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7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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Published by Banff Centre Press Riverside Architectural Press
Copyright copy 983090983088983089983089 Banff Centre Press Riverside Architectural Press All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission from the publisher except in the context of reviews
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright
Errors or omissions would be corrected in subsequent editions
Publication Design and Production Philip Beesley Architect Inc
Art Director Hayley IsaacsCopy Editor Claire Crighton
eBook Development WildElementca
Riverside Architectural Press wwwriversidearchitecturalpresscom
Banff Centre Press wwwbanffcentrecapress
Printing and binding by Regal Printing Limited
Tis book is set in Zurich Lt B and Garamond
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Euphoria amp Dystopia the Banff New Media Institute dialogues edited by
Sarah Cook and Sara Diamond
Accompanied by HorizonZero DVD
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 9830979830951048632-983088-983097983090983088983089983093983097-983095983089-983090
ISDN 983089-1048632983097983092983095983095983091-983090983092-983089
983089 Art and technology 983090 Banff New Media Institute I Cook Sarah
983089983097983095983092- II Diamond Sara 983089983097983093983092-
983095983090983092983097983095 983090983088983089983089 983095983088983088983089rsquo983088983093 983090983088983089983089-983097983088983093983097983092983095-983097
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HE BANFF NEW MEDIA INSIUE DIALOGUES
EDIED BY SARAH COOKamp
SARA DIAMOND
EUPHORIAD YSOPIA
B983137983150983142983142 C983141983150983156983154983141 P983154983141983155983155 R983145983158983141983154983155983145983140983141 A983154983139983144983145983156983141983139983156983157983154983137983148 P983154983141983155983155
amp
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Contents
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PRODUCTION ampDISTRIBUTION INMODELS OFCOLLABORATIVEPRACTICE7
SARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK 820 Introduction
ERIC KLUITENBERG 842 Notes on the Nature of Collaboration and Networks
SU DITTA 856 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
ALEXEI SHULGIN 858 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
NINA CZEGLEDY 860 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CURATING amp CONSERVINGNEW MEDIA ART QampA
864 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN 867 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
MICHAEL CENTURY QampA 872 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
DAVID MARTIN 876 Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632
BOB STEIN 878 Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088
MARK GREEN 882 Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SAUL GREENBERG 887
Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SIMON POPE 891 Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632
JENNY MARKETOU 902 Growing Things 983090983088983088983088
ANNE NIGTEN 904 Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089
STEPHEN MARSH 908 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
JONAS HEIDE SMITH 913 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
EDWARD SHANKEN 920 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
FATOUMATA KANDEacute SENGHOR 926 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
SYLVIANE DIOP 929 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW 936 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
CHRISTINE MORRIS 939 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
GEORGE BALDWIN 941 Bridges I I 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE 947 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
LYN BARTRAM 952 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
SHA XIN WEI 956 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
KIM SAWCHUK 959 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
ldquoWHAT IS COLLABORATIONrdquo QampA 962 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
PARTICIPATECOLLABORATE ROUNDTABLECHAIRED BY BERYL GRAHAM
966 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
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7
Production amp
Distribution inModels of CollaborativePracticeSARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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Published by Banff Centre Press Riverside Architectural Press
Copyright copy 983090983088983089983089 Banff Centre Press Riverside Architectural Press All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission from the publisher except in the context of reviews
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright
Errors or omissions would be corrected in subsequent editions
Publication Design and Production Philip Beesley Architect Inc
Art Director Hayley IsaacsCopy Editor Claire Crighton
eBook Development WildElementca
Riverside Architectural Press wwwriversidearchitecturalpresscom
Banff Centre Press wwwbanffcentrecapress
Printing and binding by Regal Printing Limited
Tis book is set in Zurich Lt B and Garamond
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Euphoria amp Dystopia the Banff New Media Institute dialogues edited by
Sarah Cook and Sara Diamond
Accompanied by HorizonZero DVD
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 9830979830951048632-983088-983097983090983088983089983093983097-983095983089-983090
ISDN 983089-1048632983097983092983095983095983091-983090983092-983089
983089 Art and technology 983090 Banff New Media Institute I Cook Sarah
983089983097983095983092- II Diamond Sara 983089983097983093983092-
983095983090983092983097983095 983090983088983089983089 983095983088983088983089rsquo983088983093 983090983088983089983089-983097983088983093983097983092983095-983097
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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HE BANFF NEW MEDIA INSIUE DIALOGUES
EDIED BY SARAH COOKamp
SARA DIAMOND
EUPHORIAD YSOPIA
B983137983150983142983142 C983141983150983156983154983141 P983154983141983155983155 R983145983158983141983154983155983145983140983141 A983154983139983144983145983156983141983139983156983157983154983137983148 P983154983141983155983155
amp
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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Contents
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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PRODUCTION ampDISTRIBUTION INMODELS OFCOLLABORATIVEPRACTICE7
SARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK 820 Introduction
ERIC KLUITENBERG 842 Notes on the Nature of Collaboration and Networks
SU DITTA 856 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
ALEXEI SHULGIN 858 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
NINA CZEGLEDY 860 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CURATING amp CONSERVINGNEW MEDIA ART QampA
864 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN 867 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
MICHAEL CENTURY QampA 872 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
DAVID MARTIN 876 Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632
BOB STEIN 878 Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088
MARK GREEN 882 Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SAUL GREENBERG 887
Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SIMON POPE 891 Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632
JENNY MARKETOU 902 Growing Things 983090983088983088983088
ANNE NIGTEN 904 Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089
STEPHEN MARSH 908 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
JONAS HEIDE SMITH 913 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
EDWARD SHANKEN 920 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
FATOUMATA KANDEacute SENGHOR 926 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
SYLVIANE DIOP 929 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW 936 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
CHRISTINE MORRIS 939 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
GEORGE BALDWIN 941 Bridges I I 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE 947 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
LYN BARTRAM 952 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
SHA XIN WEI 956 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
KIM SAWCHUK 959 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
ldquoWHAT IS COLLABORATIONrdquo QampA 962 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
PARTICIPATECOLLABORATE ROUNDTABLECHAIRED BY BERYL GRAHAM
966 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
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7
Production amp
Distribution inModels of CollaborativePracticeSARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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HE BANFF NEW MEDIA INSIUE DIALOGUES
EDIED BY SARAH COOKamp
SARA DIAMOND
EUPHORIAD YSOPIA
B983137983150983142983142 C983141983150983156983154983141 P983154983141983155983155 R983145983158983141983154983155983145983140983141 A983154983139983144983145983156983141983139983156983157983154983137983148 P983154983141983155983155
amp
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Contents
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PRODUCTION ampDISTRIBUTION INMODELS OFCOLLABORATIVEPRACTICE7
SARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK 820 Introduction
ERIC KLUITENBERG 842 Notes on the Nature of Collaboration and Networks
SU DITTA 856 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
ALEXEI SHULGIN 858 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
NINA CZEGLEDY 860 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CURATING amp CONSERVINGNEW MEDIA ART QampA
864 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN 867 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
MICHAEL CENTURY QampA 872 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
DAVID MARTIN 876 Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632
BOB STEIN 878 Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088
MARK GREEN 882 Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SAUL GREENBERG 887
Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SIMON POPE 891 Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632
JENNY MARKETOU 902 Growing Things 983090983088983088983088
ANNE NIGTEN 904 Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089
STEPHEN MARSH 908 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
JONAS HEIDE SMITH 913 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
EDWARD SHANKEN 920 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
FATOUMATA KANDEacute SENGHOR 926 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
SYLVIANE DIOP 929 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW 936 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
CHRISTINE MORRIS 939 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
GEORGE BALDWIN 941 Bridges I I 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE 947 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
LYN BARTRAM 952 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
SHA XIN WEI 956 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
KIM SAWCHUK 959 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
ldquoWHAT IS COLLABORATIONrdquo QampA 962 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
PARTICIPATECOLLABORATE ROUNDTABLECHAIRED BY BERYL GRAHAM
966 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
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7
Production amp
Distribution inModels of CollaborativePracticeSARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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Contents
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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PRODUCTION ampDISTRIBUTION INMODELS OFCOLLABORATIVEPRACTICE7
SARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK 820 Introduction
ERIC KLUITENBERG 842 Notes on the Nature of Collaboration and Networks
SU DITTA 856 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
ALEXEI SHULGIN 858 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
NINA CZEGLEDY 860 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CURATING amp CONSERVINGNEW MEDIA ART QampA
864 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN 867 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
MICHAEL CENTURY QampA 872 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
DAVID MARTIN 876 Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632
BOB STEIN 878 Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088
MARK GREEN 882 Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SAUL GREENBERG 887
Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SIMON POPE 891 Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632
JENNY MARKETOU 902 Growing Things 983090983088983088983088
ANNE NIGTEN 904 Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089
STEPHEN MARSH 908 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
JONAS HEIDE SMITH 913 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
EDWARD SHANKEN 920 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
FATOUMATA KANDEacute SENGHOR 926 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
SYLVIANE DIOP 929 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW 936 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
CHRISTINE MORRIS 939 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
GEORGE BALDWIN 941 Bridges I I 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE 947 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
