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Table of Contents:
automatism
m e t a <meta@meta.am>
university teaching jobs (new media) in amsterdam
geert lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>
periodic notice, etc. - alan
Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Turning the Tide: New issue out now Vol 14 No. 4 Winter 2001-02 [a]
Michael Novick <part2001@usa.net>
NEW BOOK: politics of a digital present
Ned Rossiter <Ned.Rossiter@arts.monash.edu.au>
"Your Favourite London Sounds"
David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 01:29:55 -0800
From: m e t a <meta@meta.am>
Subject: automatism
>there is no automatism in communication that creates sense
1 a : the quality or state of being automatic
b : an automatic action
2 : the power or fact of moving or functioning without conscious control
either independently of external stimuli (as in the beating of the heart)
or under the influence of external stimuli (as in pupil dilation)
3 : a theory that views the body as a machine and consciousness
as a noncontrolling adjunct of the body
4 : suspension of the conscious mind to release subconscious images
<automatism --the surrealist trend toward spontaneity and intuition -- Elle>
2 much control gets in the way not automatic not reflexive consider
a program or a patch or a complex 2 complex for reflex can't express
or not outward or a true representation of inner not feeling not
perhaps a state of mind or a state of being too much programmatic control
far too many intermediate steps and menus and too many intermediaries
inhibits a certain reaction too much voilition concious thought
and control self analysis and second guessing the media the means of
expression not immediate enough the software never became second nature
always an upgrade or an update rendered obsolete before a true symbiotic
quality emerges theory or emergent behavior a suspension of the concious
mind is exactly what is needed in this over mediated environment
these ultra-programmatic mindsets and environments for the creation of
sound and image quite nice yet only engaging one aspect of ourselves and the
power or fact of moving or functioning without concious control either
independently of external stimuli (as in the beating of the heart) or under the
influence of external stimuli (as in pupil dilation) remains elusive unknown
forgotten not unlike yet another email archived forever via google so ciao.
//m
127.0.0.1
http://meta.am/
216.71.65.73
/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 21:57:42 +1100
From: geert lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>
Subject: university teaching jobs (new media) in amsterdam
The Faculty of the Humanities at the UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM offers BA and
MA programs in Media and Culture; starting September 2002, the three-year
Bachelors curriculum will include a range of introductor courses in theory
and practice of media, as well as more specialized courses in film,
television, and new media. The MA program offers advanced degrees in one of
three areas: Film and Visual Culture, Television and Popular Culture, and
New Media and Digital Culture. In addition, the department offers a
professional masters program in Journalism and Media, and plans another
professional MA in Preservation and Presentation of Film. More than 300
students per year enroll in the BA Media and Culture program; we expect
between 100-150 students to enter the various MA programs.
The program in Media and Culture has the following openings for tenure track
positions:
Assistant Professor of Film Studies (f/m); full-time; vacancy-code 9122
Assistant Professor of Television Studies (f/m); full-time; vacancy-code
9123
Assistant Professor of New Media studies (f/m); full-time; vacancy-code 9121
Associate Professor of New Media Studies (f/m); full-time; vacancy-code 9120
APPOINTMENT
The appointment will be for 2 years with the prospect of tenure. It will be
a full-time (38 hours) appointment at the Faculty of Humanities of the
Universiteit van Amsterdam. The gross full-time monthly salary for the
Assistant Professor ranges from Dfl. 4.496,-- (EUR2.040,20) to Dfl. 9.456,-
(EUR4.290,95) (pre-tax monthly salary for a full-time appointment). The
gross full-time monthly salary for the Associate Professor ranges from Dfl.
8.420,-- (EUR3.820,83) to Dfl. 11.269,-- (EUR5.113,65) (pre-tax monthly
salary for a full-time appointment).
INFORMATION
For more information, please contact Prof. Dr. Jose van Dijck, phone (31)
020-525 2980, e-mail j.van.dijck@hum.uva.nl
APPLICATIONS
Applications before January 4th 2002 (indicating the vacancy code and marked
"strictly confidential" on envelope; including resume, list of publications)
to the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen,
afdeling Personeel & Organisatie, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 17:27:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: periodic notice, etc. - alan
(last one of these sent out in September)
Internet Philosophy and Psychology - -05/01/02
My recent work has been dealing with sexuality, terror, death, windows
onto worlds, the confluence of subtropical nature with subsumption neural
architectures.
