Who Controls New Media? Help decide as you attend a panel of the same name at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City from 7-9pm on Thursday March 21. "Who Controls New Media? Open Art in Closed Systems" (co-organized by the Guggenheim Museum and Goethe- Institut Inter Nationes New York) will "examine how the expansion of copyright has raised questions of public use, how interactivity has become a marketing buzzword, and hownational security and freedom of expression appear unreconcilable." The participants: Dieter Daniels, professor of art history and media theory at Leipzig's Academy of Visual Arts; Alex Galloway, Director of Content and Technology at Rhizome.org and the producer of Carnivore, a networked art project based on the FBI software of the same name; and Wendy Seltzer, lawyer, computer programmer, and a Fellow with Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Moderator Jon Ippolito is an artist and Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim. A reception follows from 9-10 pm at the Goethe-Institut.

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Up through 2002, the "Picasso ebook" was first created to celebrate Picasso's 120th birthday in 2001. The artist/curator of the Web project, London's Gandha Key, has two goals with this piece: 1. to create a "more accessible" species of net art, perhaps by referencing one of history's most reknowned artists, and 2. to have site visitors examine, by both perusing and contributing to its contents, how and why many people have a hard time separating Picasso's questionable morality and his extraordinary creativity. The ebook presently contains over 100 serious and satirical images and text works sent in from around the world.

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Tonight, at 160 Kroeber Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, another excellent free lecture will be given as part of the ongoing Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium. From 7:30-9pm, Sara Diamond, Executive Producer for Television and New Media and the Artistic Director of Media and Visual Arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts, will talk about CodeZebra, an interactive software and performance environment that uses visualization, language games and role play to cross the boundaries between art and science. At Banff, Ms. Diamond leads research in visualization tools, authoring software, 3D imaging, and other related topics. She is Principle Investigator on the Human Centered Interface Project -- and. as you've guessed, Code Zebra. Come to UC Berkeley and crack this code.

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Organized with coining the term "Net.Film" in mind, an online exhibition of the same name launched yesterday. The show "Net.Film" is a component of the "The Ides of March" exhibition at ABC No Rio Gallery in New York (click on the "Ides of March" link on the ABC No Rio site to get to "Net.Films"). As you might guess, a net.gilm uses the language and visual communication of films, only adapted for online use. "Net.Film," the exhibition, will include works by some noted net artists to help legitimize the term, including Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge of Heavy Industries, and Vuk Cosic, to name a couple. The question remains, is a "net.film" necessarily net art? Or vice versa? Perhaps a new dialogue has begun.

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Opening today and running through March 16 in Sheffield, England, is the latest edition of "Lovebytes," an international gathering of artists working with the newest of media. Special events fill the calendar, including panels and workshops. Check out "Search Engine Cinema," which features online moving image works discovered randomly on the Web, including sweet Flash animations and cool DV mini-epics. Or listen to the "laptop punk" of Sicilian musician Massimo. While you're at it, witness a performance by renowned Brit sound artist Scanner, best known for incorporating scanned mobile phone conversations into his works.

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With references to Marcel Duchamp and a decidedly Modernist feel, Germany's Frieder Rusmann's (aka Johannes Auer) "For the Natural Death of the Work of Art" seems retro, yet teems with net art spirit. Download a manifesto! Sign up to protest via email! Or just click through the intriguing screens, such as a "haiku" that's either disturbing or funny, depending on your mood (check out the

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Vancouver-based artist Deanne Achong has created an archive that intentionally possesses the unwieldy nature of the Web. Its organization is ordered by disorganization...its instability is its distinguishing characteristic. Gaps in knowledge, according to Achong, can sometimes be as interesting as orderly information. Clicking through images and text on this site is like snooping through shoeboxes of photos and notes found under a stranger's bed. Try to piece together a narrative if you can...or not.

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Now that the official Whitney Biennial is on view in New York, it's time to look at Whitneybiennial.com -- an online exhibition NOT sponsored by the Whitney Museum of American Art, but organized by artist Miltos Manetas. Those included aren't just artists, but support themselves and create cool stuff as designers, architects, and programmers. Without the "parasite" of Whitneybiennial.com, many of these works might be unseen by the public, and because their creators operate outside of the art world, they may not have the same opportunities to have the Whitney Biennial stamp as the artists included in the real exhibition. (Well, sort of. Artist Yael Kanarek, for instance, whose work is pictured, is in both shows. And who knows? A savvy curator might solicit some future exhibition material from Manetas' "parasite.") All of the works included on Whitneybiennial.com are available for manipulation by the user...via a handy application called "Turntable" devised by artist Michael Rees...a feature one certainly won't find at the official Whitney Biennale, online or off.

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