Magruder (m AT takeo.org
or mtakeomagruder AT yahoo.com). Please send all writing as Word or plain/rich
text attachments and supporting visual/sonic material as low-bandwidth
attachments or URL links. For submission materials which cannot be sent
electronically, please request posting instructions via email.

The deadline for submissions is 10/04/2005, all material received after this
date will not be considered.

Timescale:

10/04/2005 Deadline for submissions
25/04/2005 Notification of successful applicants
11/07/2005 Delivery and installation of commissions (ending 18/07/2005)
23/07/2005 Exhibition opens at 20-21
12/11/2005 Exhibition opens at Q Arts

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5.

Date: 3.17.05
From: Francis Hwang <francis AT rhizome.org>
Subject: Rhizome.org seeks software consultant

Rhizome.org, a non-profit organization serving the new media arts
community, is seeking a software consultant. The consultant will work
closely with the Director of Technology on a number of projects, from
building new community features, optimizing the existing system, or
extracting open source libraries out of the existing codebase.

Rhizome.org is a highly trafficked community website with thousands of
registered users and more than 1 million hits a month. Although the
site uses a combination of Ruby, PHP, and Perl, almost all new
development is done in Ruby. However, experience with specific
languages is less important than an interest in object-oriented design
patterns, agile methodologies, and test-first programming. Apple and
Unix snobs highly encouraged to apply.

This is a highly flexible part-time gig; we understand how consulting
work goes, and will work to accommodate scheduling quirks, whether
that's one week off to work at an ad agency in midtown, or one week off
to tour eastern Europe with the other members of your robot music
collective. However, please note that we require candidates to be in
the New York area, since much of the work--though not all of it--will
be on-site in our Manhattan office.

Rhizome.org is among the oldest and most well respected organizations
in the field of new media art. For more information about the
organization and our programs, please check out our web site:
http://rhizome.org.

To apply, please email your detailed cover letter and resume (in PDF,
if possible) to Francis Hwang at francis AT rhizome.org.

Francis Hwang
Director of Technology
Rhizome.org
phone: 212-219-1288x202
AIM: francisrhizome

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6.

Date: 3.18.05
From: matthew fuller <fuller AT xs4all.nl>
Subject: DIGITAL FINE ART POST LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY ART POSTS IN
DIGITAL FINE ART - Ref: A442

ART PRACTICE AND CURATORSHIP - Ref: A443

Art seeks to appoint two ambitious colleagues to join our distinctive
unit, committed to an integration of practice and history/theory. Art
is part of the newly formed Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary
Arts, a merging and major development of the departments of Art, Music
and Theatre Studies. The persons appointed to the posts (that may be
at lecturer, senior lecturer, or professorial level) will be expected to
make significant contributions to the Institute's vibrant research
culture, as well as enhance the excellence of our teaching and
learning. Art is currently ranked third and fourth in The Guardian and
The Times league tables.

For both posts we are looking for:

· individuals who have demonstrable potential to make their mark
in their chosen field. Candidates will have a proven record of
distinction in research or be on the way to acquiring one. Either way,
you must be capable of contributing fully to the profile of a leading
research-led university.

· Teachers who are intellectually committed, stimulating and hard
working. The unit is a relatively small and friendly one that values
highly its caring and supportive relationship with the students.

· Individuals with the initiative and resilience to respond to
the opportunities and challenges offered by both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary change.

The posts take effect from 1 September 2005.

The closing date for applications is 30 March 2005. Interviews will be
held in the week beginning 18th April 2005.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to the Head of Art, Professor Nigel
Whiteley (email: n.whiteley AT lancaster.ac.uk).

Further Details

These notes are intended to provide a succinct overview for persons
interested in applying for the posts in Art. Additional information
about our identity, degree schemes, courses, research and staff profiles
can be found on our website at:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/art

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7.

Date: 3.18.05
From: Julian Bleecker <julian AT techkwondo.com>
Subject: ISEA 2006 INTERACTIVE CITY CFP

ISEA 2006
Interactive City
San Jose, California, USA
1-14 August 2006

EARLY CALL DUE: 22 April 2005

ISEA INTERACTIVE CITY CFP: http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ISEA2006/


GENERAL INFO ABOUT ISEA 2006: http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/

ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art) is a large, international,
two week long, conference and festival situated at the critical intersection
of art and technology (see http://www.isea2004.net for last year's festival
details). In August 2006 the 13th ISEA will be held in San Jose,
California. ISEA spans a broad range of work from critical theory and
application papers, interactive demonstrations, videos, installations,
performances, and emerging music to name a few. In 2006 ISEA will feature
four themes: Interactive City, Community Domain, Transvergence, and Pacific
Rim. Each theme will of course manifest itself at ISEA in the form of
papers, demos, performances, etc. Each of these topics will also feature a
2 day event immediately preceding ISEA to further focus the topic and go
into more critical depth. This announcement is for the early call for
proposals within the scope of the Interactive City.