LYN BARTRAM 952 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
SHA XIN WEI 956 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
KIM SAWCHUK 959 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
ldquoWHAT IS COLLABORATIONrdquo QampA 962 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
PARTICIPATECOLLABORATE ROUNDTABLECHAIRED BY BERYL GRAHAM
966 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
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7
Production amp
Distribution inModels of CollaborativePracticeSARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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PRODUCTION ampDISTRIBUTION INMODELS OFCOLLABORATIVEPRACTICE7
SARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK 820 Introduction
ERIC KLUITENBERG 842 Notes on the Nature of Collaboration and Networks
SU DITTA 856 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
ALEXEI SHULGIN 858 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
NINA CZEGLEDY 860 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CURATING amp CONSERVINGNEW MEDIA ART QampA
864 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN 867 Curating and Conserving New Media Art 9830899830979830971048632
MICHAEL CENTURY QampA 872 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
DAVID MARTIN 876 Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632
BOB STEIN 878 Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088
MARK GREEN 882 Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SAUL GREENBERG 887
Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088
SIMON POPE 891 Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632
JENNY MARKETOU 902 Growing Things 983090983088983088983088
ANNE NIGTEN 904 Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089
STEPHEN MARSH 908 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
JONAS HEIDE SMITH 913 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
EDWARD SHANKEN 920 The Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091
FATOUMATA KANDEacute SENGHOR 926 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
SYLVIANE DIOP 929 Skinning Our Tools 983090983088983088983091
AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW 936 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
CHRISTINE MORRIS 939 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
GEORGE BALDWIN 941 Bridges I I 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE 947 Bridges II 983090983088983088983090
LYN BARTRAM 952 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
SHA XIN WEI 956 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
KIM SAWCHUK 959 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
ldquoWHAT IS COLLABORATIONrdquo QampA 962 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
PARTICIPATECOLLABORATE ROUNDTABLECHAIRED BY BERYL GRAHAM
966 ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
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7
Production amp
Distribution inModels of CollaborativePracticeSARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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7
Production amp
Distribution inModels of CollaborativePracticeSARA DIAMOND amp SARAH COOK
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
821
EUPHORIA amp DYSTOPIA THE BANFF NEW MEDIA INST ITUTE DI ALOGUES
Te first chapter of this book dealt with metadatamdashthe detailed way to find out aboutthe data of the dialogues themselves Here in the last chapter of the book we cometo the meta-topic of all of the dialogues of the Banff New Media Institute How do we produce and distribute new-media work and moreover how do we manage the
inevitable collaborations that result through working in this field At times during theediting of this text it has felt as if this chapter could be the entire bookmdashor rather asif everything in this book could fit into this thematic chapter (as such it has been tre-mendously difficult to choose the contents of this chapter and to edit it down to size)
Tis chapter also represents a more recent concern evidenced in the transcriptspredominantly dating from 983090983088983088983088 onwardmdashthe writing of histories of new-mediaproduction (Tis practice is now gaining ground internationally as organizationssimilar to Te Banff Centre publish decade-long anniversary anthologies and
conferences such as Media Art Histories which began at Banff as Refresh First
International Conference on the Histories of Media Art Science amp echnology (983090983088983088983093)increase their presence in academic circles) Examining the ldquohowrdquo ldquowhatrdquo andldquowhererdquo of new media is increasingly in vogue Writers are embracing material-ist approaches to technology and sociological approaches to studies of ldquothe labrdquoReflecting on the techniques of how work is made and shared is a crucial part ofthat history as Eric Kluitenbergrsquos intelligent essay suggests
WHO PRODUCES AND WHO DISTRIBUTES
Te Banff New Media Institute was always interested in hearing from people who were actively creating platforms for the production and distribution of new-mediacontent Similarly the sought to identify and share the best strategies for working together in networked environments online and offline As such thetranscripts in this chapter always have in the background the crucial question ofthe effects of the shifting spaces of cultural productionmdashincluding most criticallymuseums galleries the web media labs industry universities art and design insti-tutions and science labs
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
822
It is especially important that this chapter contains the voices of those present at theCurating and Conserving New Media workshop held in 9830899830979830971048632 as that was the first timethat museum professionals independent festival producers and curators met to chart
this new field of art production In her ldquopop-reportrdquo on the event curator Kathy RaeHuffman pointed out the difficulty of un-entangling production from distribution inthe new-media field
[Te workshop] centred on the issues of curating for the online environment Tis ldquohot topicrdquofrequently discussed informally among artists and at family gatherings of the Netcommunity hasbecome more important during the last years as more official institutions museums and state artsagencies are taking up residence on the World Wide Web Te irony is that many artists who haveestablished art websites have by default become curators and organizers of Netgalleries and defacto editors of online journalsmdashto bypass the Contemporary Art system that generally ignoresInternet as a serious artspace1
Tis event transcripts of which are in this chapter included a number of artistcuratorhybrid types presenting their ldquoplatformsrdquo for both the production and distribution ofnew-media projects It underscores the important place that the demonstration of workheld within the summits Many of these types of show-and-tell presentations aredifficult to reproduce in transcript form without audiovisual accompaniment and thusdonrsquot appear within this book but are best testified to in the reports on the events availa-ble in the archives For instance Martin Schmitz from the Europe-wide Hamburg-based artist project Van Gogh 2 discussed how one might create ldquothe ultimate museum
presence onlinerdquo in his description of a structure for the organization of information ldquothecontent management system () works between and to allow the creationof a presentation system Created as an online working environment for curators thepublic and artists it can be used with high-end office workstationsrdquo
In contrast to these platforms produced with easily available tools and softwareproducers were just as likely to present more ambitious far-fetched projectsHuffmanrsquos report states that
David Plant the representative of Silicon Valley North presented another model the SGI VirtualMuseum project Tis system with its 983090983088 erabyte trashcan does as Plant stated ldquojust about every-thing that can be done in digital technologyrdquo It requires
1 Te event took place from May 983090983093 to 983091983088 9830899830979830971048632 Te report available in the archives isdated June 9830901048632 9830899830979830971048632 and was originally published at httpwwwheisedebintpissuedl-print
cgiartikelnr=983092983089983089983092amprub_ordner=popampmode=print2 Van Gogh created numerous interactive and telecommunications-based works (both offline and as
broadcast works) that invited audience participation
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
823
an Onyx Reality Engine to run real-time but will allow detailed representation of masterartworks even to the level of artistic interpretation Plant demonstrated the system from videodocumentation showing how artworks could become a kind of ldquosettingrdquo for an animation andexaminations of the artistrsquos subject matter A test project now being created with the British
Museum the Virtual Museum is currently estimated to take approximately 983090983088 years tocomplete (and 983090983088 million British pounds) It will ultimately connect major museums through-out Europe3
With hindsight we now know that this system didnrsquot come into being as the growthof the World Wide Web continued to allow museums and all creative content produc-ers large and small to develop their own presences and individually authored platforms
PRODUCTION TOOLS OF THE TR ADE
Much of the discussion at the was held without knowing what tools wouldbe developed and how the landscape of new media might change but partici-pants often displayed an uncanny ability to describe these technologiesmdashwithsentiments that could be described as euphoric In the audio recordings we hearpeople talking about s without knowing what they would be called whileothers discuss how users navigate the interface of websites and physical objects without knowing that we would one day be living in ldquoan Internet of thingsrdquo Inthe dialogues there is a constant reflection on the tools of the trade available
and on the possibilities of designing new ones For instance dialogues at Banffconsidered how the collaborative nature of documentary (whether filmmak-ing or other forms of interactive documentary projects) could be strengthenedby digital tools Michael Moore whose documentaries are constructed throughdiscursive interaction with his subjects participated in Te Documentary Deluge
Whatrsquos Fuelling the Documentary Revival (983089983097983097983094) At Synch or Stream A Banff
SummitmdashA think-tank or networked audio and visual media (983089983097983097983097) Peter Wintonick provided a very early vision for the ways that digital technologies
would provide avenues for citizen journalism and inclusive documentary
Prior to the founding of the in spring of 983089983097983097983092 Te Banff Centre held a designsymposium on authoring tools4 Te intention of the event was to challenge the
3 Kathy Rae Huffman ldquoCurating and Conserving New Media Pop-reportrdquo (report Banff New MediaInstitute 9830899830979830971048632)
4 Te User Symposium on Authoring ool Design took place across four days from March 983090983095 to 983091983088
983089983097983097983092 as part of the New Media Research Project of Te Banff Centre It was led by Sara Diamondand Kevin Elliott and was structured around seminars for professionals in film video andother ldquorelated time-based mediumsrdquo
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
824
limited set of tools on the market and insist on an artist-driven design process Tereport on the event prepared by Don Romanchuk retells the story of the three mainissues facing new-media project production 983089) the need for an authorrsquos workshop
toolkit 983090) the desire for adaptable interfacesmdashboth for creators and for end users and983091) a consideration of authoring grammarsmdashhow to recognize that new-media creative work might require different approaches than work based on narrative oral traditionor documentary Tis early groundwork on the question of how one might create newtools for use within the new-media landscape was crucial to later discussions at the Indeed looking back some items on the ldquowish listrdquo for laboratories and new-media production toolkits still seem very current
bull Feature a visual interface
bull Involve time as a key component
bull Allow for scalability
bull Be user-definable and configurable with multiple grammars
bull Support network communication
bull Allow prototyping with feedback and debugging
bull Be cross-platform compatible with all current media formats and standards through
appropriate input and output devices
bull Allow accessconnection to existing production tools
bull Be transparent and non-obtrusive
bull Allow for copyright-free run-time versions
bull Be able to make templates and recycle projects
bull Be configurable to run on affordable systems and
bull Be kept up to date with the evolution of technologies5
In this chapter a number of people report on the emergence of laboratories providinghistorical context and contemporary analysis (and often applying science and technology-
studies methodologies to understand how laboratories evolved) these speakers also explorehow the material conditions of production in the laboratories influences the work made inthem Michael Century a key figure in the founding of new-media research at Banff wasinvited to give the keynote at Bridges A Conference about Cross-Disciplinary Research and
Collaboration (983090983088983088983090) in which he reflected on the history of art and science lab collabora-tions in ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo6 Similarly at the Human Generosity Project ools Tat Enable
