[-empyre-] Furtherfield: people and communities

[Ranulph Glanville]

Sorry: don't know how this message got sent to this address.

Of course, I'm still glad that everything that was a success was!

Ranulph



On 19 Jul 2010, at 12:45, Ranulph Glanville wrote:

> 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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