The city has always been a site of transformation: of lives, of populations,
even of civilizations. With the rise of the mega city, however; with the
advent of 24/7 rush hours; with the inexorable conversion of public space
into commercial space; with the rise of surveillance; with the
computer-assisted precision of redlining; with the viral advance of the
xenophobic, the contemporary city is weighted down. We dream of something
more. Not something planned and canned, like another confectionary
spectacle. Something that can respond to our dreams. Something that will
transform with us, not just perform change on us, like an operation.

The Interactive City seeks urban-scale projects for which the city is not
merely a palimpsest of our desires but an active participant in their
formation. From dynamic architectural skins to composite sky portraits to
walking in someone else's shoes to geocaches of urban lore to hybrid games
with a global audience, projects for the Interactive City should transform
the "new" technologies of mobile and pervasive computing, ubiquitous
networks, and locative media into experiences that matter.

We are initiating an early Call for Proposals that manifest but are not
limited to the spectrum of ideas below. Interactive City proposals should
embrace aspects of the city of San José and/or the surrounding metropolitan
San Francisco Bay Area specifically.  We are seeking projects that are
large
in scale, require advanced or special planning and/or permissions, or
projects seeking early review.

Let us experience your vision of the Interactive City!

MORE INFO: http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ISEA2006/

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Rhizome ArtBase Exhibitions

http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/

Visit the third ArtBase Exhibition "Raiders of the Lost ArtBase," curated by
Michael Connor of FACT and designed by scroll guru Dragan Espenschied.

http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/raiders/

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8.

Date: 3.15.05
From: Marius Watz <marius AT unlekker.net>
Subject: Project: Universal Digest Machine

-- Marius Watz: Universal Digest Machine
-- 7.2 - 31.4, Solvberget Kunstforening, Stavanger
-- Part of the exhibition "My Language"
-- http://spider.unlekker.net


A trip through the hyperuniverse of the World Wide Web on full autopilot:
The Universal Digest Machine is an installation featuring a web spider that
crawls the net, digesting web pages and outputting a brief analysis of their
contents. The display unit is an industrial thermal printer mounted on a
plinth. For every page visited by the spider, a receipt is printed, falling
on the floor unless taken by a visitor. The receipts become a sprawling heap
of intriguing but ultimately incomprehensible artifacts, obviously
representing information but no longer in a human-readable form.

Internet space is much like the physical universe - greater than any single
person could comprehend or personally navigate. Since the spider is
indiscriminate about the links it follows, it ends up in places most human
users would never reach. As it does so it reveals a Terra Incognita of
obscure web sites, giving equal space to Microsoft white papers, Disney
collectibles and scat fetishism. Just as antique maps would be marked with
dragons and fantastic monsters where the cartographers' knowledge of the
world ended, there may well be terrible and wonderful things lurking on the
web just outside of reach.


-- The project can be seen online:
-- http://spider.unlekker.net


Marius Watz
http://www.unlekker.net/

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9.

Date: 3.17.05
From: rick silva <rick AT cuechamp.com>
Subject: working title

friends, enemies, friends of friends, and enemies of enemies,

new project up online / quicktime and sound up:

http://www.cuechamp.com/working_title.htm


werd,

rick

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10.

Date: 3.17.05
From: Jon Ippolito <jippolito AT guggenheim.org>
Subject: Re: Internet2: Orchestrating the End of the Internet?

Thanks for this thoughtful response, Phil. It's hard for me to disagree with
someone who is so plugged into Internet2--and says such nice things about
me. But I'll do my best, with the help of Google and the EFF's Seth Schoen.

> (1) the broadcast flag only applies to over-the-air broadcasts (not
>cable, satellite, or internet streaming

That's basically true--although Seth tells me the jury is still out on
whether the flag applies to cable. In any case, Hollywood didn't need to
lobby for a broadcast flag on cable or satellite broadcasts because those
providers already can (and generally do) slap on even stricter DRM. The FCC
approved this stricter form of exclusion--with minor limitations--in their
recent "Plug and Play" proceeding.

http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/FCC_PnP_Ruling.pdf

> (2) [the broadcast flag] will not prevent
>copying for fair use. For example, you will still be able to record
>over-the-air broadcast TV shows at home for later use.

Yes, if you use software or hardware that meets Hollywood's specification.
While in theory such a device might let consumers do everything they're
legally allowed to do, in reality the MPAA has no incentive to encourage
devices that let consumers do something Hollywood won't profit by. Jack
Valenti isn't really interested in letting you freely record digital TV with
your current DVD burner, email a clip from a President's press conference to
your mom, or create a high-definition video installation based on an archive
of short TV clips.

http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000148.html
http://www.digitalconsumer.org/bcastflag/info.html
http://www.artnewsonline.com/currentarticle.cfm?type=feature&art_id=1226

To be sure, Jack doesn't have the direct authority to approve or disallow
new PC tuner cards and DVD players. But before the broadcast flag, Hollywood
had no recognized legal interest in appealing an FCC decision. Now that
there's an FCC ruling designed specifically to protect their own interests,
the movie studios are hiring expensive lawyers to do just that.

