d-i-n-a events | metagallery | netcultures

NETCULTURES

NETCULTURES is a selection of texts that frame the projects invited at d-i-n-a's events, casting light over their context and the links between social change, public visibility, ownership in knowledge exchange, and the dynamics of information flows.


The Liar's Poker
by Brian Holmes
(2003)

" Basically, what I have to say here is simple: when people talk about politics in an artistic frame, they're lying. "


The GNU Project
by Richard Stallman
(1998)

"The idea that the proprietary-software social system--the system that says you are not allowed to share or change software--is antisocial, that it is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise to some readers. But what else could we say about a system based on dividing the public and keeping users helpless? Readers who find the idea surprising may have taken proprietary-software social system as given, or judged it on the terms suggested by proprietary software businesses. Software publishers have worked long and hard to convince people that there is only one way to look at the issue."

The Conquest of Cool
by Thomas Frank
(1997)

A exemplary excerpt from a book about the co-optation of US hip cultures in the business empire in the 60s. What kinds of tensions and bonds exist between counter-cultures and consumer cultures? What happens when alternative styles enter the business domain? Thomas Frank, a US journalist, gives some insight on "the genesis of counterculture as an enduring commercial myth" which recurs throughout post-sixties culture.
Digital resistance
by Critical Art Ensemble (2001)

"Digital resistance" - whose Introduction is translated and presented here - is a recent book by Critical Art Ensemble, a U.S. based collective of artists/thinkers which deeply influenced a whole scene of activists and artists working with digital technologies in the political and social arena.
Software art
by Florian Cramer e Ulrike Gabriel
(2001)

A text about the importance of code writing in the transformation of contemporary artistic practices. Jurors for the 2001 edition of the Transmediale festival, the authors are key figures of the Berlin media cultures.

The XYZ of Net Activism
by Luther Blissett
(1999)

"Hybridisation is not about just connecting the virtual and the "street". We risk to remain rhetoric and predictable on both the fronts. We have to hybridize and to contaminate the forms of pop culture to create pop modules for activism."
A post-media aesthetics
by Lev Manovich
(2000)

On how digital communications technologies ultimately question the traditional categories of medium-based art and mass vs. high culture. In Manovich's view, data processing is the key factor of a radically new way of approaching creation, not only in the field of computer science.
Manovich teaches at the University of California San Diego.
Game Patch - Son of scratch?
by Erkki Huhtamo
(1999)

An early text about videogames modifications, drawing a revealing connection between the creation of alternative videogames patches and the 80s phenomenon of scratch video, both seen as an autonomous and "tactical way of (mis)using popular media. Huhtamo is a professor at US and Finnish univerisities.

Fast, Cheap and out of control
by Timothy Druckrey (2002)


The fake persuaders
by George Monbiot (2002)

A real account of how information can be used as a virus and who is playing with it (in this case in the biotech debate).
George Monbiot is an investigative journalist from the UK newspaper The Guardian.


Transfiguration of the Avant-Garde / The Negative Dialectics of the Net
by Eric Kluitenberg
(2001)

An approach to classical "net.art" as new and innovative examples of cross-over between defunct art avant-garde and media experimentation.
Eric Kluitemberg teaches at the University of Amsterdam and is director of activities at the new media center De Balie (Amsterdam).

 




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