[-empyre-] Furtherfield: people and communities

Mon Jul 19 21:43:57 EST 2010

Hi Ruth

Thanks for such a detailed and succinct outline of Furtherfield's range of
inspiring activities.

I came across the following quote on the Furtherfield website:

"We are the medium - the context - the source of networked creativity"

I find this a fascinating statement, especially if we conflate Sean's
comment of last week on mediation and some of the discussion on agency.

Would you care to comment on how Furtherfield considers individual and
collective activities as the medium for networked creativity? This seems an
important concept that could shift the ontological debate...

Best

Simon

Simon Biggs
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk
Skype: simonbiggsuk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/
Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts

> From: Ruth Catlow <ruth.catlow at furtherfield.org>
> Reply-To: <ruth.catlow at furtherfield.org>, soft_skinned_space
> <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:22:53 +0100
> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Furtherfield: people and communities
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Thanks Simon for the introduction and the invitation to talk about
> Furtherfield. 
> 
> So here goes, casting my raft onto the white-water rapids of last week's
> discussion; )
> 
> We have been asked to discuss how creativity can enable people and
> communities through the examples of our own practices and activities. I
> am  really chuffed to be invited to talk about Furtherfield and will
> start with a disclaimer. Furtherfield is made up of many different
> people and voices so I should make it clear that I am speaking from my
> own perspective. Others have different experiences.
> 
> In our work with Furtherfield we believe that people are inspired and
> enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies
> through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and
> technology. This connects very strongly to the ideas of agency that were
> under discussion last week.
> 
> Marc Garrett and myself started Furtherfield 1996-7 and since then we
> have been working  with a community of artists, programmers, writers,
> curators and hackers (mixing up experts and beginners) from around the
> world. Together with this community we have developed a neighbourhood of
> platforms (online and offline) for creating, viewing, discussing and
> learning about practices at the intersections of art, technology and
> social change. Our approach has always reflected the DIY
> ethos that came from Marc's earlier work, social hacking with pirate
> radio, bulletin boards (BBS) and both of our work using the streets as a
> site for artistic intervention.
> 
> I would like to start by pointing to a number of artistic projects.
> First with a couple of online platforms and then in a couple of days I
> will highlight a number of gallery, publishing and community-based
> projects.
>         
> In addition to www.furtherfield.org which features reviews, artists'
> projects, interviews and articles, we run the Netbehaviour email list
> www.netbehaviour.org for sharing and actively evolving critical
> approaches, methods and ideas around contemporary networked media arts
> practice. Although our list is much less structured and more informal
> than Empyre it does generate rigorous debate; people post the things
> that inform their thinking and artmaking, they exchange and comment on
> their work and it is often used as a platform for collaborative work.
> 
> Most notably the list has hosted two iterations of DIWO (Do It With
> Others) E- Mail art projects which combine email exchanges (and
> therefore highspeed collaboration-with people and machines) with the
> traditional snailmail correspondence of Mail Art projects
> http://www.tinyurl.com/34so3kg ; the Ada Lovelace Day which gathered
> together a list of inspiring women working with art and technology
> http://www.furtherfield.org/ada_lovelace.php and catching my attention
> at the moment is Karen Blissett, a long running contributor who has just
> gone multiple by sharing her email password with people she trusts
> inviting them to speak and act as her http://tinyurl.com/395fyna . The
> people who contribute to this list are really fascinated by critical art
> that is enabled and inspired by digital networks.
> 
> Secondly I'd like to point you towards VisitorsStudio,
> http://www.visitorsstudio.org/x.html a platform for browser-based
> realtime collaborative audiovisual remix. Neil Jenkins (another core
> member of the team) created it with us in 2003 as a place where people
> could get their hands dirty and learn how to mix and remix media in a
> social space. It uses perl and server sockets to create the realtime
> interaction with a flash interface (we are working towards a FOSS
> alternative).
> Rather than trying to describe it I recommend that people who are
> interested log in and play.
> 
> This platform is used both playfully and purposefully. The Furthernoise
> crew http://furthernoise.org ran a whole series of internet radio
> programmes called 'Radio You Can Watch' that featured noise explorations
> accompanied by live mixes in VisitorsStudio with invited artists. It has
> also been used to develop collaborative art-polemic in performance
> marathons like DissensionConvention. Live mix performances can
> accommodate online heckling and be screened in public spaces to provoke
> discussion and general rowdiness.
> http://www.furtherfield.org/dissensionconvention/
> 
> A bit later in the week I would like to talk about how we have worked to
> engage different audiences at HTTP Gallery http://http.uk.net.
> 
> I will also introduce an ongoing project, that addresses art, technology
> and the environment, Zero Dollar Laptop that we are developing in
> partnership with Access Space as part of our Media Art Ecologies
> programme. http://www.furtherfield.org/zerodollarlaptop/
> 
> Look forward to making connections with conversations that have gone
> before. Also to reading about the work that Magnus is involved in.
> 
> cheers
> Ruth
> 
> 
> 
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