1m2 - on (off) extitutions

These past weeks we've been lucky to have Femke Snelting in Madrid. I've had the opportunity to have a couple of very very interesting conversations on interfaces with her, and I think we might be re-taking our informal research on interface criticism and politics from now on. So... first (clumsy) notes: /////// On (off) extitutions // Tactical interfaces >> Looking at interfaces is key to understand sets of relations (-> systems), as they are the assemblage surfaces that facilitate some connections and not others (some performativities and not others). Interfaces show us the affordances of the agents they connect to (or not). .. // How can we build interfaces that have space for political affections, that have / sustain critical affordances? //// performativity → defined through gesture(s) >> Interface → studied from the performativities that are permitted and/or that emerge from it = “zone of affordances” .. // Hermeneutics of gesture → analysis of the set of gestures that are applied in each set of relations (system) >> Interface is key to understand sets of relations (->systems), as they are the assemblage surfaces that facilitate some connections and not others (some performativities and not others) → interfaces show us the affordances of the agents they connect to (or not). .. // The 'if' way of constructing systems is very much based on >> Competences: what you can do / affordances: what you might do possible responses. .. // So, interfaces are affordance-spaces that we must study, applying what we'll call “the hermeneutics of gesture”: performative interpretation (based on connecting) Hermeneutics of gesture can/could be applied in “interpretation centres” or “hermeneutic spaces”. Interfaces – mediations – extitutions – hermeneutics -------------- Italo Svevo Mediating mediation. Layers of interfaces. If everything is an interface, what should we talk about? rendering practice of mediating why did you not make an auto-ethnography Sciences have strategies of rendering. The problem of rendering. mediating gradients models of governance are needed scale, gradient, ... who defines the protocol -- complex cultural eco-systems experimenting mixing generative mediation -------------- How to account for the fact that interfaces are often malleable, respond to gestures and not only orient/suggest/direct/shape them? How to go from interpretation to creation? Can we close the loop of hermeneutics – gestures – interfaces? Can we think of a form of interface that goes deeper then skin, that is compliant rather then surface, that permeates both human and machine (or institution and audience, or …). I'm trying to think of mediation as something that is not independent from the medium that is operated upon, nor from the operation itself. Would an 'interrogable' interface be more interesting then one that resists interpretation? What would be the performativity of the interface itself, thinking about it as not a separate/separable element but a space that is intimately interlinked with human bodies, thoughts, imagination? …?

El Internet

Lo más violento sería volver a la normalidad

#feliz15M 2012 (vía @teclista)

Richard Sennett - La arquitectura de la cooperación

Preparando el taller'#greenvia: Transferencias de la innovación social al espacio público', organizado por VIC en Intermediae, he dado con esta conferencia que dio Richard Sennett recientemente en la escuela de diseño Harvard. Sennett lanza una pregunta fundamental: ¿puede el urbanismo entenderse como una herramienta para la cooperación entre extrañxs?. Hace además una interesante diferenciación entre 'borders' (con características compartidas con las de las membranas) y 'boundaries' (más similares a los muros), y ofrece una clara crítica hacia ciertas acepciones del término 'sostenible', que se alejan del trabajo constante y la revisión continua de un sistema -que no puede ya defenderse como cerrado a lo cibernético, por tanto-.

Good Listeners: a spiritual plugin visualizing the (forced) confessions obtained by divine web trackers

La cosa de los known unknowns: Muy relacionado con el reciente texto de Eli Pariser, "The Filter Bubble. What the Internet is hiding from you" (2011), aparece de la mano de @mushon un divertido browser plugin de visualización de esos filtros que ayudan directamente en la tarea de gestionar nuestra experiencia online en muchas plataformas de esas del "don't be evil"... (via: http://mushon.com/gl/)

Install Party de conceptos: "P2P degenerado"

El pasado 1 de diciembre organizamos en Medialab-Prado una install party de conceptos transfeministas. La idea es continuar archivando definiciones, y revisitarlas luego para remezclarlas. Aquí el video con algunas instalaciones, y el texto introductorio de la actividad: 

Intro.:

"El código, contempla una parte material (los números por ejemplo) y una parte semiótica (el significado de un determinado orden en los números). El software libre otorga a lxs usuarixs libertad para usar, copiar, modificar y redistribuir sin restricciones un determinado programa a partir de la alteración del código. El código (del latín codex, libro de leyes o principios) es el material en el cual están escritos los programas informáticos, y por ende para poder ser modificado debe ser accesible (estar abierto).

