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The messy Hydra: developments in transglobal Peer-to-Peer culture

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Once a minor practice in places of privilege in the global North, internet-enabled file-sharing via peer-to-peer (P2P) systems has evolved into a vast, transglobal activity. Engaging millions of participants, P2P is decentralised, deeply networked, grass roots-driven, polycultural phenomenon growing exponentially. It appears uncontainable, as each wave of technological, legal and commercial measures designed to halt or divert it fail. Moreover, pressure exerted 'from above' by governments and multinational industry alliances becomes a productive force within geographically dispersed, globalised P2P networks and communities. Technical and social innovations are generated 'from below' in order to protect and expand “cultures of sharing,” or “piracy.” Paradoxically, these innovations become mainstreamed as they force corporations to adopt new business models in response to 'market' desires.

Art and Research

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Art and Research is an online journal for ideas, contexts and methods. It provides a resource of downloadable finished papers, interviews and conference notes that are considered important and current to the discourse that surrounds artistic research. The journal is international and peer-reviewed with an editorial board, one of the main editors being Ross Birrell an artist researcher and staff member at Glasgow School of Art. As well as being an interesting artist, Ross is also an interesting writer and his editorial paper Jacques Ranciere and The (Re) Distribution of the Sensible provides ‘Five Lessons in Artistic Research’ that condenses and links ideas such Rancier’s notion of the ‘distribution of territories’, a commentary on the value of certain disciplines over others, to Mika Hannula (and others) notion of the ‘democracy of experience’ which is ‘the precondition of a non-hierarchical research environment’.

Waves – the art of deconcealment

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This text is my first attempt to reflect some of the issues arising from the two Waves exhibitions. The exhibitions in Riga (2006) and Dortmund (2008) were conceived as research projects. By looking at waves as "a principle material and medium of art" the exhibitions were made with an outlook on building a bottom-up, materialist theory of media art.

/tmp/lab announces the second Hacker Space Festival

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Hacker Space Festival 2009 | Call For Proposals | HSF2009

In 2008, we organized HSF[1] on the spot, as an ad-hoc meeting for
hackerspaces-related networks, technical and artistic research emerging
from them and social questionning arising from them. This sudden
experiment proved to be a huge success, as much as on the
self-organizing level as on the participants and meetings quality, as
well as the emotionally-charged ambient, the kind of which you make
fond memories.

Call for Papers: 6th European Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts

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Riga based initiative e-text+textiles is pleased to announce that the 6th European Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts will take place in Riga in June 2010. Deadline for abstract submissions: 16 August 2009, slsa.2010@gmail.com

Sassen on the end of financial Capitalism

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In this article, Saskia Sassen argues that the financial system is too big to be saved.
The sociologist who coined the term Global City in the early 1990s, demands decinancialisation rather than burning more money, by trying to save the financial system. Interesting read and historically illuminating.

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