The Next Layer

The Next Layer is a collaborative environment combining open source, experimental and artistic research methodologies.

ONE LOVE: How FLOSS Can Make True All the Promises of the Avantgarde (yet would kill 'art' by doing so)

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Fri, 06/27/2008 - 15:41

In his essay All problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses, Simon Yuill claims that the emergent practice of livecoding 'most directly embodies the key principles of FLOSS production into the creation and experience of the work itself.' Unfortunately this claim is supportet by an argumentation which is elitist, draws on the criterium of virtuosity and thereby stands in stark contrast to the culture of particpation that FLOSS has engendered. While his central argument is not supported, the piece offers enough food for thought to be considered interesting reading.

Howto create structured research documents with 'Books' (revised)

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Thu, 06/26/2008 - 13:31

In the past few months TNL has gone through significant changes. Although many of those are not visible on the surface straight away, they constitute great improvements of the site. Key changes have been made especially in regard to this forum topic about books and bibliographic references.

Waves - material and medium of arts and communications

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 16:55

The exhibition "Waves" is part of a long term research project into analogue and electromagnetic waves. "Waves" uses the process of making an exhibition as a form of practice based research. This research journal entry starts with a new abstract regarding Waves related research, and then introduces the two exhibitions in Riga 2006 and Dortmund 2008. This should be shortly followed by a new summary of the research project. There is also a new waves image gallery and these efforts are all combined by the fact that they use the second Waves exhibition for taking stock of what came from this research so far.

DIY or die | Historical genealogy of the network society

Submitted by Clemens Apprich on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 08:53

Talking about as well as investigating networks has become the determining morphology of our society in recent years. Web 2.0 holds the promise of an essential change, in which the collective intelligence of the users becomes the central resource of individual and community life. Today the question seems to be whether the industrial society is in the middle of a transformation to something entirely new, which by theory is only indicated with the prefix "post". Thus, scientific research has trouble keeping pace with the rapid development of a nascent mode of life and production.

How not to upgrade your Drupal

Submitted by admin on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 08:52

Last monday the 26th of May I upgraded drupal from 5.3 to 6.2. This turned out to be a bad decision, as drupal 6.2 is not ready yet in many ways to host a site such as thenextlayer.org.

The decision to do an upgrade at all was motivated by security fears, as the version 5.3 which I was using was said not to be totally safe anymore although I am not so sure about this. I should have upgraded to 5.7 which is the latest version of version 5.x and has all the latest security patches (but no new functionality besides.