Collaboration summit (983090983088983088983089) Anne Nigten
5 From the report on the User Symposium on Authoring ool Design available in the Archives6 See the Bridges discussion on page 1048632983095983090 See also Michael Century Pathways to Innovation in Digital
Culture (New York Rockefeller Foundation Arts and Humanities Section 983089983097983097983097)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
825
formerly a lab manager at V983090_ in Rotterdam examined multi-user environments anddiscussed how to muster collaboration in productive online spaces
In reading the dialogues it quickly becomes apparent that inquiries about toolsand the design process (and the labs in which production takes place) are more than justtechnical questionsmdashthey are tied into entire belief systems methodologies and ways of working Tis is perhaps best demonstrated in presentations from the summit Skinning
our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091) which picked up the challenge of
design-specific versus generic tools and interfaces Playing on the vocabulary of computergames organizers asked ldquoCan we change the skins that our technologies wear Whattools need to be generic or more to the point what components of tools can be generic what elements adaptive and sensitive to the context of use What does localization reallymean or require What tools should be built from the bottom up within a specificcontext How can that be supportedrdquo7 Tis summit was developed with the School ofCreative Media Hong Kong University the University of California San Diego Calit983090and the Aboriginal New Media workshop organizing team at Te Banff Centre
7 From the agenda for Skinning our ools Designing for Context and Culture (983090983088983088983091)
Michael Century presenting the history of ldquocollaboratoriesrdquo Bridges A Conference about Cross-
Disciplinary Research and Collaboration 983090983088983088983090 Courtesy Te Banff Centre
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
826
Skinning Our ools was rife with case studies from around the world each of whichhighlighted artistsrsquo efforts to develop participatory approaches to technology innovationMervin Jarman8 then part of the ndashbased artist group Mongrel along with his col-
laborators Camille urner9
and Sonia Mills10
presented Te Container Project (excerptedin Chapter 983093) Aboriginal artist and curator Skawennati ricia Fragnito described herongoing collaborative project Cyber PowWow a co-production Fatoumata KandeacuteSenghor and Sylviane Diop discussed labs in Senegal (these talks along with the ques-tion and answer session which followed are excerpted in this chapter) An artistrsquos talk byPaul Vanouse11 examined ldquoGenome echnologies Profiling Identity and Resistancerdquo inhis practice While artistsrsquo works were inspirational and deeply context-specific engineersalso shared their understanding of the challenges of designing tools and platforms for
individual or collective participation For example in his presentation excerpted in thischapter Stephen Marsh12 questioned the idea of specific tools versus inclusive mass-produced tools in which the interface would adapt to individuals in very precise waysmdasha notion now prevalent in inclusive design
Participants at Skinning our ools considered whether collaboration is culturally medi-ated and site-specific and wondered whether technology and interfaces might needto adapt within and across cultures Tis continued a research thread within the that addressed the impact of bringing generic tools into specific contexts and adapting
thesemdashboth in terms of cultural impact and in terms of viable business models
DISTRIBUTION PERFORMING NEW-MEDIA WORK
Living Architectures Designing for Immersion and Interaction (983090983088983088983088) was a large partof the Banff New Media Institutersquos Human Centred Interface Project13 which began with the 983090983088983088983088 summit Emotional Computing Performing Arts Fiction and Interactive
Experience (described in part in the introduction to Chapter 983093)
Emotional Computing was an early summit that brought together presenters who were international artists from theatre choreography music design computerscience engineering and performance theory A group of artists from the Big City
8 Director Te Container Project
9 Media and Performance ArtistCultural Producer10 Associate Te Container Project
11 Assistant Professor of Art University at Buffalo12 Research Officer National Research Council Institute for (Ottawa)13 Te research initiative was made possible through the support of the Alberta Science and Research
Authority Research Development Initiative Out of the Box and in association with elefilmCanada Canada Montage Silicon Valley North Canada Council for the Arts and other partners
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
827
Visual Arts residency whose work looked at emotion identity and perfor-mance joined the summit Te premise of the event was to explore the waysin which the canon of performing arts and performance practices provided an
invaluable resource from which to build next-generation new media Tesepractices combine physical discipline with improvisation and narrativemdashoftenachieving a sense of presence and provoking emotional experiences for theartist the participant and the audience Performancemdashwith its emphasis onldquolivenessrdquo and simultaneitymdashhas a long history of combining individual andcollaborative modes of production and distribution
One set of researchers produced experiments in online real-time improvisational
theatre Tey considered the ways in which narratives unfolded as well as the ways in which performers and audiences engaged or failed to engage Te performing arts havea long tradition at Te Banff Centre and were explored at the event by the leaders ofthese Banff programs on panels such as ldquoLegaciesrdquo For instance Keith urnbull (wholed the Teatre Arts program) and Richard Armstrong provided their views aboutthe impact of digital culture on live performance Lizbeth Goodman14 drew from herhistory of online Shakespeare and improvisation to discuss the ways that users andaudiences can collaborate perform and analyze stories both live and online
Other panels included choreographer Susan Kozel who discussed character devel-opment through abstract interactions Bernie Roehl of the University of Waterloo who had created avatar-based interactive online theatre and Catherine Ikam whoseuncanny virtual-reality faces projected into the room appeared to be followingaudiencesrsquo movements with their eyes while responding to their facial expressionsDuring one of the evenings Adrienne Jenik 15 created an online theatre event enti-tled Desktop Teatre which was made up of a series of events that connected actorsonline through virtual performances Another online theatre presentation consisted
of documentation from Desert Rain Blast Teoryrsquos lauded immersive-theatre pieceTese events were contrasted with live presence as Maurice Yacowar16 read from hisnovel Te Bold estament and his work-in-progress Te Sopranos on the Couch17
14 Director Researcher and Senior Lecturer the Institute for New Media Performance School ofPerforming Arts University of Surrey
15 Visual Arts Department University of California San Diego and Assistant Professor of Computerand Media Arts
16 Dean of Fine Arts University of Calgary17 Maurice Yacowar Te Bold estament (Calgary Bayeux Arts 983089983097983097983097) Te Sopranos on the Couch
Analyzing rsquos Greatest Series (New York Continuum 983090983088983088983090)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
828
Te enduring elements of narrative and emotional engagement across media began toemerge through these comparisons of form
ldquoOral cultures storytelling roots processes and interactionsrdquo were valued in relation tonew media and online experiences with a diverse group of Aboriginal artistsmdashincludingElaine Bomberry18 Te Banff Centrersquos Marrie Mumford19 and Lee Crowchild20mdashpre-senting their approaches Visual artists provided a critical perspective on emotionallyengaged performances For example Eric Maillet responded to the concept of presence with a discussion of ldquodeceptive information and dysfunctionrdquo Jason Bowman presentedhis work in the context of ldquomisrecognition blind and deaf interactionsrdquo suggesting thatthe Internet provided unexpected mediated performances when technology intervened
to contradict artistsrsquo intentions in exciting ways Patricia McLaughlin focused on thehumour of online performance Web artist Ursula Endlicher challenged the viability ofperformance on the web British choreographer Susanne Clausen and artist Pavlo Kerestydiscussed other kinds of disruptions through their performances which they undertookin unexpected places describing them as ldquoa stream of film and performance images [that]crash choreographed into a critical sphererdquo An Emotional Computing panel chaired byCelia Pearce and Sara Diamond explored changes in the practice of narrative writingand directing in relation to online presence focusing on tools and enabling environ-ments It included a prescient presentation by Bob Stein21 (excerpted on page 10486329830951048632) about
ldquotalking booksrdquo and tools to build deep narrative interaction based on story22 At elus
Presents Out of the Box Te Future of Interface (9830899830979830971048632) David Martin presented very earlyintelligent-whiteboard technology
Both Living Architectures and Emotional Computing sought to bring together artists engi-neers and designers in order to develop shared approaches to the problems of designinghighly responsive spaces contexts and their contents Living Architectures consideredtools for this from every possible angle intelligent software and surfaces network capa-
bilities microwave and cellular technologies motion-sensing systems Internet architec-tures satellite communications projection and neural networks Questions includedldquoCan we develop a shared protocol How can we create affordable environments that can
18 Aboriginal Radio Producer and Artist19 Teatre Producer Artistic Director of Aboriginal Arts20 Dancer Games Developer21 Nightkitchen22 Peter Ride then Artistic Director of 983090 discussed the ways in which curatorial practices were
shifting to facilitate the presentation of virtual reality and immersive interactive works Frank
Boyd Director of Unexpected Media and Future Change for the provided an overview of newdevelopments in interactive television
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
829
link together and support creative projects and learning What are the applications forthese environments How can artists designers architects and software creators build acloser alliance Where do these design projects fit in the world of public and private art
Should spaces create context or be content-ladenrdquo23
At Living Architectures University of Calgary computer scientist Saul Greenberg aregular presenter at events provided a suite of networked tools and Universityof Alberta computer scientist Mark Green shared his work in building collaborative virtual environments (both talks are excerpted in this chapter) Artists conceived ofidiosyncratic collaborative tools For example at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Brazilianartist Artur Matuck presented an early whimsical mash-up word project in which
individuals contributed words that were then remixed24
REMIX ING CULTURE COLL ABORATING ONLINE
Te increasing ease of producing and distributing media with accessible online tools was also a constant topic of discussions at Banff For a brief period at the turn of thecentury streamed media provided a burst of exciting alternate culture mirroring thepirate-radio movement of bygone days Tese events occurred well before Youubeand were a precursor to the popularity of online video that dominates the current
period Synch or Stream focused on the accelerated phenomena of streamed mediamdashin particular audio video and text on the World Wide Web It consolidated theburgeoning culture of streamed audio and video on the net considered technical andpolicy issues and assisted in the development of emerging creative forms It consid-ered streaming as a means to engage with subcultures and saw new forms of audioand video access bringing ldquoimmersion expression and interactionrdquo
Te event was jointly chaired by Susan Kennard Heath Bunting and Yvanne Faught
and the key questions asked were ldquoWhat do we mean by streamed media What are therelationships between converging media new forms of creativity and new economies What are the challenges for current media What are the challenges for the Internet as we know it Who are the audiencesusersplayers What are the forms of literacy andcompetency needed to succeed What are the design equity and policy challenges What concepts describe the practicerdquo25
23 From the agenda for Living Architectures (983090983088983088983088)24 See httpelenescoms983088983097mamfinal_paperhtml for a recent variation on Matuckrsquos early work25 From the agenda for Synch or Stream (983089983097983097983097)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
830
Panels mixed and matched artists and community radio activists providing asample of international efforts For example Susan Kennard Heath Buntingand Yvanne Faught had established Radio983097983088 a low-band and streamed-radio