In Miami, my job has been terminated, the new media line cancelled, the
track itself eliminated. I contain my frustration, writing under the sign
of the repressed.
Below is the usual intro:
This is a somewhat periodic notice describing my Internet Text, available
on the Net, and sent in the form of texts to various lists. The URL is:
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ which is partially mirrored at
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html. (The first
site includes some graphics, dhtml, The Case of the Real, etc.)
The changing nature of the email lists, Cybermind and Wryting, to which
the texts are sent individually, hides the full body of the work; readers
may not be aware of the continuity among them. The writing may appear
fragmented, created piecemeal, splintered from a non-existent whole. On my
end, the whole is evident, the texts extended into the lists, partial or
transitional objects.
So this (periodic) notice is an attempt to recuperate the work as total-
ity, restrain its diaphanous existence. Below is an updated introduction.
- -----
The "Internet Text" currently constitutes around 100 files, or 5000 print-
ed pages. It began in 1994, and has continued as an extended meditation on
cyberspace, expanding into 'wild theory' and literatures.
Almost all of the text is in the form of short- or long-waves. The former
are the individual sections, written in a variety of styles, at times
referencing other writers/theorists. The sections are interrelated; on
occasion emanations are used, avatars of philosophical or psychological
import. These also create and problematize narrative substructures within
the work as a whole. Such are Susan Graham, Julu, Alan, Jennifer, Azure,
and Nikuko in particular.
The long-waves are fuzzy thematics bearing on such issues as death, sex,
virtual embodiment, the "granularity of the real," physical reality, com-
puter languages, and protocols. The waves weave throughout the text; the
resulting splits and convergences owe something to phenomenology, program-
ming, deconstruction, linguistics, philosophy and prehistory, as well as
the domains of online worlds in relation to everyday realities.
Overall, I'm concerned with virtual-real subjectivity and its manifesta-
tions. I continue working on a cdrom of the last eight years of my work
(Archive); I also additional video materials, created with Azure Carter
and Foofwa d'Imobilite, on two cdroms, Baal and Parables. I've worked on a
series of codeworks and political pieces, as well as Asteroids, a group of
videos based on 3d modeling of spatial objects and fly-byes. Finally, I've
recently completed two cdrom collections of materials, Miami and Voyage.
I have used MUDS, MOOS, talkers, perl, d/html, qbasic, linux, emacs, vi,
CuSeeMe, etc., my work tending towards embodied writing, texts which act
and engage beyond traditional reading practices. Some of these emerge out
of performative language - soft-tech such as computer programs which _do_
things; some emerge out of interferences with these programs, or conversa-
tions using internet applications that are activated one way or another.
And some of the work stems from collaboration, particularly video, sound,
and flash pieces.
There is no binarism in the texts, no series of definitive statements.
Virtuality is considered beyond the text- and web-scapes prevalent now.
The various issues of embodiment that will arrive with full-real VR are
already in embryonic existence, permitting the theorizing of present and
future sites, "spaces," nodes, and modalities of body/speech/community.
It may be difficult to enter the texts for the first time. The Case of the
Real is a sustained work and possible introduction. It is also helpful to
read the first file, Net1.txt, and/or to look at the latest files (lq, lr)
as well. Skip around. The Index works only for the earlier files; you can
look up topics and then do a search on the file listed.
The texts may be distributed in any medium; please credit me. I would ap-
preciate in return any comments you may have.
For information on the availability of cdroms containing the text and
other materials (graphics, video, sound, articles, books), see the appen-
ded notice below.
You can find my collaborative projects at
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm and my conference
activities at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk - both as a result of my virtual
writer-in-residence with the Trace online writing community.