In the short term, some consumers may not notice the immediate effects of
the flag. (Though I'm guessing Johnny Consumer will be ticked off when he
learns that the $500 video player he bought in 2005 won't play a recording
Aunt Betty made with a DTV receiver she bought in 2006.) More important for
the long run, however, will be the flag's effect on innovation in video
software and hardware. To build a legal device to interoperate with the
broadcast flag will require it to be "untamperable." That rules out any
technological innovation that requires tinkering or experimenting with an
existing apparatus. In particular, it rules out open source software such as
GNU Radio, because open source projects *require* others to be able to
tinker with them. Do we really need another market where open source
developers are told they can't compete because it would it would wreck the
business plans of entrenched commercial interests?

http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000148.html
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3065992

While analog recording devices are not constrained by the broadcast flag,
the MPAA has been trying other schemes to "plug the analog hole." A
particularly ludicrous proposal, documented in the MPAA's "Content
Protection Status Report" filed in the US Senate in 2002 and echoed by two
TV execs at last week's DVB World, calls for embedding anti-copy chips into
every analog-to-digital converter manufactured. As you probably know better
than I, those wee little converters are everywhere--in digital scanners and
camcorders, but also in thermometers, seismographs, computer mice, mobile
phones, and light-meters. That Hollywood would presume to constrain
technological development in everything from health care to scientific
research testifies to its fanatic obsession with controlling technologies
that are incompatible with its business model.

http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html

>The broadcast flag system *will* prevent large scale redistribution,
>i.e. massive piracy.

But will it? Many observers have noted that the broadcast flag's DRM has all
the toughness of a wet paper bag. It's just unencrypted bits in a stream,
and the spec is publicly and lawfully accessible. The MPAA even sidestepped
the question of effectiveness in their official FAQ. The ease with which it
can be subverted makes me worry that its introduction will spur illegal
reuses of digital TV while locking out legal ones.

http://www.mpaa.org/Press/Broadcast_Flag_QA.htm

By the way, you don't need to be a Bram Cohen to get around this DRM. Sure,
you won't find a flag-free player manufactured after this July. But if
you're keen on committing massive copyright infringement, just plunk down
$150 for a tuner card before the deadline. Then you can spew pirated Alias
episodes afterward to your heart's content.

>The ability to quickly create improvised collaborative groups was
>recognized as being among the highest application priorities in the
>earliest pre-planning of Internet2. Application level efforts such
>as the Internet2 Commons, VRVS, and indeed the very Access Grid
>technology that MARCEL depends on, are some of the fruit of this
>early vision.

I'm glad to hear you think there's plenty of room on Internet2 for pickup
collaborations outside of the broadcast model. Knowing you, you've probably
participated in some interesting events on Internet2. So forgive me if the
consortium's public face--which I've seen in Ann Doyle's presentations and
Internet2 Web sites--doesn't reinforce the vision of open and improvisatory
collaboration described above. Some of the networked performances I've seen
associated with Internet2 sound innovative, but they take for granted a
clear distinction between performers and audience. Likewise, I want to be
part of the Internet2 Commons--but not if I have to shell out a couple grand
to join it. And an Open Student Network is a great idea, but not if the end
result is a television channel for Connie Chungs-in-training.

But as you suggest, much of the problem may lie with the choreographers
rather than with the engineers. Perhaps if MARCEL and Internet2 folks
brainstormed together, they might come up with less hierarchic models of
high-bandwidth culture.

>Router level digital rights
>management is not being considered by any of the internet standards
>bodies. It's not even over the horizon.

That's good to hear, and you're in a much better position than I to know
what Internet2 chieftains are contemplating. I suppose my concern is less
with what Internet2 is now than with what it could easily become if the MPAA
starts getting its claws into it.

You see, I don't know how to square your reassurances with the comments by
MPAA and Internet2 VPs in the News.com story I posted earlier. When Chris
Russell talks about working with Internet2 to "manage illegitimate content,"
how is he going to do that without sniffers inside the network that tell him
what's being traded or who fed it into Internet2?

Today, you and I can plug off-the-shelf PowerBooks into Ethernet cables at
our university offices and communicate via Internet2 without Hollywood's
blessing. I was optimistic that this privilege might someday belong to a
much wider cross-section of people. But now the pessimist in me is thinking
that even spoiled academics like us may be denied that freedom if the MPAA
gets its way. As the folks at Public Knowledge commented in regard to the
FCC's "Plug and Play" proceeding:

"One of the key issues in this proceeding is the extent to which content
companies and content-delivery services can leverage the Commission's goals
of promoting digital television, cable compatibility, and competition in the
navigation-device market into sweeping regulations whose principal effect is
not to serve these goals, or even to prevent piracy of digital television.
Instead, the real purpose of these proposals is to restore to content
companies, to the extent possible, the degree of control over video they
exercised prior to the invention of the videocassette recorder."

http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/plugandplay

I hope that folks like you with some influence in the consortium will take
this threat seriously enough to be mindful of it. Thanks for helping to air
this debate in public.

>And I personally look forward to working further with both!

I'd love to start a working group on Internet2/Access Grid devoted to
questions of access and control. As long as admission is free :)

jon

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