La filosofía del software libre y del open source tiene implicaciones políticas radicales al ofrecer la libertad de modificar y mejorar las versiones anteriores, planteándose como una serie de desarrollos posibles en un espacio desjerarquizado y múltiple. Al mismo tiempo se corresponde con las necesidades específicas de lxs usuarixs quienes organizados en red tienen posibilidad de alterar las herramientas. Es por ello que resulta muy interesante considerarlo como un modelo cultural y desplazarlo a otras áreas de acción e interacción política como los feminismos queer o transfeminismos. Movimientos de resistencia que entienden el género como un sistema de poder, una tecnología, un dispositivo privativo que produce, controla y limita los cuerpos para adaptarlos al orden social establecido. Estos "nuevos" feminismos cuestionan la violencia del binarismo de género y la construcción jerárquica de las sexualidades y pretenden modificar, alterar, ampliar y transformar los códigos que rigen dichas construcciones sociales. A través de sus discursos y prácticas políticas combaten las consecuencias de estas construcciones sexo-genéricas, de estos artefactos culturales, en la vida de las personas y en las estructuras sociales e intentan articular una serie de resistencias y alternativas.

Las Install Parties son instancias de reunión social donde el objetivo es llevar a cabo instalaciones de sistemas operativos libres y a la vez construir y fortalecer redes y comunidades.

La necesidad de apropiarnos del lenguaje tecnológico para aplicarlo a contextos de políticas radicales de género surge de la observación de los códigos sociales que nos cruzan en tanto "sistemas operativos" universalizantes, y de la necesidad de poder abrir dichos códigos, poder ver cómo operan y deconstruirlos buscando ampliar las libertades y combinaciones posibles.

Entendiendo las Install Parties como instancias de intercambio y producción de conocimiento que escapan a las restricciones materiales y cognitivas que rigen las relaciones capitalistas, con esta actividad pretendemos generar un espacio dónde las personas participantes puedan reflexionar desde una perspectiva queer sobre cuestiones como el sexo, el género y la sexualidad. Desde aquí adquirir las herramientas necesarias para pensar y usar, manipular, modificar su cuerpo y su deseo y desarrollar prácticas generico-sexuales fuera del marco de la heterosexualidad obligatoria. Se trata de traer los discursos y políticas feministas y queer al mundo de la tecnología, del arte de acción y del hacktivismo, apropiándonos de su lenguaje y filosofía. De la misma forma, servirnos de distintas herramientas digitales/virtuales de desobediencia y sabotaje como estrategias de acción que también pueden ser retomadas y utilizadas por los feminismos para promover sus objetivos políticos de transformación social".

Texto de Lucía Egaña Rojas y MiriamSolá.

Objetivos:

• Instalar una serie de conceptos, términos y situaciones relacionados con las políticas radicales de género en contextos técnicos, artísticos y tecnológicos.
• Desplazar un arsenal de conceptos tecnológicos aplicándolos a otras áreas, actividades o contextos culturales.
• Desarrollar sistemas de intercambio P2P, face 2 face, de comunicación directa interpersonal (de sistema a sistema sin mediación).
• Proporcionar herramientas para usar nuestros cuerpos, géneros y sexualidades de formas que escapan a los modelos privativos hegémonicos.
• Trabajar desde una perspectiva trans-hacker-feminista los vínculos entre género, tecnología y capitalismo.
• Unir redes, conocimientos y esfuerzos para mejorar las actuales estrategias hacker-feministas de resistencia y transformación.
• Install party de Linux. Traete tu ordenador y los cds de linux.

Contenidos:

Señalamos algunos coceptos a instalar, entre otros que no aparecen aquí, ya que daremos la oportunidad a los invitadxs a que elijan los conceptos que desean instalar:

SISTEMA SEXO/GÉNERO, HETERONORMATIVIDAD, TECNOLOGIAS DEL GENERO, PERFORMATIVIDAD DE GÉNERO, QUEER, SEXUALIDADES DISIDENTES, PRIVILEGIO BLANCO, PRIVILEGIO MASCULINO, VIOLENCIA, ANALIDAD, ECOSEXUALIDAD, DILDO, DESPATOLOGIZACIÓN, POSTPORNOGRAFÍA, MASCULINIDADES SUBVERSIVAS, TRANSGÉNERO, MARIMACHO (TOMBOY), DRAG KING, TRANS, DIY, CONTRASEXUALIDAD, TRANSFEMINISMO, CUERPO, TRABAJO SEXUAL...

