The Peer Preview group is a working group dedicated to the advancement of research by preeviewing research outline papers and chapter drafts in an early stadium.
The JSTOR Case - US Government v Aaron Swartz
Although we have thus far discussed P2P file-sharing in terms of its most representative instances, that is, the exchange of materials drawn from popular culture, other artefact classes are also swapped, from pornography to ‘serious’ publications. Sometimes genre-specific events can bring into focus larger issues arising from cultural commodification, public domain contraction, and resultant counter actions and movements. For example, recently American digital activist Aaron Swartz allegedly downloaded a massive number of papers from the JSTOR academic database. Subsequently the United States Government brought unprecedented charges against him, claiming that he planned to release the material through P2P networks. This case demonstrates how even the spectre of unsubstantiated file-sharing can trigger disordering responses across informational domains (academia, publishing, policing, justice), some of which which might be more rooted in emotions (anger, fear, revenge, spite, etc.) than in pragmatic circumspection.
Art as Visual Research (Lecture notes)
This text is written in preparation for two upcoming talks and highlights a few aspects of my PhD thesis-in-progress "Automation, Cybernation and the Art of New Tendencies (1961-1973)". New Tendencies were one of the first postwar movements in art to focus on visual research as a way of redefining the role of art in society.
Reading the Digital City: New political technologies in the Network Society (revised version)
This article examines the 'digital city' debate of the mid 1990s as a point of departure for a media-historical questioning of how technology and the discourse about technology were used as an experimental playground for new forms of knowledge that are fundamental for the understanding of today’s network society. This text has been presented as a conference paper at the 'networks and sustainability' track of the 'textiles' conference in Riga in June 2010. The paper will also appear in a special edition of the Arts and Communications Journal edited by RIXC at the end of 2010.
Notes on Bourdieu filtered by Robbins
Knowing well about the problematic of publishing notes, unfinished forms of writing, in a very early stage, I am publishing here an excerpt of thoughts that I had when reading up on Pierre Bourdieu's theories on art, filtered by a quite concise presentation by Derek Robbins.
Research Matrix: Technopolitics
Diagram: Research Matrix Technopolitics; the terms slightly deviate from the outline for reasons of length and readability
The Gap Between Now and Then - on the conservation of memory
Let’s play hide-and-seek with future generations. We hide. The seeker is not among us yet. He or she lives in another era, a time yet to come. We don’t know if he or she will be a finder. We are not even sure we want or need to be found. We might simply just jump from our lair one day, reveal ourselves, unexpectedly, to win the game.
Paradigm Changes in Media Art: Research Project Description (Abstract, long version)
This research investigates media art through practice based and theoretic research. At the centre of this investigation are seminal exhibitions in the history of media art as well as my own curatorial practice. The thesis proposes that paradigm shifts in media art and society are closely linked and that studying those paradigm shifts through the chosen exhibitions provides insights into the interlocking dynamics of art, technology and social change.
Reading the Digital City: New political technologies in the Network Society
At the beginning of the 1990s, the proclaimed crisis of the city marked a general crisis of governance: the discussion about the supposed “decline of cities” was characterised by a controversial debate about a possible loss of control. Paradoxically, all hopes have been pinned on those technologies that were held accountable for the dissolution of the urban space. That’s because, as in similar techno-utopias before, cyberspace was considered to be constructable and, therefore, controllable.
Diagram: Techno-economic and artistic paradigms in the 20th century
This diagram is rendered by graphviz using the dot language. It tries to reflect key elements of the dominant paradigms in the 20th century regarding accumulation regimes, developmental models, political constellations, scientific breakthroughs, artistic movements and social movements. The current version is still experimental and not very strict in its interpretation of the model, which means that the diagram is imperfect on one hand anyway, but also has deliberately avoided becoming too linear, i.e. certain new terms are brought in while others get dropped.
The Production of Creative Norms: The Integrative Process, Structural Forms and Culture
This text is a methodological outline linking categories of the Technopolitics research project with the PhD research project on "Moves in Media Art - Paradigm changes in art and technology". While mainly sketching out a work program for the coming months, the notion of "creative norms" is proposed here for the first time in an English text. It therefore would be nice to get some feedback on this.
London Street Art 1
Images taken in the area.
Part 1 of my Furtherfield case study chapter - Brit Art, Situationism, Fluxus...
This is Draft 2.5 of the first quarter of one of my 3 case study chapters, on the London-based Furtherfield art group.
Some weeks ago I posted a quarter of another of my case studies, the Hong Kong In-Media citizen journalism project.
It seems i can only work in quarter chapters - perhaps this is like semi-tones in music....
Casting a Net for Reflection
Belated notes après beach and back into real life, however I always wonder which one is madder (the juggler on a unicycle on a tightrope between two high rises must ask themselves, but where would I be if things were not so ordinary?)
Outline for a Book Chapter attached
Here is an outline of a chapter for my colleague Jon Marshall's book on It & Disorder. Like much of what I seem to be doing for uni stuff, I have clearly crammed way too many things into this chapter. probably i could reduce it by 2/3 and it could still make a good contribution to the book, which has otjer chapters on software and failure, IT and social movements, IT and financial disorder, and quite a lot of philosophy. anyway, armin's critique of my P2P text-in-progress reminded me about this other thing i am supposed to write this year, and i am thinking some of A's ideas could fit.
Sassen Interview
dear all,
as some of you may know, "world-information city" has been invited to paris at the beginning of the month (this was also scheduled in tnl-calender). there i had the chance to make an interview with saskia sassen which i wanted to share with you (s. attachment)...
a+ c
70% slow-cooked disorder
About 2 weeks ago it became horribly clear I was stalled on finishing my chapter on the Hong Kong case study. I had done 3/4 of it, but i had no ideas for the final section. Days of a blank screen.
So i eventually went to the library and borrowed some of those comforting books on how to write a thesis. many of them were quite dull, but one is great ..i had read it before but had forgotten some of the good, advice...title is "writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day" by joan bolker
Notes on "The Postmodern Condition, A Report on Knowledge"
The Postmodern Condition, A Report on Knowledge, by Francois Lyotard, first published in French in 1979, was not the first book to carry the word postmodern in its title, but probably one of the most influential ones in the long term, with both its warnings and sometimes its overly optimistic assumptions about the future of knowledge in a computerised society. Reading it now what is perplexing is the rather one-sided reception it has got. While Lyotard's critique of meta-narratives and the proposed switch to language games has characterised the postmodern debate, his ambiguity about the development of science and the university under the condition of neoliberalism appears to have been given much less consideration by his followers.
Notes on History and Class Consciousness
I found this book, History and Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs, London, Merlin Press 1971-1990, very enlightening, confirming my interest in Marx and consolidating the idea to inquire the possibility of working with dialectical materialism as a methodology for my PhD. Thus I have transcribed copious notes from this book, interspersed with a few notes to myself where further to look, in terms of the continuity of this type of thought, as well as its critique. Publishing those notes in this group may or may not be of value to anyone else, I do it nevertheless.
