A Proposition by Hans Ulrich Obrist: Maps of the 21st Century

Again Hans Ulrich Obrist :
The Maps for the 21st Century project consists in an invitation to artists in which the submission guideline is as minimal as possible: how one perceives a map of the twenty-first century. Following the Formulas for Now book, this ongoing project responds to an urgent need to chart this first decade of a century characterized by increasing displacement, migration, and globality.

Propositions is a public forum that explores ideas in development. Each two-day seminar explores a topic of current investigation in an invited speaker's own artistic or intellectual practice. Over the course of a seminar session, these developing ideas are presented to the public, responded to, "researched," and discussed to uniquely propel the ideas forward.

Propositions is part of the Museum as Hub initiative, a laboratory for art and ideas realized through a partnership of five international arts organizations that includes Insa Art Space, Seoul; the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. The initiative seeks to support art activities and experimentation; explore artistic, curatorial, and institutional practice; and serve as an important resource for the public to learn about contemporary art from around the world.

Web 2.0 Studies // Critical Internet Theory with Geert Lovink

Research Methodologies Workshop
December 15th and 16th, 2008
School of Culture and Communication
University of Melbourne

The School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne is seeking applications from researchers who wish to take part in a two day methodologies workshop with Professor Geert Lovink (Director, Institute of Network Culture, Amsterdam). Participation is free but places are limited and will be restricted to participants who are engaged in research relating to the theme of Web 2.0 studies and
critical Internet theory. Participants will be chosen based on a competitive application process and priority will be give to postgraduates and early career researchers. The workshop will include a discussion of the work of Geert Lovink and presentations from successful applicants.

Workshop Theme

This two-day intensive workshop will focus on critical methodologies for studying Web 2.0. In relation to the contemporary Internet, there is an obvious need to move beyond cultural studies approaches to fandom, where active consumption is simply recast as participatory culture without any assessment of the economic and technological forces driving user-generated content. Rather than relying on the Jenkins-style models of convergence and the notion of collective intelligence, this workshop will encourage participants to consider the alternative possibilities and theoretical problems facing a materialist understanding of network culture.

For instance, to what extent can software studies move from engineering issues and technologically-focused specifications to outline a broader analytics of power? What sort of creative concepts are available for understanding the everyday practices of blogging? How can organized networks transform their dependence on free labor to reach greater economic sustainability?

While the theme is framed in part by Geert Lovink's ongoing theoretical work, this workshop also allows for the opportunity to discuss some of the more general difficulties facing Internet research, including questions of scale, speed and temporality, theories of technology, debates around networked politics and modes of
collaboration.

Some key topics:

- organized networks
- theories of blogging
- recent web 2.0 literature (Bruns, Zittrain, Shirky)
- software studies and protocol (Fuller, Galloway)
- distributed aesthetics
- free labor and collaboration

The ARC Cultural Research Network has agreed to fund 3 stipends of up to $750 to support travel and accommodation costs of participants from outside Melbourne.

How to Apply: Applications are due by Friday Nov 21, 2008.
Applications must include a 250-word summary of your research topic,
highlighting links to the theme and a one-page curriculum vitae.

Applications and further information should be sent to Michael Dieter
at mdieter {AT} unimelb.edu.au

Geert Lovink, founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures(INC), is a Dutch-Australian media theorist and critic. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and in 2003 was based at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland. In 2004, Lovink was appointed as Research Professor at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and Associate Professor at University of Amsterdam. He is
the founder of Internet projects such as nettime and fibreculture. His recent book titles are Dark Fiber (2002), Uncanny Networks (2002) and My First Recession (2003). In 2005-06 he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin Institute for Advanced Study where he finished his third volume on critical Internet culture, Zero Comments
(2007).

Geert's weblog: www.networkcultures.org/geert

Jan van Eyck Academie - Call for Applications

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Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals for individual or collective research projects for a one-year, two-year or variable research period in the department of Design

Extrastatecraft: Hidden Organizations, Spatial Contagions and Activism, a new project of the Design department, initiated by Keller Easterling, researches underexplored territory in the world's infrastructural and organizational strata. The work focuses on shared protocols, managerial subroutines and financial instruments as they produce and program physical space around the world. Perhaps because these organizations operate in the background, in an active and relational rather than nominative register, their political outcomes are often at once pervasive and mysterious.

For instance, how do organizations like the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) or McKinsey determine management protocols? How do construction networks, more than the singular creations of architects and urbanists, disseminate materials and processes that determine how the world is calibrated? How do markets and financial instruments create templates that shape space?

The research also explores the political leverage latent in this renovated conception of global infrastructure. Some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Armand Mattelart argues that global infrastructure is a field that is 'young and uncharted' largely because it is often still considered in terms of national rather than international histories. Moreover, the political instrumentality of these increasingly familiar global spheres is still frequently theorized in terms of militarization or universal rationalization, when they might really be agents of more discrepant or obscure forms of polity. The notion that there is either a dominant logic or a proper forthright realm of political negotiation usually acts as the perfect camouflage for parallel political activity - the medium of subterfuge, hoax and hyperbole that actually rules the world.

Extrastatecraft will consider a number of tools effective in manipulating active organization, but will pay particular attention to the ways in which these organizations are really populations of repeatable components and formats, the arrangement and chemistry of which possess a political disposition. The project will research multipliers in the organization that make components contagious and powerful as shapers of polity, and will consider these as stealthy tools of activism. New objects of practice and entrepreneurialism, redefined in a relational register, reflect the network's ability to amplify structural shifts or repeatable moves. If icons of piety, collusion or competition often escalate tensions, might alternative design ingenuities distract from them? Having customarily absented itself from official political channels, architecture, as extrastatecraft, finds itself in an unexpectedly consequential position, manipulating codes of passage and points of leverage in the thickening back channels of global infrastructure.

While researchers will find in the topic many points of entry, some anticipated research agendas address the managerial and infrastructural substrates of space related to finance, construction, trade and marketing. Travel, language skills, archival experience and fieldwork will serve the research. Textual, graphic or design documents may contribute to the final collective product.

Candidates interested in this project can apply with a research proposal. Selected candidates gain the position of researcher at the Design department of the Jan van Eyck Academie.

Deadline applications: 24 November 2008.

When, why and how are individuals moved by a piece of art in a museum or gallery?

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What links a neuroscientist with a social anthropologist and the UK’s premier independent art charity?

The answer is the visual perception of art. When, why and how are individuals moved by a piece of art in a museum or gallery?

These are the questions to be examined between the world renowned Department of Museum Studies and the Department of Engineering at the University of Leicester, in collaboration with The Art Fund.

Social anthropologist Dr Sandra Dudley, and Professor of Bioengineering Rodrigo Quian Quiroga are each facing what they admit is one of the biggest research challenges of their careers.

Working with the Director of The Art Fund, Mr David Barrie, in the supervision of a new PhD student dedicated to the project, Ms Jennifer Binnie, they will develop a totally new, interdisciplinary approach to the perception of gallery art.

Dr Dudley commented: “What we’re studying is a basic level of human experience of the material and visual world. It doesn’t always happen that an individual will feel the wow factor when they look at a piece of art in a museum, but it does happen sometimes. What causes that? Why does certain art appeal to certain people? What lasting impact does it have on their lives?”

We don't need education, we don't need critics, we don't need art. It is all direct visual stimulation and we can generate inspiration with preset remix of images in the future.