Metodología:

La metodologia que se desarrolla en la instalación se basa en la transmisión de información directa entre dos o más usuarios. Mediante el diálogo y la reflexión se pretende favorecer el intercambio de ideas y la construcción conjunta de conocimientos. Para ello las instalaciones se realizaran peer2peer y se cuenta con diferentes instaladorxs, esto es, personas que se hacen cargo de explicar los distintos conceptos a lxs participantes y de dinamizar el intercambio de experiencias.

Habrán distintos "instaladorxs" (personas que se harán cargo de explicar distintos conceptos clave) y se habilitará un espacio con una cámara de vídeo (estilo fotomatón) para aquellxs que quieran dirigirse a la cámara y grabar conceptos de un minuto. 

+info: http://medialab-prado.es/article/install_party_de_conceptos_p2p_degenerado

rosa_menkman

http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/

Experiencia interfaz. Dispositivos culturales de gestión performativa

"Experiencia Interfaz. Dispositivos culturales de gestión performativa" - Tesina - Jara Rocha

UKI game level one @ Piksel.no

La semana que viene presentaremos UKI game level one [infect the city] en Piksel (Bergen, Noruega). Esta parte del proyecto transmedia IKU/UKI, empezó a desarrollarse en Medialab-Prado, y continuó en el SummerLab de LABoral (y posterior residencia).

Shu Lea Cheang estará simultaneamente presentando la performance de UKI en La Internacional Cuir (MNCARS), comisariada por Beatriz Preciado.

+info: http://www.u-k-i.co/

Wordleing Experiencia Interfaz

Ok, si haces un wordle de un trabajo de 23.500 palabras con la sigueinte hipótesis: "La interfaz es un dispositivo cultural de procesado de la experiencia, que gestiona la performatividad en el medio digital. Dependiendo de las características de esa gestión, se despliegan algunas potencialidades que podrían contener los requisitos para una cultura libre", te sale esto:

Tebeo Arduino

http://www.jodyculkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/arduino-comic-latest3.pdf

Steve Woolgar - Visualisation in the age of Computerisation

Some highlights:

- "the visual is analogous to other abstractions like "social"or "natural""

- "We have never been visual!" ;-)

- "visualisations are performative, not descriptive"

- the part about neuromarketing

(Más info en http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/insis/visualisation/Pages/default.aspx)

EXPRESSION OF CONCERN REGARDING THE ACTA-AGREEMENT

He firmado el comunicado anti-ACTA redactado en el marco de la red internacional de medialabs, LabToLab. Pego a continuación el grueso del texto, escrito de forma colaborativa:

////////////

INTRODUCTION

Wikipedia is a wonderful example of free culture. It produces knowledge and the process by which it does so also enriches its participants. It is a large scale pedagogical experiment where all learn from all, radically democratic, open to reading and writing. It encourages debate and is in constant evolution. Problems like defamation and copyright infringement exist in Wikipedia but are handled ad hoc when they occur. Wikipedia doesn't ignore these problems, but chooses to explain participants what fits in the platform and what not. And when errors are made, they are taken care of with flexibility and in dialog. The fundamental a priori relationship Wikipedia has with its user is trust.

Free culture questions and nourishes society; it feeds imaginaries and can act as an antibiotic to its diseases. It evolves through comments, re-interpretations, mixes, forks and variations. Creation is not a one-way process, it is a complex feedback loop that encourages participation and contribution. To develop and survive, free culture requires tools, workspaces, and collaborations based on an exchange system:

Free culture needs to be able to customize existing tools, and create new tools if needed. This creates the possibility to explore tastes, styles and ideas beyond what is taught at school. The learning process requires access to source code and documentation, in order to understand what is behind an interface and how to engage with the communities that develop them. Proprietary software is expensive and reduces the diversity of tools available. Monopoly practices of closed source software companies reduce it even further. With limited cultural budgets, we prefer to support the development of free software which can be shared amongst a community of libre practitioners.

It requires the availability of flexible workspaces. Medialabs provide high quality digital spaces for experimentation. A painter may choose a studio because of certain light conditions, an artist working in a medialab must be able to adapt a digital space to the conditions of his or her specific cultural production.

It thrives in a context that fosters diversity. Confronting different languages for example, offers different ways of thinking; diversity allows people to change perspective and therefore they can transform and innovate.

It supposes ongoing Collaboration and exchange. In free culture, participants are not confined to the role of consumers. They are allowed to access, respond and transform materials. Free culture presupposes collaboration and dialogue, involving an exchange between multiple disciplines: artists, engineers, scientists, musicians and everyday citizens.


As will be evident through the following 5 main concerns, ACTA threatens this exchange system on several levels.

What if Wikipedia, by the effect of harsh policy, had to adopt a defensive approach against its users? What if it had to prevent any infringement before even it happens? Any modification before it would become public? To chose always the safer description to stay away from trouble? To create committees of moderators, and committees of committees who would have to approve all additions? The Wikipedia model would shift away from content and discussion towards regulations. Or more simply put, Wikipedia would go back to the old model of encyclopedia Universalis.


CONCERNS

1. Free culture needs clear laws

In creative production, mixing and meshing is common practice. The ability to make citations, appropriations, parodies etc. is essential for a vibrant culture. The vagueness of ACTA is therefore a problem. Actors need to be confident about their investment in free culture in order to engage and invest in it. By badly defining possible infringements and their scope, ACTA creates a climate of doubt and insecurity. Vagueness is a deterrent, it actually implies rigidity. When the scope of the treaty remains undefined, we can expect that disproportionate measures will be taken "to stay on the safe side": publishers will want to prevent problems before they occur, artists will anticipate the decision of publishers.

ACTA brings under the same hood a mixed bag of 'infringements': file sharing, copying, counterfeiting, patenting are treated as if they are of the same order. But copying and counterfeiting are not synonyms. Assimilating all IP infringement to counterfeiting, makes it difficult to respond adequately to a situation where exceptions to author's rights and fair use provisions have their role to play. It makes it hard to be nuanced in a cultural context where nuance makes all the difference.

2. Cultural practice is not about commerce

ACTA is based on a poor definition of 'commercial' and 'non-commercial' activities. For the interwoven tissue of hybrid economies that drives cultural production, such a definition is at the same time disproportionate and inoperative. ACTA blindly affirms distinctions based on a caricature of cultural practice. The crass fuzziness of ACTA leaves the door open to grotesque measures and arbitrary decisions.

The definition is disproportionate. ACTA states that harsh measures will be applied to 'commercial scale infringement', but extends measures to 'non-commercial infringements giving a commercial advantage to a third party'. This results in a very wide definition of commercial activities, therefore it extends the scope of the treaty almost indefinitely. Concretely, it would mean a blogger sharing a file on a page that displays advertising, would be met with the same rigour as a large-scale infringer; linking to a PayPal account would qualify as 'operating on a commercial scale'. Medialabs provide their collaborators with digital workspaces. They offer online services to a large network of practitioners. The current ACTA agreement would define a medialab as an ISP and make them subjacent to the same measurements that exclude flexibility and experimentation and would paralyze their functioning.

The definition is inoperative because it refuses to recognize the assemblages of innovative models in the permanent process of constructing cultural wealth. The un-challenged distinction between 'commercial' and 'non-commercial' obscures the fact that professional production relies on our culture at large. What would Walt Disney be, without traditional fairy tales? The company makes millions from Snow White, but calls the same people who conveyed the oral memory of the tale to the present day 'infringers' when they want to re-interpret the tale. Would Snow White have been such a success if millions of families had not already for centuries told and enriched the tale, with all their love and creativity, long before Disney had ever thought of drawing the first scene of the movie? Why is their commercial appropriation legitimate when the re-use of Disney imagery is met by the most rigourous enforcement measures?

Professional artists and entertainment companies have always both nurtured and exploited resources from living culture. Living culture borrows from, responds to, and is inspired by commercial production. But rather than encouraging the continuous flow of creativity between cultural zones, ACTA legislators consolidate an artificial vision of culture where a few 'creators' are broadcasting to a passive mass of customers while, in fact, these 'customers' co-create commercial products in various ways.

3. Cultural heritage deserves to be used

On-line cultural heritage archives help build and reinforce our historical memory and identity. They empower the social and political awareness of citizens. It is important to acknowledge and promote new forms of collective production and take full advantage of the technical properties of digital objects, use new technologies of information and communication and revive and reuse archive materials. We are concerned that ACTA contributes to a counter-productive fear of participation in reading, writing, adapting and distributing digital cultural objects.