environment that would house resident artists and provide a platform for musicsound art and commentary at Banff Rachel Baker discussed Backspace an artistsrsquospace in London that acted as a gallery lounge and resource centre and had builta streamed radio venue Artists and technicians had quickly created new tools thatallowed programming to be automated and shared Honor Harger representedr a d i o q u a l i a and spoke about ldquoNew Relations with New Events Participatory Audiences Interventionsrdquo Tomax Kaulmann of Radio Internationale Stadt(Berlin) had created a site to aggregate and stream music from the European
alternate music scene and audio programs produced by other cultural institutionsthrough his presentation he demonstrated how his work sought to provide thesepractitioners with a platform imothy Childs a former specialist hadcreated Oz Media which was capable of streaming images over the Internet Jason Lewis of Interval Research demonstrated his text graffiti technologies whichallowed multiplayer real-time interactions with text over the Internet
In a panel entitled ldquoTeorizing the Future Understanding Streaming Impacts Ideasand the Design of the Net Economy Democracy SynchronousAsynchronousrdquo
Martha Wilson founder of Franklin Furnace described her groundbreaking work in wholly transferring a physical performance art centre onto the Internet Case studiesfeatured streamed events such as Ken Gregoryrsquos Under the Influence of Ether AbbiePhilliprsquos groundbreaking commercial work with film television and music on the web and Mark Morrisrsquos Te Raven King a live and online childrenrsquos opera MelaniePrintup Hope also shared her online video work Other sessions included practicalinstruction on how to begin a streamed-radio station
INEVITABLE COLLABORATIONS
Some of the discussions that came up in the previous chapter (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) arealso hinted at here in terms of thinking not only about how to produce but alsohow to promote new-media work to audiences and consumers Tis raises questionsof how exactly producers think of the audiencemdashas an interactant an observer or aparticipant Te exchange economics in terms of gifts comes up often when artistsclash with more commercially driven software producers as we hear in the voices ofparticipants speaking from the floor after the presentation from artist Simon
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
831
Pope at Interactive Screen (9830899830979830971048632) Tis clashing of methodologies is the impetus forcollaboration and as the moved through the post dot-com crash of the early983090983089st century more and more people came to the summits to seek out collaborators
Eventually collaboration became a topic of the summits themselves (and also in partled to the introduction of a fourth day at the end of each summit when participants were given workshop time to develop ideas more fully)
Occurring after the dot-com crash and September 983089983089 983090983088983088983089 Bridges was a broad-ranging academic conference supported by the Rockefeller Foundation the NationalResearch Council of Canada the Alberta Science and Research Authority ()elefilm the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council () and Bell
GlobeMedia as well as by the federal and Alberta governments It was intended as anexploration of the implications of new trends in research practicesmdashespecially in thedomain of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists humanities and social-science researchers scientists and engineers It interrogated the questions ldquowhat is artrdquoand ldquowhat is sciencerdquo understanding these as different communities and cultures ofpractice with something to say to each othermdashif they could find a shared language Itincluded a significant number of scientists and had a truly international outreach
Te organizers argued that convergence manifested less through technology and
more through the activities of people enabled by technologies Te cultures that werebrought to the table by researchers acted as mediating factors sometimes inhibitingand sometimes enabling collaboration Bridges pinpointed collaboration itself as askill to be identified studied and learned Te event provided both plenary lecturesand a series of case studies in order to propose practical strategies for including col-laboration as a vital component in education creation and research Te objective wasto identify best practices amplify existing networks and stimulate the developmentof othersmdashall to provide a means of productive communication for those engaged in
the reality of collaborative research Bridges included explorations of languagemdashitsunderstanding and misunderstandingmdashas a critical factor in the success of collabora-tion Te emphasis for Bridges was cultural context as well as ethical and aestheticdimensions and the practical challenges of research collaboration
Te panels were provocative and allowed researchers to publicly interrogate theirpast practices One of a series of panels entitled ldquoTe Science of CollaborationmdashMethodsrdquo asked ldquoWhat models do we use when we build collaborative environmentsLaboratories Corporations Networks Open Source Software Peer-to-Peer
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
832
Universities Collectives Historical Cultural Modelsrdquo 26 Co-moderated by Susan
Bennett and Sara Diamond it included cognitive scientist Brian Fisher27 whoargued for the need to break the boundaries of cognitive science and to find knowl-
edge ldquofrom a variety of fieldsrdquo so as to allow ldquofocus and intellectual rigour to emergefrom praxis rather than disciplinerdquo Fisherrsquos talk is excerpted in this chapter He wasfollowed by Simon Pope who asked the challenging question ldquoopen-source andfree-software lsquomovementsrsquomdashare these software-development models really mod-els for artistic collaboration Who do these models excluderdquo Tis presentation isincluded in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo)
Te panel ldquoAboriginal CollaborationsmdashWithin and Between Nations Within and
Between Culturesrdquo was co-moderated by Sara Diamond and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew It featured Christine Morris28 an Indigenous scholar who spoke aboutldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnologicalHegemoniesrdquo Morris explained concepts of copyright and legal responsibility inrelation to knowledge generation and transfer within research practices in her com-munity stating that
Symbolic forms of communication like [computer games] convey the Indigenous intellec-tual reality much better than the linear written text I eagerly anticipate the development ofanything that resembles our symbolic forms of knowledge transfer which foster interactivethought processes However the transferring of this knowledge needs to be through osmosisnot through Western formalized ldquoteachingrdquo methods in which the Indigenous student is pre-sumed intellectually handicapped the moment he walks in the room 29
Tis panel is excerpted on page 983097983091983097
Bridges included a mini-festival of collaborative works Te first evening was theresult of submissions and the second featured a selection of artists and projectscurated by Sarah Cook Tis latter evening also featured a dialogue on the ethics
of collaboration with artists Alison Craighead and Jon Tomson (who practiceas Tomson amp Craighead) and American artist Jon Winetmdashartists who all workbetween the art world industry and academia Both evenings of Bridges
26 ania Fraga da Silva (Professor Department of Visual Arts Universidade de Brasiacutelia Brazil) gave hercase study for Aurora 983090983088983088983089 Fire in the Sky and Hekuras Tese were collaborative projects each tryingto gather ldquoAncient and Scientific Knowledge New Aesthetics New Practices Across Culturesrdquo
27 Associate Director Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre University of BritishColumbia
28 Arts Queensland Queensland University 29 Christine Morris ldquoIndigenizing the Effects of Global CulturemdashOral Cultures and echnological
Hegemoniesrdquo (lecture Bridges 983090983088983088983090)
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
833
included examples of work and analysis as well as discussions of the curatorialcontext for collaboration in art and technology Te presence of artworks and theirmakersmdashboth artists and scientistsmdashgrounded Bridges in the reality of creative
practice
Te Beauty of Collaboration Manners Methods and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) summit was cre-ated in collaboration with (a sociology institute led by Nina Wakeford at theUniversity of Surreyrsquos School of Human Science)30 and brought together expertise incomputer-supported cooperative work computer-supported communities collabora-tive videoconferencing online discussion chat and design systems agent technologieshuman-computer interface design distance learning online moderation and perfor-
mance While the intention was to discover a new aesthetic that derived from collabo-ration in new-media contexts there were a wide variety of key questions including
bull Can we design ldquoarchitectures of trustrdquo
bull What is a computer-supported community
bull How do online communities differ from parallel physical communities
bull Can machines and software be designed to facilitate human collaboration with intelligent
tools
bull How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms
bull Are new kinds of knowledge generated that have not been accessible before
bull Are there new forms of expression and new identities that result
bull What can we learn from historical precedents such as chat spaces role-playing
environments media-production cooperatives artistsrsquo collaborations and
scientistsrsquo collaborations
bull What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration
bull What are the protocols of these collaborative systems and tools
bull Do needs differ across cultures or disciplines
bull Can consensus bring about beautybull How do we evaluate cooperative initiatives
bull Is ldquocollaborationrdquo always a positive word or value
bull What about individual achievement
bull Can participatory cultures be built 31
30 Troughout the summit research fellow Kris Cohen and director Nina Wakeford presentedpuzzles projects and analysis that were meant to challenge assumptions about the meaning or ease ofcollaboration which supported cooperative processes Cohen and his sometime collaborator artist BenCoode-Adams suggested new aesthetic forms that resulted from their work together
31 From the outline for the Beauty of Collaboration summit
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
834
Michael Boycersquos report from that summit provides thoughtful evidence of thecomplex mediations that technologies enact within the creative production processand also makes reference to the gnarly nature of dialogues that try to understand
humans and machines as actors within the network of production And what is perhaps interesting here is not so much the old chestnut concerning whetheror not machines can harbour or allow for human relations (forcing human network relationsinto restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables) because human relationsare always and already that which are object and subject of and to a mechanics (machinerytechnology) the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined (those paradigms andpattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to thosemodels strategies etc which face-off within human interaction according to a measure oftheir own abstraction and practical viability)mdashbut rather how the mechanics (engineers workings design etc) of human relations are applicable to and manageable within a socialproduction of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics morehuman)32
Edward A Shanken33 provided a thorough overview of the emergence of collabo-rative practices in new media making reference to collaborative practices in theproduction models of previous media On a panel comparing local dialogues anddistributed dialogues Janet Abrams34 a renowned moderator shared her techniquesfor eliciting meaningful debate whether online or face-to-face
Tere was a fair amount of repartee between artists and scientists as they exploredcollaborative approaches and protocols Lyn Bartram35 explored her systematic inves-tigation of the relationships between cognitive processes and collaboration interfacesas well as the challenges of creating systems to evaluate collaboration In their paperldquoArtistic Virtual Environments Analysis and Creation through CollaborationrdquoGregory Little36 Brian Betz37 and Dena Eber38 presented a parallel set of technologiesand collaboration methods as well as criteria for evaluating success In his keynoteaddress Ron Baecker39 leader of the collaborative engineering consortium Network
32 From Boycersquos unpublished report on Te Beauty of Collaboration33 Ten Executive Director Information Science and Information Studies Duke University 34 Director Design Institute University of Minnesota 35 Researcher CoLab and Faculty of Computer Science Simon Fraser University 36 Visiting Assistant Professor Digital Arts School of Art Bowling Green State University 37 Associate Professor Psychology Stark Campus Kent State University 38 Chair and Associate Professor Digital Arts Bowling Green State University 39 Bell University Laboratories Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Professor of Computer
Science University of oronto and Founder Knowledge Media Design Institute
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
835
for Effective Collaboration echnologies through Advanced Research ()presented a large suite of collaborative tools created for blended and distance learningand professional collaboration Te methods that scientists use to collaborate were
