[-empyre-] Response to Anna: Nick Knouf, MAICgregator

[Anna Munster]

Yes MAICgregator is a great example of how the question of finance totally subtends all kinds of relations across the net, especially pedagogical/knowledge ones! I also think this work was way ahead of the game in that it perhaps signalled how an activism might arise around ‘outing’ all kinds of knowledge-based institutions’ ‘investments’ in dirty monies. Recently this has upscaled to demands that universities and colleges divest from dirty financial networks.

If Nick’s around I’d love to hear from him about where he’s going with the finance-knowledge-network relationship and why he deactivated MAICgregator…is finance too touchy a subject for art?

cheers
Anna

Anna Munster
Associate Professor,
Faculty of Art and Design
UNSW
P.O Box 259
Paddington
NSW 2021
Australia
a.munster at unsw.edu.au
http://sensesofperception.info 


> On 15 Sep 2016, at 7:52 AM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thanks so much for joining us, Anna, and for focusing our attention on net.art focusing on the finances of the web.  While not directly in with Heath Bunting's piece, which I'm very pleased to see recalled, you have me thinking fondly of Nick Knouf's MAICgregator (http://maicgregator.org) that is a Firefox extension that aggregated information about the embeddedness of colleges and universities (I seem to recall that he focused on US institutions) in the military-academic-industrial contex. The software provided an overlay on university homepages of the data culled from government funding databases and news sources, etc., as well as information about university trustees.
> 
> I recall Nick's being aggressed quite harshly by one of my colleagues for the "terrorism" of his project (whose aim was to reveal the disguistes of terrorism of a different sort).  I'm hoping that Nick will see this post and perhaps comment in more detail on this fascinating and innovative piece (which seems to be no longer active).   I seem to recall that Anna might have written something about this piece in her last book as well?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
> Timothy Murray
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> Taylor Family Director, Society for the Humanities
> http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art 
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
> A D White House
> Cornell University,
> Ithaca, New York 14853
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu