[-empyre-] Furtherfield: people and communities

[Ranulph Glanville]

I'm very glad this was a success.

Ranulph



On 19 Jul 2010, at 11:22, Ruth Catlow wrote:

> 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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