discussed and then compared to the ways that artists collaborate with the goal offinding shared approaches40
A panel that followed provided opportunities for artistscientist collaborators topresent their approaches via case studies41 Cynthia Pannucci founder and director ofNew Yorkndashbased Art amp Science Collaboration Inc () set the stage by explainingthe ArtSci an online tool that profiles artists and scientists who are interestedin collaboration and provides case studies of collaborations this was an early social
media effort to facilitate matchmaking and new projects
holds regular confer-ences at which the resulting projects are exhibited and discussed Following Pannuccirsquosaddress two enduring collaborations were presented Alan Dunning 42 and Paul Woodrow 43 have worked together for over a decade on the Einsteinrsquos Brain project inconcert with neural scientist Morley Hollenberg44 Tis virtual- and augmented-realityproject investigates its mediumrsquos potential as a filter reflecting the ldquointerior processthat makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to a worldrdquo Te secondteam was represented by computer scientist and statistician Mark H Hansen45 whotogether with composer Ben Rubin has created compelling installationsmdashsuch as
Listening Post mdashthat process Internet communication text messages and images Tesummit also included dialogues with Roel Vertegaal46 and Saul Greenberg47 whichexplored the underlying technologies that support collaborative production and workprocesses from both an engineering and a perspective
Peter Visentin and Gongbing Shan both from the University of Lethbridge setup a motion-capture system in the dance studios providing summit partici-pants with the opportunity to understand how the system produces images Teir
research makes use of motion capture to help musicians and dancers heal them-selves after stress injuries and learn new forms of movement through feedback
40 Speakers included Dana Plautz (Manager Research Communications Intel Research) and PierreBoulanger (Professor Department of Computing Science University of Alberta)
41 Chaired by Kris Cohen and Sara Diamond42 Academic Head Media Arts and Digital echnologies Alberta College of Art + Design43 Professor Faculty of Fine Art University of Calgary 44 See httppeopleucalgaryca~einbrainnewmainhtml for details of this project45 Professor Department of Statistics 46 Professor Human-Computer Interaction and Director Human Media Lab Queenrsquos University 47 Professor Computer Science University of Calgary
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
836
Isabel Rocamora gave a compelling presentation of her anti-gravity choreographyand her collaborative works with Sophy Griffiths which explore the body in sus-
pension as located in architectural and historical sites Teir works ldquouse the hangingbody and its lsquosubversionrsquo of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of conscious-ness paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rationalrdquoRocamorarsquos practice whether in filmed interpretations of her works or in theirperformance required trust and thus provoked a discussion on risk-taking48
Tere were reports from two highly collaborative projects with links to the Te high-speed network had provided funding for educational research
projects that tested and extended the capacities of the network Te Rural AdvancedCommunity of Learners () project led by C Montgomerie was estab-lished to research the development and delivery of online curricula to rural andremote communities in northern Canada49 Te project provided a dynamic
48 Other contributors to Te Beauty of Collaboration were Michael Bussiegravere (Sonic Design InteractiveInc) Maja Kuzmanovic (Artistic Coordinator Fo) Nik Gaffney (echnology CoordinatorFo) Alok Nandi (Media Author and Artist) Ben Coode-Adams (Artefact) Kris Cohen() Jeanne Randolph (Psychoanalyst) Hans Samuelson (Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologique)and Magdalena Wesolkowska (Lecturer and Researcher University of Montreacuteal)
49 Other participants included Cathy King (Regional Manager Netera Alliance University of Alberta) and Bev Hilihorst (Principal Project Lead Fort Vermillion School District ProjectUniversity of Alberta)
Brainstorming session for the Global Heart Rate Project Mobile Digital Commons Network ( ) Design amp Engineering Workshop 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy of the
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
837
learning environment using Sonyrsquos multipoint video technology to provide asense of presence for learners in geographically separated and isolated classrooms who felt alienated from the teacher and from other students they could not see Te
Banff New Media Institute and the Aboriginal Arts program developed Aboriginalcontent and held real-time events with Aboriginal communities in the NorthTe created a series of Internet science and mathematics games for use inInternet-based grade 983089983088 and 983089983090 classes Tese were delivered over the Internet inrural Alberta Te intention of the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning ()project led by Janet Murphy was to research online educational collaboration50 Secondary-school teachers across Canada developed the curriculum together usingbroadband video Te contributed design expertise and facilitated the fine-
arts curriculum including online gallery critiques
A large part of this chapter is from the summit ParticipateCollaborate Reciprocity
Design and Social Networks (983090983088983088983092) which was a cumulative event that completed thersquos creation and maintenance of the New Media Collaboration Studies Network()51 funded by Tis project was intended to pull together researchersin the field of collaboration from around the world Te served as a plat-form for discussion reflection and exchange about various concepts and methods ofinterdisciplinary collaboration between art-based and science-based disciplines and
became the platform for the initiation of spin-off collaborative projects Collaborationitself had become not only a methodology and strategy of interdisciplinary researchbut also an object and subject of study As members of the interdisciplinary group were drawn from various geographic and work milieux (independent industryprivate and public institutions academia etc) and had different practices andknowledge one main concern emerged as pressing the use and (re)design of newtechnologies to address the complex issues of how to enable and enhance collabora-tive activities which are altering the way that work and research are conducted and
the way that collaborative knowledge is generated Other than studying collaborationthe network sought to understand how networks technologies and the use of vari-ous online tools and environments affect collaboration It also compared face-to-facecollaboration with technologically mediated contexts and networks endeavoured todetermine the ways in which collaborative environments could become enabling toolsfor other disciplines and designed an online environment for the
50 Collaborators in project included Karen Andrews (District echnology CoordinatorEdmonton Public Schools eleLearning Centre J Percy Page) and Sharon Friesen (Co-Founder
Galileo Educational Network of Alberta)51 Sara Diamond was the principle investigator for the and was assisted by Magdalena
Wesolkowska
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
838
Te network used qualitative assessment reflexive analysis and action-researchcase studies It researched in proximity to the National Science and
Engineering Research Council ()ndashfunded collaborative tool-developmentnetwork for this reason researchers from both networks converged on Banfffor the event52 Te summit was organized according to panels led by its four working groups Tese panels were ldquoCollaboration as Processrdquo ldquoCollaborativeool Evaluationrdquo ldquoCollaborative ool Designrdquo and ldquoCollaboration as CulturalProcessrdquo imes were also set aside for the working groups to meet face-to-faceto undertake research planning Te summit made use of a variety of tools in itsdeliverymdashfrom the AccessGrid multipoint videoconferencing tool to consumer-
grade technologies like iChat Tese tools made it possible to connectparticipants to the conference such as Nigel Gilbert in the United Kingdom andSha Xin Wei in the United States
Prior to arriving at ParticipateCollaborate international participants had joinedin an online file-sharing and chat tool where 9830921048632-hour time-limited discussionshad taken place At the beginning of the summit researchers discussed the differ-ences between collaboration and sociality Tis discussion considered the
52 Lyn Bartram played a major role in leading the conference and was active in both networks
Opening of Te Banff Centrersquos Advanced echnology Research () Visualization Lab Virtual Reality Graphics Lab and Collaboration Lab Banff 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
839
epistemic roots of collaboration and the negative connotations of the word inrelation to World War Useful taxonomies were mooted and analyses of thecharacteristics of different collaborative toolsmdashfrom blogs to whiteboardsmdashwere
discussed in presentations by Kim Sawchuk Lyn Bartram and Sha Xin Wei(excerpts of which are included in this chapter) Metrics for analyzing tools and ways of evaluating collaboration and usability were considered by participantsincluding Nigel Gilbert Lyn Bartram Brian Fisher and coordinatorand tool designer Karen Parker Tere were assessments of collaborative networks(such as the grid-computing project WestGrid53 the Mobile Digital CommonsNetwork and Netera 54) as well as assessments of physical infrastructure createdfor collaboration (such as le Socieacuteteacute des Arts echnologiques in Montreal55) with
commentary by Ron Wakkary
here was an effort to mix and match experiences as researchers DavidGeelan56 and Diana Domingues57 compared arts and educational infrastruc-ture for collaboration with comments from om Choi58 Nina Czegledy andSarah Cook An extensive discussion of the impact of mobile technologies oncasual and formal collaboration included comparisons of the United KingdomFinland Canada and Japan59 Another panel evaluated the role of play andpleasure within the collaborative process60 he turn toward both a collabora-
tive culture and open-source approaches provided ample fodder for dialogue A striking presentation by Brazilian researcher Hernani Dimantas describeda large-scale initiative to provide media and text literacy training using open-source software and recycled computers in Brazilian favelas61 An analysis of
53 Te panel included Brian Corrie (Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator Department of Physics West GridSimon Fraser University) Pierre Boulanger Maria Lantin Lyn Bartram and Sara Diamond
54 Cathy King Director of Member Services Netera Alliance (Edmonton)55
Reneacute Barsalo Director Development and Strategies56 Assistant Professor Department of Secondary Education University of Alberta57 Professor and Coordinator Universidade de Caxias do Sul58 Manager Digital Initiatives Science Alberta Foundation59 Tis panel included Michael Longford Sara Diamond on behalf of Minna arkka Drew Hemment
(Director Futuresonic University of Salford) and Juumlrgen Scheible (Project Coordinator andDoctoral Student Media LabMobile Hub University of Art and Design Helsinki) with commentsfrom Sandra Buckley (Adjunct Professor McGill University)
60 Te panel included Jeff Mann (Artist the Netherlands) Michelle eran (Media Artist theNetherlands) Robert F Nideffer Beryl Graham (then Senior Research Fellow New Media ArtUniversity of Sunderland) and Magdalena Wesolkowska
61 Dimantas is allied with Pontificia Universidade Catolica Te session facilitator (with presentation) was Susan Kennard Presenters included Ken Jordan (Editor PlaNetwork Journal ) and Jon Husband(Founder Wirearchy)
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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SARA D IAMOND amp SARAH COOK
840
participatory design methods62 as well as the value of sonification and visualiza-tion in building tools for collaboration rounded out the considerations of tools
An open-ended session led by Beryl Graham which is excerpted in this chapterconsidered ldquoime Scale and Space Factors Characteristics and axonomies Affecting Collaborationrdquo
It is valuable to remember that these summits occurred at Banff in the context ofthe labs and technology resources available to the Te Banff New MediaInstitute was a robust site of production with the co-production program evolv-ing into ndashhosted residencies over time Research and artistic production
occurred alongside co-productions carried out by small and midsized commercialcompanies In addition the hosted a myriad of programs designed to supportbusiness development and commercial market-oriented production as well as theInteractive Project Laboratory () a national network with the Canadian FilmCentre and lrsquo described in Chapter 983094 (ldquoMoney amp Lawrdquo) Much of this is takenup in Susan Kennardrsquos afterword to this book which describes how context shapedactivity at Banff after 983090983088983088983093
62 Te panel consisted of Paul Bason (Development Producer Culture Online) Vera Roberts KathrynSaunders and Stephen Marsh
Dr Maria Lantin Jeroen Keijer Anita Johnston and Di Mainstone during the Am-I-Able Project Lab 983090983088983088983092 Courtesy
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERIAL KNOWN AS DATA
