Re: <nettime> TAZ THING

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

I can only agree with the project of Mute and of THE THING. For seven years
I researched the cultural implications of Internet. This research had
little to do with 'the virtual'. I focussed upon the interelations between
mediation and new relations of distribution. I was not afraid to 'tease
out' reaction in a number of locations, in arts and aesthetics, policy and
polity, regulation and governance. From very early on the My motive was to
apply, at the end of this period, a quite conventional or traditional
alternative, independent, media model to the field of distributed
computing. I am doing so (or think I am doing so - one always needs
criticism and feedback) with Thirdnet. (http://third.net - you can check
out the proposed consitution at http://www.third.net/constitution.html) 

We hear a great deal about the 'dangers' of digital culture, but little
about the 'dangers' when power relations and investments between
individuals and within institutions are challenged. Not by 'technology' or
rhetorical 'new paradigms', but by anxieties caused by shifts in mediation
of the production, reproduction and dissemination of knowledge. Some of the
reactions I charted - third year students locked out of a compouter suite
in Liverpool during Sean Cubitt and my teaching of the Digital Cultures
course in 1996,  the cesnorship of my UEL Occupation publication in May
1998 (copied to http://www.yorku.ca on the day my login 

We all have responsibility to highlight these dangers and overreactions.
They were often stunning for their intensity. More than anything these
reactions (from high Thatcherian exercises in demonstrating arbitrary
power, to over-forced humour) convinced me that there was indeed something
very new about the new media, or I should say: new relations of mediation.
If they had not occured, I would not be interested in the field. I would be
working in print media.

It is for this reason we need alternative, independent, media, with all the
apparatus this implies, and I think those of us engaged in the process of
finding out whether alternative, independent media are possible in digital
culture, or in culture at large for that matter, are learning a wide range
of techniques and strategies that have very deep histories in publishing. 


Lachlan Brown

-----Original Message-----
From: Wolfgang Staehle <wolfgangsta@thing.net>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 17:46:49 -0700
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: <nettime> TAZ THING


> There has been a report in the press (taz) about the current state of 
> THE THING (NYC) that could be misconstrued.  While it is true that we 
 <...>

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