See also:
Being on Line, Net Subjectivity (anthology), Lusitania, 1997
New Observations Magazine #120 (anthology), Cultures of Cyberspace, 1998
The Case of the Real, Pote and Poets Press, 1998
Jennifer, Nominative Press Collective, 1997
Alan Sondheim - Miami cellphone (voicemail) 305-610-5620
Miami phone (no voicemail) 305-668-5303 email sondheim@panix.com
Home address: 4600 SW 67th Avenue, Apartment 252, Miami, FL, 33155
(This address is good through 4/15/2002.)
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
CDROM Offering: Alan Sondheim : Collected and Newly-Released Work:
All of the following include video/text/sound (except Asteroids - only
video - and Turn/Cray - only sound); Archive 4.1 or later has the entire
Internet Text to date - over 4500 pages!
There are 7 cdroms for sale; price includes shipping costs. Any ONE cd-rom
for $ 15; TWO for $ 25; THREE for $ 31. FOUR for $37, $5 each for any over
FOUR. Special $53 for all eight!
What's Available:
Archive 4.1: This includes all the texts from 1994- present, a number of
older articles, several books, a great number of images, some short video,
etc. Archive is continuously updated. There is also sound-work and some
programming. I think of this as the "basic" cd-rom; if you have an earlier
copy, you might want to update.
Et: This is the most recent cd-rom, with almost all of the video/sound/
imagework that has been described on the lists - plus more. r- if not x-
rated. Much of this deals with the relation between sexuality and terror,
as well as fascinated/fetishization - with Azure Carter. Some of the most
intense pieces we've done.
Voyage: Finished before Et, a number of video and image works, as well as
sound/music pieces - with Azure Carter. Languor and exhibitionism on the
way out of New York.
Turn/Cray: Continuous/stringent machine soundwork, 56 minute .wav file.
Miami: Finished before moving to Florida, a number of sound, image, and
video pieces. Despair, existentialism, sex, power-land. With Azure Carter.
Parables: Dance, Foofwa d'Imobilite, texts and sound by Alan Sondheim,
Azure Carter, a series of short videos (plus text) taken from The Parables
of Nikuko. Between conceptual dance and body work / mesmeric movement.
Baal: Foofwa d'Imobilite, Azure Carter, Alan Sondheim, several videos of
sexuality, the problematic of ballet, and signs. r- or x- rated.
Asteroids: A number of short silent videoworks - camera moving through 3d
"asteroids" - no sound.
Special: All 8: $53. Please note there is some overlap (not much) among
the disks.
===================
Please send cash, money order, or check to:
Alan Sondheim
4600 SW 67 Avenue, Apartment 252
Miami, Florida, 33155
========================================
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 10:33:30 -0800
From: Michael Novick <part2001@usa.net>
Subject: Turning the Tide: New issue out now Vol 14 No. 4 Winter 2001-02 [a]
The new issue of "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research
& Education" is now out. The quarterly tabloid is produced by Anti-Racist
Action(ARA)/People Against Racist Terror(PART) and features PART's
perspective on "Fighting the Next War, Not the Last One," as well as a
piece on "The Homeland Theater of Operations," by Michael Novick of
Anti-Racist Action.
Two articles, "Combating White Supremacy in the Anti-Globalization
Movement," by Sonja Sivesind, and "Report on a Forum on Racism in
Progressive Movements," by Donna Lamb, take up the important and
often-neglected issue of racism within "the left," a dynamic often
forgotten by groups that focus exclusively on opposing right wing forces or
naked white supremacists like the nazis and Klan. Further addressing issues
raised by the on-going US "anti-terrorism" war, in Afghanistan and
elsewhere, this issue includes an eye-opening review of Zbiegniew
Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives," by Michael Ruppert, one of the founders of LA's !Crack the
CIA! Coalition, as well as an International Human Rights Day declaration by
RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.