841Te initiated and participated in important production-driven networks which allowed large projects to emerge over time and were able to seek substantive
resources Before the inception of the Media Arts created Nomad Net in 983089983097983097983091to support artistsrsquo work on the Internet and Banff was part of a casual national alli-ance of art and technology centres until 983089983097983097983093 Te engagement with WestGrida high-performance research network provided excellent contacts with computerscientists as well as engagement on the WestGrid Collaboration and VisualizationResearch Committee reinforcing on-campus activities WestGrid provided partialresource for the Labs Te was part of the European Networkfor Cyber which was affectionately nicknamed ldquordquo to recognize Banffrsquos
contribution Artistsrsquo projects were co-produced between European centres andBanff Te helped to initiate and lead two significant networks with consider-able research outputs the Mobile Digital Commons Network () and Am-I- Able (wearable and portable intelligent technologies)
As will be clear from the transcripts included in this chapter the alwayssought out new possibilities for and models of networked production as well asnew support systems for artists researchers and companies What the dialogueshere show is that these models while not perfect worked well when they were
iterative adaptive nomadic or networked
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
842
Notes on the Nature ofCollaboration and NetworksERIC KLUIENBERG
In many accounts of the nature of networked collaboration the implicit requirement offree exchange is too easily equated with altruistic behaviour and all its attendant ambiguous
connotations Collaboration is a good thing yet it cannot be realized without the willing-ness of all parties involved to share something of value Tis is a mode of operation thatrational economic activity tends to shy away from or to enshrine into formal agreementson what is exchanged in exchange for what In traditional economies such processes ofexchange are preferably organized through a monetary system of some sort rather than inone or the other modality of a barter exchange In the context of the new forms of socialorganization that emerge around network technologies things get even more complicatedOn one hand the transnational scale of social linkage makes traditional ways of building
trust and responsibility largely inapplicable as a basis for collaboration and free exchangeon the other the monetary model tends to discourage the most evident benefits of the newnetworked media its capacity to engender spontaneous or serendipitous forms of collabo-ration between people initiatives and organizations that did not know each other previously
Te ldquoproblemrdquo at hand is (once again) a classic example of Marcel Duchamprsquos magicalformula ldquothere is no solution because there is no problemrdquo63 Against the recurrent
63 Often paraphrased the comment is from a feature on Duchamp which appeared in Life magazine Winthrop Sargeant ldquoDadarsquos Daddy A new tribute is paid to Duchamp pioneer of nonsense andnihilismrdquo Life 983091983090 no 983089983095 (983089983097983093983090) 983091
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
843
emphasis on the altruistic impulse behind collaboration and free exchange I would like to present a series of arguments that position collaboration as a clearlyldquorationalrdquo practicemdashspecifically and especially in economic terms Rather than
locating the incentive for collaboration and exchange in altruistic ldquodo good andfeel goodrdquo sensations I would place it in the involved partiesrsquo mutual recognitionof shared self-interest and a general self-awareness of their inability to solve certainproblems alone Once such a rational basis for collaboration and (free) exchangeis established most of the complications mentioned above tend to dissolve Tisby no means makes the nature of collaboration and networking unproblematicHowever it is important to avoid approaching questions of collaboration freeexchange and networkingmdashand their tremendous rewards and infuriating difficul-
tiesmdashfrom the wrong premise
Te Banff New Media Institute has made a number of courageous attempts todelve into the dynamics and characteristics of collaboration and (digital) network-ing in order to find answers to the question of how to make it work It has alsoinvestigated the even more vexing question of how to stimulate collaboration in atechnologically networked social context between disciplines that traditionally feelthey have little to say to each other let alone sharemdashmost notably art and scienceBridging the ldquotwo culturesrdquo (as so named by C P Snow) 64 traditionally makes for
great spin and window-dressing operations However if one intends to makethe collaboration productive and meaningful while still taking both domains of theproduction of knowledge and experience seriously you are in for a heady ridehellip
Te Banff Centre seems ideally placed to let the fresh clean mountain air andthe impressive mountainous sceneries brighten up the troubled spirits of thoseprofessionals who wish to take this question seriously Literally elevated abovethe dreary concerns of daily life such gatherings as ParticipateCollaborate
Reciprocity Design and Social Network (983090983088983088983092) and Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics (983090983088983088983091) investigated the social legal economicand aesthetic dimensions of collaboration in a technologically networked socialcontext Te proceedings and results of these events can still be heard and read via the centrersquos online archive Here I would like to review some of the mostcrucial conceptual and practical questions and the problems related to the natureof networked collaboration in order to show how a rational understanding of theunderlying principles of sharing and free exchange can aid in evaluating the socialdynamics involved in these processes
64 C P Snow Te wo Cultures (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 983089983097983094983088)
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
844
COLL ABORATION AND THE NET WORKED FORM OF
SOCIAL ORG ANIZ ATION
Collaboration is a more or less ldquonaturalrdquo property of networked forms ofsocial organization Te remarkable development of networked multimediatechnologies into what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed an ldquointegratedmultimedia systemrdquo 65
has in recent years provided a strong impetus to developnetworked forms of social organization even though these social forms are
essentially ldquoextra-technologicalrdquo Te concept of (social) networks is extremelymultifaceted and ambiguous and in itself currently the topic of heated andfascinating debate However a pragmatic way of understanding this social formis to regard networks as partly formal and partly informal arrangements thatconsist of actors who work exchange and fight out conflicts among one otherand are usually organized around a shared interest issue or practice Networkscan be localized and can be established within a certain professional elitemdashbutmore often than not they are trans-local and operate across traditional
65 Manuel Castells Te Rise of the Network Society (Te Information Age Economy Society and Culture
Volume 983089) (Malden Blackwell Publishers 983089983097983097983094) 983091983097983095
Peter Visentin and University of Lethbridge Associate Professor Gongbing Shan demonstrate motioncapture Te Beauty of Collaboration Methods Manners and Aesthetics 983090983088983088983091 Courtesy of Te Banff Centre
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
845
professional boundaries What digital networking technology introduces to thenetworked form of social organization is (electronic) speed and accessibility within the digital network As a result the question of access to digital net-
works becomes increasingly important while the geophysical location of actorsbecomes relatively less important
All these factors play an important role in shaping the dynamics of electronically net- worked forms of collaboration including the formality and informality of relationsissue-based versus disciplinary ties the social stratification of network access located versus non-located and the introduction of electronic speed in a highly diversifiedsocial form Castells characterizes the combination of social networks with electronic
digital networking technology as the basis for a fundamental social transformation oftechnologically advanced societies In the conclusion of his now-famous 983089983097983097983094 bookTe Rise of the Network Society he summarizes this transformation as follows
As a historical trend dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasinglyorganized around networks Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and thediffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of pro-duction experience power and culture While the networking form of social organization has existedin other times and spaces the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis forits pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure66
It is the pervasiveness of networking technology ldquothroughout the entire social struc-turerdquo that legitimates us (for the time being) to restrict our attention to these elec-tronically enabled or supported forms of networked collaboration and exchange inorder to point out their social dynamics and their aesthetic qualities Indeed net- workingmdashespecially electronic networkingmdashis inconceivable without sophisticatedforms of collaboration if only because the network is constituted by the practicesof the actors involved in it and their practices are necessarily communication andexchange Tus collaboration could be considered the emergent property of the
networked form of social organization
COLL ABORATION AS A DESIGN PROBLEM
With the rise of the Internet as a public medium a series of absolutely remark-able forms of networked collaboration have established themselves newsgroupsand mailing lists online multi-user worlds the free software movement and alarge variety of community and special-interest networks Some of those golden
66 Ibid 983092983094983097
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
846
questionsmdashespecially in the age of dot-com mania (in the digital prehistoryof the late lsquo983097983088s) have been ldquoHow are those spaces of collaboration designedrdquoldquoWhat makes them workrdquo and of course ldquoHow can we replicate and repro-
duce themrdquo Interestingly most attempts at replicating such collaboratively builtstructures have been astonishingly unsuccessful Tis has certainly not been atechnological issue however While the nth remake of the online multi-user worldmdashwith even more advanced visual and interactive capabilitiesmdashwent down messaging notification networks dating services hipster invite-only net- works police-bashing networks67 underground artist gatherings and much morebecame immense successes building on a technologically desperately retrogrademedium Why
Itrsquos difficult to tell Te incorporation of into the corporate mould alreadylooks like a short-lived success Te commercial (re-)appropriation of her-alds the demise of as a socially vibrant media space it seems Te vanguardis already looking for a new niche unfettered by the mainstream and overpricedtransaction costs (letrsquos not forget that was once introduced as a free add-onservice for the mobile phone) Whatrsquos more virtually all of the examples givenabovemdashhighly successful collaborative electronically networked social formationsmdash were by and large undesigned (save a very basic message-carrying technological
infrastructure) Quite often these collaborative spaces came into being as whollyunintended side products next to or even in contradiction with the original pur-poses of the technological structures involved What this hints at is that the incen-tives for the creation of such collaborative structures are largely extra-technologicaldespite the fact that their manifestation takes shape within a decidedly techno-logical landscape It really begs the question in what media space will somethingsimilar start to happen next Skype
CONDIT IONS OF COLLABORATION
Successful collaboration is usually grounded in actual need and in an inability toresolve the problems at hand alone Unless part of some truly perverse schemethis can hardly be regarded a ldquodesign parameterrdquo It is in this most basic conditionthat the problems start for a utility-driven design In exceptional circumstancespeople might collaborate in creating something that they do not actually need
67 In Amsterdam Moroccan youths have successfully used closed networks to organize resistanceagainst police harassment
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3343
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
847
but most collaboration emerges out of necessity rather than choice or play Stillnot every attempt at collaboration out of real need is equally successful and thusit must be possible to distinguish particular conditions that are more conducive
to successful collaboration
Here some of the more ephemeral qualities of collaboration come to bear As inmany other processes of exchange (including monetary) it is clear that trust playsa crucial role in successful collaboration rust can be facilitated by a series of atti-tudes and patterns of behaviour that are often characterised as ldquoaltruisticrdquo such asgenerosity hospitality mutual respect or even friendship It is also easy to imaginehow these patterns of behaviour can facilitate successful cooperation