Digital environments offer the potential of easy access to books, photographs, pamphlets, audio recordings, video files, radio broadcasts... Digital reproductions of public domain documents that are part of our mutual cultural heritages, can and should in principle be copied, remixed and re-used in new works. They should be consulted, tagged, connected, and commented upon. In this way, users collectively build high quality public repositories and sustainable archives of information, enabling the culture of our future to benefit from the richness of our cultural past.

EU policy aims to support citizens to appreciate and enjoy their heritage. For that purpose they need to be and feel part of the process of culture. If laws are made to regulate the circulation of digital objects, we not only need to worry about the protection of commercial production, but we most of all need to make sure that the acccessibility of past and future culture is guaranteed. How can future generations build on a legal actuality that is aimed at exclusion and the protection of products, and not on the protection of culture?

For this reason, we are concerned about the future of orphaned works. Under the Berne Convention, The European Commission has provided partial solutions understanding the importance of making available to the public an heritage whose owners are difficult to trace. We strongly support the idea that works with no explicit copyright or owner should belong to the public domain and should therefore be managed, accessed, re-used and distributed collectively. The provisions in ACTA are closing off one promising avenue for policy intervention.

4. ACTA would harm our international collaborators

The day to day reality of cultural production in the age of the internet means that work takes place in an international and intercontinental context. This is an aim and a desire, and an integral part of our daily practice. Building productive exchanges with international networks is vital for our work. Now and in the future, we contribute to projects in developing countries, and in countries outside ACTA.

Needless to say that adopting ACTA will have a recursive negative effect on all cultural work done within ACTA countries. Restrictive measures that hit one area of production, will without doubt be felt in another.

Defining an all-encompassing commercial way of dealing with culture will have a disastrous effect on digital literacy and access for people from developing countries. They would be suffering even more from the weakening of free software, from harsh restrictions on legitimate copying, losing the flexibility that is necessary for collaborative production.

5. We are alarmed by the opaqueness of the process

Transparency is central to open networks. As medialabs, we try hard to make our organisations function in ways that are easy to understand for everyone involved. In our projects we favour systems open to discussion, questions and contestation. We therefore cannot help but to be alarmed by the way this treaty has been drafted.

As long as the definition of the terms, on which ACTA is based, remain open to interpretation, the treaty will provide avenues for arbitrary decisions. This in itself is enough reason not to ratify the agreement.

We are irate to find out that a treaty that has been negotiated in the most opaque way imaginable, demands faith in a future committee whose powers will include changing the terms of the treaty itself. We see no reason to trust ACTA with a blank cheque.

ACTA is the result of a process that only very late acted out a mere parody of consultation, and involved a very limited representation of stakeholders. This treaty should by no means be validated.

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SUPPORT THE TEXT

Please send your name, the name of your organisation, your role and your country to acta@labtolab.org

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman

Dara Birnbaum (1978-79).

[Leyendo mi regalo de reyes, el análisis de este video a cargo de T.J. Demos].

Gender Changer

(Buscando una imagen para el grupo de género y tecnología de Medialab-Prado).

The Powers of Ten

Ray y Charles Eames, 1968.

http://www.powersof10.com/

I'm Here, de Spike Jonze

Se puede ver aquí: http://www.imheremovie.com/

Escuchar el tweet.

Prototipo de análisis de la poética social dialógica en el microblogging.

Las aplicaciones de microblogging ofrecen un aparente reforzamiento de las libertades en los procesos creativos literarios. Proponen una nueva forma de discurso digital que facilita la práctica cultural de la dialogía en el ámbito de la narrativa. Sin embargo, carecen de la legitimación estética, académica y social necesaria para ser consideradas reconfiguradoras reales de las jerarquías canónicas tradicionales. Así pues, deben ser entendidas como laboratorios culturales donde se pueden estudiar y medir las grietas que aparecen en el muro del canon literario, y donde se pueden también desarrollar experiencias y proyectos estéticos en los que dichas grietas son trabajadas para generar tanto formas como contenidos artísticos ajenos a la convención.

--->Descargar el texto completo<---

Noteboek: ejemplo de Remediación Invertida

Más info sobre el concepto de "Remediación Invertida" ("Reversed Remediation").

Fuente: Rhizome

Paisajes Sonoros 1 (En Vía Límite de RNE)

Paisajes Sonoros 1 (Vía Límite- Culturas Sonoras)