A continuing focus of TTT and PART has been freedom for political
prisoners, and this issue is no exception. "Human Rights During Wartime,"
by Ohio 7 anti-imperialist political prisoner Jaan Laaman, and "Imperial
Foreign Policy," by Mumia Abu-Jamal, still on death row despite a federal
court ruling overturning his death sentence, provide important insights
from behind prison walls. Articles by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, a former
political prisoner and Black anti-authoritarian, and by Matt Meyer of
"Resistance in Brooklyn," a supporter of the Jericho Amnesty Movement,
focus attention on particular cases such as that of Ali Khalid Abdullah as
well as the connection of political prisoners in general to the prison
movement and struggle against imperialist war. This issue also has contact
information for the important upcoming "Tear Down the Walls" international
conference on U.S.-held political prisoners and prisoners of war, to be
convened in Havana, Cuba in March under the auspices of OSPAAL (the Cuban
Organization of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin
America). [For more information, see:
www.thejerichomovement.com/teardownthewalls]. "The Executioners Blinked:
The Struggle to Free Mumia" looks at the critical case of Abu-Jamal, a
political prisoner still on death row and still facing the prospect of
execution after more than 20 years of unyielding resistance. The issue also
reports on a new generation of political prisoners such as L.A. anarchist
Robert "Ruckus" Middaugh, sentenced to three years in prison after being
the victim of a police riot on May Day in Long Beach, CA.
News reports in this issue include accounts of the racist Jewish Defense
League and fascist National Alliance making hay in the wake of the war and
state racism, and the arrest of two Anti-Quarantine AIDS activists on one
million dollars bail. The issue also provides detailed information on
several major upcoming conferences and mobilizations, including "Unlocking
Los Angeles: LA and the Prison Industrial Complex" in Pasadena CA, January
26; an Anti-Capitalist Convergence and National Student Mobilization
against the World Economic Forum in NYC, January 31-February 4; and
Barricada's "Festival del Pueblo" in Boston MA on May 1-5, 2002.
Subscriptions to the quarterly publication are $15 a year in the US, $25
internationally, but people in the US can obtain a free sample copy of the
latest issue by sending their name and street address to ARA/PART, PO Box
1055, Culver City CA 90232; 310-495-0299; or by email: part2001@usa.net.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only.
Join the "stop police abuse" list at
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stop-polabuse>
People Against Racist Terror (PART), PO Box 1055, Culver City, CA 90232
Tel.: 310-495-0299 E-mail: <part2001@usa.net>
URL: <http://www.antiracist.org/issues.html>
Send for a sample of our quarterly print publication:
"Turning The Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education"
Free Mumia! End the racist death penalty!
Clemency for Leonard Peltier now!
Free Marilyn Buck, Mutulu Shakur, Oscar Lopez
and all political prisoners and P.O.W.'s in U.S. prisons!
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 15:04:47 +1100
From: Ned Rossiter <Ned.Rossiter@arts.monash.edu.au>
Subject: NEW BOOK: politics of a digital present
[dear moderators - we'd appreciate it if this could be posted on
nettime's publications (?) announcements..../best , ned]
FIBRECULTURE READER - ORDERING INFORMATION
Hugh Brown, Geert Lovink, Helen Merrick, Ned Rossiter, David Teh,
Michele Willson (eds), Politics of a Digitial Present: An Inventory
of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory (Melbourne:
Fibreculture Publications, 2001).
Paperback 150 x 230mm 300pp
ISBN 0-9579978-0-9
RRP $30AUS (includes GST) or $16US (for international orders) plus
postage - payable by cheque or money order made out to Fibreculture.
Please make international bank cheques or international money orders
payable in US dollars to Fibreculture.
Contact the administration address (below) to place an order and find
out cost of postage. Mail to:
Fibreculture
c/-Ned Rossiter
Lecturer, Communications
School of Political and Social Inquiry
Monash University
Berwick Campus
Clyde Rd
Berwick VIC 3806
Australia
tel. +61 3 9904 7023
fax. +61 3 9904 7037
email: Ned.Rossiter@arts.monash.edu.au
WEBSITE WITH INFORMATION ON ORDERING THIS BOOK
<www.fibreculture.org>
EMAIL ADDRESS
<admin@fibreculture.org> (for list administration and book ordering)
BACK COVER BLURB
Established in January 2001, fibreculture is a forum for Australian
net culture and research, encouraging critical and speculative
interventions in the debates concerning information technology, the
policy that concerns it, the new media for(u)ms it supports and its
sustainable deployment towards a more equitable Australia.
Fibreculture is committed to fostering and promoting open,
independent, critical, participatory and sustainable forums.