However progress in resolving complex problems is not always achieved by meansof agreement and consensus In fact the availability of different kinds of skill setsand different types of knowledge across and between different actors workingtogether may be a crucial factor leading to success in collaboration In such casesmisunderstanding and disagreement are almost necessarily built into the processfrom its inception If people are passionate about the things they are collaborat-ing on discussions tend to become heated quite easily Yet differentiation of skillsand knowledge and a strong investment in the problem at hand seem necessary
to reach a solution that one cannot bring about by oneself Agreement and trustalone can therefore not be considered sufficient conditions for making collabora-tion productive Unless one of the parties involved is prepared to enter into apurely (self-)exploitive relationship motives that are not purely altruistic must beinvolved in collaborative exchange
COLL ABORATION AND COOKING-POT MARKE TS
(GIVI NG IS NOT ALTRUI STIC)
One of the main reasons behind the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late rsquo983097983088s was the absence of a comprehensive monetary exchange mechanism for validatingonline transactions Still the early phase of the public Internet was characterizedby explosive value creation by its users Since much of this value creation happenedoutside of any monetary system of costs benefits and rewards these systems of value creation and exchange were quickly described as ldquogift economiesrdquo In thisearly phase of Internet development revenues were mainly made via facilitatory(infrastructure and access) and secondary derivative services
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3443
N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
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7
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SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
848
Te emphasis on ldquogiftrdquo as concept to describe non-monetary value transac-tions may have given the wrong idea about these processes of exchange Even ifmonetary validation mechanisms are absent the actors engaged in these exchange
processes make clear rational cost-benefit judgements Economist Rishab AiyerGhosh has written one of the most illuminating analyses to date of the rationalbasis underlying free-exchange processes and gift economies on the InternetIn his essay ldquoCooking-Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in FreeGoods and Services on the Internetrdquo he uses the analogy of a cooking pot wheredifferent ingredients must be brought together to create a tasty dish68 In a cook-ing pot however the value of what comes out is roughly average to what wentin (everyone contributes a certain ingredient) on the net the output is theoreti-
cally infinite since the marginal costs of creating extra copies are near zero Teeffort lies in the creation of the first copy By sharing this first copy every actorgets access to a much larger number of other originals practically for free Ghoshsummarizes this principle as follows
Te Internet cooking-pots hellip take in whatever is produced and give out their entire contents to whoever wants to consume Te digital cooking-pot is obviously a vast cloning machine dishingout not single morsels but clones of the entire pot But seen one at a time every potful of clonesis valuable to the consumer as the original products that went in Te key here is the valueplaced on diversity so that multiple copies of a single product add little valuemdashmarginal utilityis near zeromdashbut single copies of multiple products are to a single user of immense value If asufficient number of people put in free goods the cooking pot clones them for everyone so thateveryone gets far more value than was put in69
In the case of open-source software development (probably the most remarkablesocial experiment in collaborative digital networking thus far) the actors involvednot only get access to a whole series of finished products they can also accessthe very building blocks of those products and put them to their own use Tisprinciple has created an extraordinarily productive form of intellectual collabora-
tion and exchangemdashone that urgently needs to be extended into other fields ofknowledge production
Te prerequisite for any cooking-pot market on the Internet to keep on workingis that different actors continue to contribute new ingredients and recipes to
68 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh ldquoCooking Pot Markets An Economic Model for the rade in Free Goodsand Services on the Internetrdquo ldquordquoFirst Monday 983091 983091 (9830899830979830971048632) httpwwwfirstmondayorgissues
issue983091_983091ghosh69 Ibid
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3643
N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3743
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
849
the pot If no one puts in the pot dries up and will eventually be abandonedSecondly at some point the benefits reaped online and the digital productsand tools acquired must be translated into tangible results or monetary rewards
Even the most isolated digital hermits need to eat drink and put a roof overtheir heads Moreover they need electricity a machine to work on and a reli-able network connection Tis translation can happen via derivative servicesoffered on the basis of the obtained tools and products Backup from a culturalor academic institution is another form of translation and redistribution ofopen-source products is a third Regardless every collaborative network at somepoint needs to interface with the world around it if it wants to stay alive Stillnetworks can be tools of agency in dealing with real-world contexts that are
often not primarily benign
A cheerfully subversive initiative in this regard was the proposal for the Interfund net- work that was drafted at
festival in Riga Latvia in 983089983097983097104863270 Teproposal carried the slogan ldquoCreate Your Own Solutionsrdquo Interfund was intended asa self-help initiative that would allow independent digital-art initiatives to share skillsknowledge and facilities with other members Te condition for joining this collabora-tive structure was the willingness to share with other participants whatever could be of value to the other network members (except money) Te curious circumstance was
that the idea for the Interfund emerged after the artistsrsquo network for stream-ing media had received quite a large sum of prize money Te question was Who is thenetwork How should it divide this money or what should it do with it
Te Interfund proposal was to create a self-help micro-funding scheme EveryInterfund member could apply to the fund and be sure to get approval (basicrate 983076983089 per applicationproject) o further enhance the self-help characterof the fund it was decided that the letterhead and a template acceptance letter
would be made available for members to download so that they could drafttheir own acceptance letters thus reducing costs and administrative overhead tonear zero With this acceptance letter the Interfund members were sure to havean answer to the standard question that funders ask non-established culturalinitiatives ldquoAh interesting who else is supporting yourdquo Upon which the happyreply would be ldquoWell here is the acceptance letter of the Interfund Te otherapplications are still in processhelliprdquo
70 See httpasusilatinterfundhtml
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N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3843
N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
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THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4043
7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3643
N KATHER INE HAYLES
850
INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION (WIKIPEDIA VERS US
ldquoTHE ACADEMICSrdquo)
Te desire to extend the free-softwareopen-source model to other domains of knowl-edge production and intellectual labour can be summarized as the move from open-source to open content Much of this is highly problematic First and foremost thenew regimes of intellectual property create tremendous problems Beyond copyrightthey now also threaten the livelihood of open-source software development by incar-cerating innovative code in generic software patents Even though the author may havelong been declared dead by our great luminaries of critical thinkingmdashRoland Barthesand Michel Foucaultmdasheveryone knows that intellectual work intellectual production
and their markets are reputation economies the art world being by far the worst casein point
With the increasing dematerialization of artistic and academic practice informa-tion and reputation is about all that is left to trade for in these domains of ldquoimmate-rial labourrdquo Tis reality certainly contributes to a reticence to embrace open contentand free information exchange Locking up knowledge information and data in factincreasingly becomes the core activity of the information economy now the dominantsector of all developed and emerging economies around the planet Te problem of this
commodified model of intellectual production is that it squanders the most importantpotentials of digital networking making valuable knowledge widely and instantaneouslyavailablemdashespecially in places where such knowledge can mean the difference betweenlife and deathmdashand accelerating the growth of knowledge through the exchange ofinformation at electronic speed
Even though the odds seem bitterly against it initiatives such as Wikipedia and Usenetnewsgroups and discussion forumsmdashnot to mention countless online public-informa-
tion sourcesmdashdo manage to realize something of the emancipatory promise of digitalnetworking Invariably there has to be a trade-off between expert and layman knowl-edge and experience in these kinds of open collaborative environments and they callforth their own highly idiosyncratic management problems71
Impressive though the Wikipedia project in particular may be it still begs the ques-tion of whether or not the concept of public access to shared resources of informationand knowledge is the raison drsquoecirctre of the academic community After all academicactivity is 983097983097 percent funded via public means and provides a
71 See Wikipedia rsquos ldquoVillage Pumprdquo section httpenwikipediaorgwikiWikipediaVillage_pump
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3743
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3843
N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3943
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4043
7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3743
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
851
context for researchers in various domains to concentrate on their intellectual workrelatively unfettered by basic material concerns Te costs and investments hereas in the Internet cooking-pot markets involve the creation of original data and
knowledge Te costs of the subsequent distribution and proliferation of results arenegligible Te public-funding model should therefore not be discarded too easilyas a basis for productive intellectual collaboration Te social benefits can be nextto immeasurable and these remain an important consideration in sustaining theeffort In fact much of the work to be found on Wikipedia would be unthinkablehad the academic structure not been present in the background in the first place
OPTING OUT FROM NETWORKIN G TO NOTWORKING
Te idea of having to work together can be as frightening as the prospect of workingalone In his essay ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo media theorist Geert Lovink stud-ies the ldquotheory of free co-operationrdquo72 Drawing on the insights of the German mediacritic Christoph Spehr he maintains that the threat of being locked in or forced tocooperatemdashor more precisely of being unable to withdraw from cooperationmdashcanbe as detrimental to finding independence as the coercion of systems of direct con-trol as in the Fordist factory model According to Lovink every form of networkedcollaboration should have a clear exit strategy for its participants if it is to further the
goal of independence and freedom ldquoTe option to bail out is the sovereign act ofnetwork users Notworking is their a-priori the very foundation all online activitiesare built upon If you do not know how to log out yoursquore locked inrdquo 73
Lovink is developing this principle of ldquonotworkingrdquo to establish a starting pointfrom which to analyze those who refuse to collaborate who tend to be on theoutside Much of the theory of networked collaboration has erroneously focusedon the consensus modelmdashespecially the theory of virtual communitiesmdashand is
thus unable to deal adequately with issues of conflict and subversion Howeveras explained earlier conflict is almost necessarily built into any form of col-laboration that intends to bring about novel innovative resultsmdashresults that theindividual participants could not have brought about by themselves
Lovink observes that in mailing-list cultures for instance there is a high degree offlexibility and variability in the intensity of discussions and exchanges ypically
72 Geert Lovink ldquoTe Principle of Notworkingrdquo in Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (Amsterdam HvA Publicaties 983090983088983088983093) httpwwwhvanllectoratenol983088983097-983088983093983088983090983090983092-lovinkpdf
73 Ibid 983089983090
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3843
N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3943
