[-empyre-] networked_art & performance

[Anna Munster]

There's a lot in Johannes' post which I hope to come to by and by and I think Kazys will have much to say about considering his chapter is about the 'immediated'...
but just to throw something a little different in the mix as to the relation between 'network' and networked'. 

Unlike G.H. Hovagimyan, I take my academic inspiration for network thinking from Castells initially (rather than from Turkle). That's not the only place I take inspiration from but it was certainly a big 'text' for me years ago. What that text did f was to help me think about networks as not simply flows of information but flows that organise unevenly, that segment and aggregate the different kinds of materialities and immaterialities flowing: finance, data, aesthetics, bodies, socialities etc. Importantly Castells drew attention to the reorganisation of urban spaces and work via networks such that working life and living life fundamentally changed: labour flexibilisation and individualisation; new areas of urban aggregation around information 'campus' suburbs, outsourcing, call centres etc. This understanding of the rise of the 'network society' has always informed my thinking through of networked aesthetics.

But then, briefly, what do I mean by 'networked'? Keeping the work done previously by Castells in mind, 'networked' might mean: what has come to pass and how do we take this into account socially, economically, culturally in this 'post-network' understanding of an information society? ie we are now networked through and through, and so what are we going to do about it? How might we work in, with, against the broader vectors of information flows? what can a networked (elsewhere I have called this a distributed) aesthetics do and say about the unevenness and affective dimensions of these flows? Are other flows possible and what might they feel like?

Eduardo, any thoughts from you about the differences between networks and 'networked' and what the latter is doing in the Networked project title?

best
Anna