The fibreculture network comprises theorists, critics, journalists,
academics, artists, activists, policy developers and all sorts of
media producers, designers and other information-workers.
Fibreculture is working towards productive dialogues around our
distinctive engagements with/in new media & internet theory and
practice. The inaugural fibreculture reader is an encounter with
some of these dialogues in process: offering not conclusions or
closures but rather an invitation to further reflection, debate, and
action.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
Listing Media in Transition: An Introduction to Fibreculture
Theory
Abstraction
McKenzie Wark
Net Affects: Responding to Shock on Internet Time
Anna Munster
(S)end
David Teh
'Don't send me your saliva': Fantasies of Disembodiment in Email and
Epistolary Technologies
Esther Milne
How to Launder Money: Finance Capital, Value, and Biopower
Brett Neilson
Networks, Postnationalism and Agonistic Democracy
Ned Rossiter
Politics
Grassroots and Digital Branches in the Age of Transversal Politics
Guy Redden
Strengthening Cohesion, Networking Cells: Environmental Activists On-line
Jenny Pickerill
The Lens of Images: Desire, Commodities, Media and Hacking
David Cox
KNOBS and NERDS: What's So Good About Being Networked?
Ann Willis
Hack
McKenzie Wark
Policy
The 'New Empirics' in Internet Studies and Comparative Internet Policy
Terry Flew
New Threats, New Walls: The Internet in China
Kay Hearn and Brian Shoesmith
'Until there's evidence there's no comment': Risk, Fear and the Mobile Phone
Sean Aylward Smith
Intellectual Property: A Balance of Rights
Terry Laidler
The Knowledge Economy as Alienation: Outlines of a Digital Dark Age
Phil Graham
Arts
To Ephemeral Peace
Sean Cubitt
Ephemeral Pieces: An Interview with Sean Cubitt
David Teh
The Human Phenome Project
Kevin Murray
Interview with Kevin Murray
Geert Lovink
Empyrean| soft_skinned_scape
Melinda Rackham
Theatre as Suspended Space
Andrew Garton
Diagramming Innovation-scapes
Pia Ednie-Brown
When is Art IT?
Scott McQuire
The Art of Real Time
Daniel Palmer
Education
What is New Media Research?
Chris Chesher
Locating Community in the Social: Reorienting Internet Research
Tania Lewis
All Wired Up: Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online
Helen Merrick and Michele Willson
Cultural Functionality: Media Research and Error
Stephi Hemelryk Donald and Ingrid Richardson
Fibrous Amigos: The Critical Pursuit of Difference
Molly Hankwitz with Danny Butt
Appendix: program of events
List of Contributors
INTRODUCTION
Listing Media in Transition: An Introduction to Fibreculture
Internet mailing list dynamics are hard to predict. As tiny living
entities these online communities in the making can be pretty
stubborn. Their growth and direction is pretty much unknown for the
founders, moderators and participants. Unlike the (web) magazine
format, the "editorial" policy of those who would like to build up
and maintain the list are rather limited. However, fibreculture has
had an interesting first year of its existence and the aims set in
early 2001 were by and large fulfilled.
One of the central challenges for fibreculture so far has
been to at once determine and invent the "location" of a critical Net
practice in Australia. Where is such work happening, and who is
undertaking it? Academia? The independent "tactical" media groups?
The "new media arts" as defined and sanctioned by the funding bodies;
user cultures; open source software communities; IT-experts; official
entities such as ISOC?[1] The fibreculture facilitators' group felt
that what was particularly lacking in Australia was not so much Net
practice or new media theory in general but a critical, theoretical
reflection on what was actually happening at the crossroad of arts,
culture, policy, education and new media.
How might we give the Net a sense of place within our
national frame? The third wave or "generation" of Net studies on
"virtual communities" seeks to redress this search for heimat (or
public home) with its empirical work on ethnographic uses of
networked media and its attention to policy and regulation issues.[2]
Even so, we felt that the range of work going on in Australia didn't
fit neatly into cultural or critical theory agendas, and that the
field of Net studies and practice was still very much up for grabs.