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4043
7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3843
N KATHER INE HAYLES
852
lists are characterized by large numbers of non-active or non-contributing mem-bers (ldquolurkersrdquo) and long periods of dormancy followed by short bursts of intenseactivity in which a substantial percentage of the lurkers can suddenly enter the
debate Tis flexibility actually plays an important role in ensuring the sustain-ability of the network although this is not the only factor
SABOTAGE (VANDALISM A ND TROLLS)
Practically any networked and reasonably open collaborative initiative willeventually have to deal with the issue of vandalism and sabotage In the online world this has become something of a subculture of its own which started out
with conflicts and ldquoriotsrdquo in Usenet newsgroups and spread to other forms ofonline networking and collaboration Te subversive actor has even received itsown name the troll Te question of how to deal with trolls is something thatmost moderators of mailing lists discussion forums chat-boxes newsgroups andcollaborative blogs have to learn to deal with Extensive online manuals and documents on the subject can be found as trolls pose a considerable challenge tothe practice of free and open online collaboration
Te trolls themselves have even formed some communities of their own in which
competitions in sabotaging prominent online gathering sites are staged Beingblacklisted from a forum newsgroup or mailing list then becomes a status symbolcontributing to the actorrsquos social status within the troll community Copies of logsof blacklists are presented as proof of achievement A blacklisted username is alreadysomething but a blacklisted e-mail address or better still a blacklisted address ina notoriously open environment are considered among the highest degrees of honourand achievement in these communities Lifelong fame is acquired by bringing downor completely destroying a forum by means of tactical intrusions
Wikipedia has an extensive manual that reports on how to recognize point outand deal with cases of abuse and subversion of articles testifying to the virulenceof the issue One of the most exhilarating examples from the media-art domain was probably the recurrent incursion of the integerNetochka Nezvanova ()phenomenon into various media-culture mailing lists A combination of artistsprogrammers and text-bots became a nuisance and a distinctive voice on vari-ous mailing lists flooding these lists with excessive guerilla postings and causingheated debates about whether or not to ldquohit the moderator buttonrdquo and put thelists under some form of basic editorial control Some forums responded by devel-oping their own protocols others silently removed the ldquonoiserdquo from the list Te
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3943
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4043
7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 3943
THE MATERI AL KN OWN AS DATA
853
most spectacular case was the Syndicate mailing list for media art and culture inEastern Europe which collapsed in the summer of 983090983088983088983089 without too much protestfrom its members exposing the end of the initiativersquos lifecycle Syndicate now lives
on partly as an anarchistic free space for netartists on a server in Norway whilethe events of that summer spawned the creation of the currently still-active Spectre mailing list for media culture in ldquoDeep Europerdquo
SUSTAINABIL ITY
Tese experiences call forth important questions about the sustainability of net- worked forms of collaboration and free exchange Without a model of direct mon-
etary exchange such networks tend to operate in the public domain Although thepublic domain is the domain of freedom per se it is also a dangerous unstable spaceconstantly subject to intrusion appropriation and the threat of dissolution Legalprotection models such as Creative Commons serve certain practical purposes butthey also contribute to the legal system exerting further control over free resourcesand activities Lovink is working on a new theory of ldquoorganized networksrdquo whichseeks to address the issue of online networksrsquo sustainability He observes that thereis a general unwillingness on the part of institutions to support or adopt networkspartly due to their lack of institutional definition and demarcation
Yet even the most ephemeral network needs certain infrastructures to operate onand expert services for keeping the network running are hard to maintain over timeif everybody is working on a voluntary basis
Networks are also hard to use as a mass political instrument Teir relative fluidityprecludes a clear definition of identity this also contributes to their relative invis-ibility to and within mass-media structures As a result networks can operate rela-
tively free from the kind of political pressures that mainstream media sources haveto work under but they also have a much harder time enlisting broader politicalsupport Although Castellsrsquos analysis of the emerging network society is now widelyaccepted in political circles we still lack the institutional formations that couldsupport and thus ensure long-term sustainability for the kind of networked col-laborative structures discussed here Tis question urgently needs to be addressedhowever in order to retain the innovative potential of the new electronically net- worked forms of collaboration and (free) exchange
mdashAmsterdam August 983090983088983088983093
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4043
7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4043
7
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4143
SU DIA Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632 ALEXEI SHULGIN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632NINA CZEGLEDY Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632ldquoCURAING AND CONSERVING NEW MEDIA ARrdquo QampA
Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632
CARL GOODMAN Curating and Conserving New Media 9830899830979830971048632MICHAEL CENURY QampA Bridges 983090983088983088983090DAVID MARIN Out of the Box 9830899830979830971048632BOB SEIN Emotional Computing 983090983088983088983088MARK GREEN Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SAUL GREENBERG Living Architectures 983090983088983088983088SIMON POPE Interactive Screen 9830899830979830971048632 JENNY MARKEOU Growing Tings 983090983088983088983088 ANNE NIGEN Human Generosity Project 983090983088983088983089SEPHEN MARSH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091 JONAS HEIDE SMIH Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091EDWARD SHANKEN Te Beauty of Collaboration 983090983088983088983091FAOUMAA KANDEacute SENGHOR Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091SYLVIANE DIOP Skinning Our ools 983090983088983088983091 AHASIW MASKEGON983085ISKWEW Bridges 983090983088983088983090CHRISINE MORRIS Bridges 983090983088983088983090GEORGE BALDWIN Bridges 983090983088983088983090
CHERYL LrsquoHIRONDELLE Bridges 983090983088983088983090LYN BARRAM ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092SHA XIN WEI ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092KIM SAWCHUK ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092ldquoWHA IS COLLABORAIONrdquo QampA ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092PARICIPAECOLLABORAE ROUNDABLE ParticipateCollaborate 983090983088983088983092
RANSCRIPS
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4243
856
Tis chapter begins with the holders of the metadata of new-media artmdashthe muse-
ologists and media-art historians Te following transcripts are from the 983089983097983097983096 symposium
Curating and Conserving New Media which comprised a three-day summit followed
by a three-day workshop and was one of the first events to explicitly discuss sharingknowledge about how new-media art is produced and presented We have selected extracts
from the presentationsmdashindependent curator Nina Czegledy talking about international
networks artist Alexei Shulgin talking about net-art artist-led processes and histories
and museum curator Carl Goodman talking about the institution and collectingmdashand
included them here with an extract from the introduction to the workshop by Su Ditta
and some of the discussion from the QampA period chaired by Sara Diamond74 Tese pas-
sages are followed by the QampA that occurred after Michael Centuryrsquos presentation on the
history of collaboration between the National Research Council and the National FilmBoard which asks how good collaborations can be sustained
SU DIA983107983157983154983137983156983145983150983143 983137983150983140 983107983151983150983155983141983154983158983145983150983143 983118983141983159 983117983141983140983145983137 104862510486331048633983096
Su Ditta ranscribed In full alk Not noted Panel ldquoDeveloping the Curatorial Proposal
for New Media Works with Examples from Installation Exhibitions Individuals and the Webrdquo Event Curating and Conserving New Media Date Monday May 983090983093 9830899830979830971048632 time not noted
Born in oronto and educated at rent University Su Ditta has been working as a media-artscurator critic arts administrator cultural-policy analyst and arts-management consultant formany years Previously the executive director of the Canadian Images Film and Video Festival Ditta is probably best known for her work at the National Gallery of Canada where she curatedmedia-arts exhibitions and managed the media-arts collection publications and public pro-gramming from 9830899830971048632983095 to 983089983097983097983088 She then served for four years as the head of the Media ArtsSection of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa and was responsible for developingand delivering a 983076983093 million program of support for the creation production distribution and
exhibition of video audio film and computer-based new-media work by Canadian artistsSince then Ditta has served on the boards of directors of a number of arts organizations and hasacted as an advisor and consultant to a wide variety of arts organizations cultural agencies andcommissions including the Ontario Arts Council the National Film Board of Canada and TeBanff Centre for the Arts She lectures frequently at colleges and universities across Canada andorganizes exhibitions and special projects at museums artist-run centres and public art galleriesacross Canada and in the
74 Dittarsquos report from the event is available on Te Banff Centrersquos website
SU DITTA
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum
7232019 Euphoria and Dystopia Production and Dis
httpslidepdfcomreaderfulleuphoria-and-dystopia-production-and-dis 4343
857
Su Ditta Irsquom going to start this morning by telling you a little about my own fortunate
relationships to new media I am really not a new-media kind of girl I only learned
to use the computer two years ago here at Banff My engagement with new media
started as a political one I was hired as the curator with the National Gallery of Canada
and at that time the position was of a video curator I thought that was problematic
I wanted to include new film and I wanted to include new media and of course the
museum was somewhat resistant to that Therefore I became a champion of new
media Similarly at the Canada Council there was a small program I supported for new
media but it was fairly limited When I went to the Canada Council as the head of the
Media Arts division there was no program of exhibition at all in mediamdashnot in film and
not in video That didnrsquot mean exhibitions didnrsquot happen and it didnrsquot mean that some-
times people couldnrsquot get funding for it but it was always through other routes Itrsquos
really only been in the last eight years from my personal perspective that new media
has come on the terrain and it has been an area of really active engagement
Irsquom nervous because I know that the directors and most of the staff of half of the
video organizations in Canada are here This morningrsquos panel is concentrating on the
idea of curatorial proposals but from talking to the panellists what we are going to
have is an opportunity to look at the shifts in how curatorial work is taking place and
has taken place over the last few years as new media has become a more critical
area Some of the people will be speaking about the international context some
about the Canadian context
Irsquom going to open up by sketching what for memdashboth as an institutional curator and
now as an independent curatormdashhas been some of the basics of putting curatorial
proposals together I know that everybody on the panel is going to challenge that
and show how that paradigm either doesnrsquot work or is often completely different
for new media There are different kinds of proposals that I work on One is putting
together the curatorial proposal Thatrsquos principally writing grant applications in orderto get funding whether you are applying to a foundation a corporation or a public
funding agency The second one is when you are pitching an exhibition either within
an institution or as an independent curator to an institution The third one is with the
inter-non-institutional environment and placing the artist at the centre or when you
are developing a curatorial proposal thatrsquos going to be exercised with a collective of
people In each of those cases you have different barriers and different things that
drive you and you are imagining different people reviewing the proposal You will be
putting more emphasis on one thing or another I write very differently when Irsquom writ-
ing for my peers in a jury situation than when Irsquom writing to the director of a museum