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The Rise of the Network Commons, Chapter 1 (draft)

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The Rise of the Network Commons is the working title of a new book which I am currently writing. It returns to the topos of the wireless commons on which I worked during the early 2000s. In this new version, combining original research from my German book Freie Netze (2004) and new research conducted in the context of the EU funded project Confine, the exciting world of wireless community network projects such as Guifi.net and Freifunk, Berlin, gets interspersed with philosophical reflections on the relationship between technology, art, politics and history. This is the first draft of the first chapter. In the final version, texts may significantly change. Critique and comments are welcome. You can send your opinion either to me in email or ask me for an account to post comments here armin (a) easynet dot co dot uk.

The Broken Mirror - Art after the dreamworld of digital utopia

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Starting from the premise that the financial crisis of 2008 made only visible a deeper, structural crisis of information society, the exhibition Fields was conceived as a survey into possibilities of renewal through art. Art used to be understood as a mirror of society. Then, in the twentieth century, media became the preferred mirror of mass society. At the end of the 20th century, information superseded the media and was supposed to become the perfect mirror - the dreamworld of digital utopia. But this mirror is broken, as virtuality and the real have collapsed into an 'integral reality' (Baudrillard). Reality has lost its shadow, its capacity to dream, its underbelly of radical alternatives. As the world is urgently in need of a new social imaginary, the exhibition Fields is an articulation of that search. Fields is about an epistemic shift from subject-object relations within traditional, hierarchical ontologies towards new, networked, horizontal connections. While this slow, glacial transformation happens anyway with a degree of inevitability, we cannot awaken from the dreamworld of digital utopia soon enough. What can an art after information be like? How can we articulate artistic imaginations of a new society? How can we talk about it, categorise and develop such a vision as a more long term, infrastructural goal?

Press Release: FIELDS exhibition

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The exhibition "Fields - patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations" will open on May 15th at Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art. FIELDS, jointly curated by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and Armin Medosch will show work by app. 40 artists and is part of Riga 2014, European Capital of Culture. You find the full announcement and press release below.

Die Zukunft im Rückspiegel - von der Geschichtlichkeit der Kunst mit (neuen) Medien

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Braucht Medienkunst eine Geschichte? Ausgehend von der Konferenz Media Art Histories, Riga 2013, und einer Reihe von Interviews für die Sendung "Braucht Medienkunst eine Geschichte?", ORF Ö1, Radiokolleg, 27.-30.Januar 2014, wirft dieser Artikel einen inter-subjektiven und polyphonen Blick auf die Geschichtlichkeit von Kunst und Medien.

Technopolitics in a Nutshell: Commented Reading List on Key Categories

Wind energey in the East of Austria

This article presents in overview form some of the key categories of Technopolitics together with essential reading. Technopolitics is a project that has began as a collaboration between Brian Holmes and me on these pages in 2010. Since 2011 a Technopolitics working group exists in Vienna. There is a lot of additional material which you can find spread out over Thenextlayer, so I thought for newcomers its time to collect a few basic references.

A Canadian Story - Railways, Telephones, Satellites, an Interview with Robert Adrian X

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Robert Adrian X is one of the true pioneers of art as telecommunications. This file presents just a few random samples from an interview with him about the need for a history of media art. Bob mixes his thoughts about the meaning of communications with his memoirs about working those technologies from the late 1970s onwards. The beginnings were characterised by the specifically Canadian situation, a vast country that needed telecommunications to keep its ends together.

Contradictions of a Tiger Cub, Part I

Video sequence taken during recent Vietnam trip. What strikes me is the contradicition between Vietnam's apparent dynamism, allegedly having joined the club of fast growing economies as a 'tiger cub' - in reference to the other Asian 'tiger economies' such as Taiwan, South Korea or Thailand - while at the same time this catching up modernisation process starts from a very low level.

Check out this river view of a village between Can Tho and Cai Be, in the Mekong delta.

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