This isn't to say that it was any less "mature" than its
international counterparts - such a distinction in itself demands
qualification - but that a cartography of differences was yet to be
assembled in Australia that registered and gave a platform to the
variety of work being undertaken on and using the Net.
After a few quiet months in which the list reached the two
hundred subscribers range the list took off. Fibreculture debated
across an extensive and diverse range of topics, including government
involvement in (Net) culture; the political economy of broadband
scarcity ("ba[n]dwidth"); the imminent end of DNS, ICANN and global
domain name policies; globalisation and the nation state; Microsoft
and the virtual classroom; "the hoax is the virus..."; the
post-information age; syndicated content and the future of Australian
writing; intellectual property versus digital technology; media
tactics and ethics; free code and the divisions within; Internet
culture and advertising; migration, the Tampa crisis and the Net;
visualising the WWW; telepresence; online petitions. And then there
were a host of discussions about the papers collected in this reader.
These issues constitute part of an inventory we call *a
politics of the digital present*. Not because they are special or
noteworthy per se, but because their crisis is articulated in one way
or another with a *digital mediology*. For Régis Debray, 'mediology'
involves 'not media nor medium but mediations, namely the dynamic
combination of intermediary procedures and bodies that interpose
themselves between a producing of signs and a producing of events'.[3]
Digital mediology for us, then, is a politics that consists of
writing within the media architectonics of an Internet listserve, in
the time of the present, in the space of the social. It is a
politics of writing the social in the abstraction of a code, and of
contesting the codes in which the social is read.
If we can assume, momentarily, to represent a geo-culturally
differentiated network of list subscribers, then one of our aims is
to very quickly articulate the body social of fibreculture with other
political actors. (Or perhaps, if at odds with those actors, to
tackle them side on.) Here, we are speaking of articulations with a
variety of entities whose spatial scale ranges from State and Federal
parliaments and their auxiliary departments, to entities such as the
anti-corporation networks and IndyMedia activists; from educational
and contemporary arts institutions, to community organisations
dealing with local issues. Perhaps this sounds terribly like empire
building. Perhaps it's overly ambitious. And perhaps it reads as
yet another deluded installment of Third Way ideology. Let's hope
not! Certainly it's naïve to assume to overcome in any multi-lateral
sense what Jean-François Lyotard astutely termed the problematic of
the différend - those phrases in dispute, those cosmologies of
incommensurability, that condition the possibility of the social.
More pragmatically, such speculation on political arrangements to
come speaks of a difficult or agonistic universality, but one which
nonetheless enables (to some degree) the very iterations of
fibreculture - both online and off.
In the history of fibreculture, there have also been politics
of another kind to negotiate. There are the politics of definition
and identity that are peculiar to any mailing list: what voices
dominate, what modes of expression are considered (il)legitimate,
what and whose interests are advocated? People have joined, people
have unsubscribed. Going beyond the list's ever shifting phases of
enculturation, there are other political ideologies and practices
that fibreculture seeks to address and intervene. From the beginning
fibreculture primarily focussed on Australian Net culture. Within a
global medium such as the Internet, it would be logical to question
the boundaries of the nation state. Many of us are very well
connected overseas. What was missing was a critical forum closer to
home.
Whilst a neoliberal paradigm apparently remains unassailable,
challenges to its irrational logic of instrumentality, to its violent
assertion of absolute sovereignty, are too often assumed to be
illegitimate and are deemed anachronistic or hysterical. The techne
of neoliberalism is reproduced across institutions many of us are
affiliated with in one way or another. After a decade of
evisceration, and effectively without representation, most academics
have devolved into bureaucrats, modelling their institutional
subjectivities or habitus according to the dictates of DETYA,[4] who
determine what constitutes intellectual labour and its value.
Contemporary cultural institutions across the country are run by
boards and managers who have usurped the authority of curators.
Cultural critics play the emasculated game of mutual affirmation, and
artists, like all good careerists, display an obsessive preoccupation
with enhancing their CV's. Even the culture industries are driven by
a corporate institutional complex (including States) for which the
integrity and wisdom of markets is paramount; this compounds the
dislocation of their unwitting public which, long since removed from
most political processes, now finds itself even culturally
disenfranchised. The ideology of managerialism has all but triumphed
over the administration of the arts. These are just some of the
indices that register not so much the abolition as the transformation
of the nation state. It is within these prevailing conditions that
fibreculture emerges.
