[-empyre-] can we avoid the corporate pyramid scheme model: independents

[xDxD.vs.xDxD]

hello


> In the EU at least (where ISEA HQ is as I understand it) it is implicitly
> understood as minimum that a contributor's airfare and accommodation are
> covered. Very large festivals I've shown work in around the world do this:
> Japan Media Arts Festival, FILE (Brazil), Transmediale (Germany), Ars
> Electronica (Austria) not to mention a few dozen smaller festivals I've
> shown
> at over the years. Many even pay a fee on top.
>
> Why? Perhaps they understand that a rigorous, diverse electronic arts scene
> greatly benefits from makers and thinkers being able to share and
> demonstrate
> their work.
>


very important theme.
workshops and activities going beyond the presentation of results, providing
tools and methodologies should really be financially supported. Independents
often work outside institutions (or diagonally across them) and thus cannot
benefit from the backing coming from them, and yet they provide an
incredible value. Or, as it happens more and more, even people in
institutions start having difficulties finding money to offer workshops and
to show work. I bring myself as an one example among many of us: in our
faculty in Rome they performed an incredible amount of cuts this year and at
the beginning of september I was faced with the impossibility of attending
two meetings in Finland for which arrangements had already been made. The
generous support offered by the Designs on E-Learning conference in Helsinki
will allow me to go there and perform a workshop in which people will be
able to use a new computer vision technology to create innovative ubiquitous
learning environments, and they will be able to bring it back home to use it
on their projects. This is a great value, as it is in all the cases in which
people are supported to bring their research with them and facilitate other
people to gain knowledge and to use new tools.

I would like to stress again a very successful model we are experimenting
here in Italy: in our workshops (for example the Read/Write Reality workshop
on ubiquitous publishing we held in the south of italy right before ISEA)
people could benefit from the "social room": a limited number of attendees
have been granted with full financial support in exchange for services
offered to the workshop, ranging from audio/video documentation, tutoring
support for participants, articles and communication, volunteering
activities of various kinds, and specific workshop sessions leveraging their
skills and personal researches.

This is both a way to support people and to give value to their researches,
and also to create a feeling of doing things together, of feeling part of an
etherogeneous, international community sharing ethics and a plan.

best,
Salvatore

---
Salvatore Iaconesi
prof. Cross Media Design
University of Rome "La Sapienza"
Faculty of Architecture
Dept. of Industrial Design

salvatore.iaconesi at artisopensource.net
xdxd.vs.xdxd at gmail.com
salvatore at fakepress.net

skype: xdxdVSxdxd
---
Art is Open Source
http://www.artisopensource.net

---
FakePress
http://www.fakepress.it
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