Fibreculture wants to be more than social noise (or digital
cosiness). An independent critical Net discourse has to fight to be
taken seriously. Now that new media are no longer that new, the Net
is in immediate danger of being reduced to a vulgar e-commerce
platform plus push-media for second grade content of the old media.
But the potential of digital media has yet to be fully realised. New
and innovative techniques and applications are still being sought. It
is too early to foreclose discussion - rather, fibreculture wants to
initiate/instigate a vigorous and critical debate about where to go
now, in the past-future of the present.
Given fibreculture's broad and for the most part unknown
constituency (since many subscribers do their fibrework as lurkers),
it would be an instance of utter delusion to claim autonomy in any
absolute sense. However, fibreculture has been, and can continue to
be, a partially autonomous zone, a space peculiar to the dynamics of
listserves and the parallel forums it spawns, such as meetings,
books, newspapers, policy debates, consultations on communications
and culture, and so on.
This first fibreculture publication may seem a bit academic.
So be it. There will be more Gutenberg projects to come. The
academic discourse is just one of many discourses and ways of telling
the story. The format of the academic paper which dominates this
first fibreculture reader could be seen as a response to the
all-too-Australian tendency to chat, thereby reducing online debates
to the level of casual conversation. While the papers are
necessarily presented in the order you find them in, this says as
much about the medium of the book, and the particular constraints it
places on sequencing, as it does about the content of the reader as a
whole and the editorial decisions made. Another mix would have been
possible, and it is up to you, the reader, to finally determine how
this book is used. Perhaps, too, you might be inclined to join
fibreculture and contribute to the ever expanding inventory of
writings on Net culture, to a forum whose limits and possibilities
will reflect those of this digital present, and the next.
Notes:
1 ISOC is the Internet Society and represented in Australia by
the the Internet Society of Australia. See http://www.isoc-au.org.au/
2 See Terry Flew's contribution to this reader for a summary of
these three phases of Net studies.
3 Régis Debray, Media Manifestos: On the Technological
Transmission of Cultural Forms, trans. Eric Rauth (London and New
York: Verso, 1996; 1994), 17.
4 DETYA - the Commonwealth Department of Education, Training
and Youth Affairs - is the key administrative body for funding
universities and academic research in Australia.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 22:30:50 -0500 (EST)
From: David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>
Subject: "Your Favourite London Sounds"
Announcing
YOUR FAVOURITE LONDON SOUNDS
compiled by Peter Cusack
with photographs by Dave Mandl
catalogue number: RESFLS1CD
What is your favourite London sound and why? The responses of
Londoners to this simple question are as varied and extraordinary as
the city itself.
This fascinating CD reveals the London of the ear, rather than that of
the eye. A myriad of places and experiences, familiar and obscure,
are brought to life in this striking collection--from Big Ben to bagel
bars, from songbirds to slamming doors, from thunder cutting through
the sky to the eternal uproar of the city's soundscape.
Since 1998 the London Musicians' Collective has asked many
Londoners--including all 74 of London's Members of Parliament--the
question, "What is your favourite London sound--and why?" The
response has been overwhelming (the MPs returned nine!), with a lot of
interest in the question and plenty of discussion on how to answer it.
Hundreds of favourite sounds have been proposed, often in considerable
detail. Many have since been recorded by sound-artist Peter Cusack,
taking care to be as faithful as possible to the original suggestions.
The 40 tracks on this audio-postcard are a selection from the hours so
far collected.
YOUR FAVOURITE LONDON SOUNDS contains over an hour of audio material,
plus a full-color 24-page booklet of photographs and information.
For all media and distribution information, please contact the LMC.
(Distributed in the U.S. by Forced Exposure.)
- ---------------------------------------------
London Musicians' Collective Limited
3.6 Lafone House, 11-13 Leathermarket Street, London SE1 3HN
Tel: 020 7403 1922
Fax: 020 7403 1880
http://www.l-m-c.org.uk
Registered charity number 290236
- ---------------------------------------------
------------------------------
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