ANAT: Get on your digital soapbox!

Sept. 6, 2007

Type: discussion

Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) are holding a series
of FREE public forums as
part of still/open Program during September in Melbourne, Perth and
Brisbane as part of their
emerging technology labs. The forums are running;

Melbourne 6pm, 5th September 2007 @ Digital Harbour
Perth 6pm, 10th September 2007 @ The Bakery ARTRAGE Complex
Brisbane 6pm, 14th September @ The Judith Wright Centre

The forums will explore recent projects by internationally renown
guest thinkers: Alessandro
Ludovico (Italy) a publisher, media artist and editor in chief of
Neural (http://www.neural.it/), Andy
Nicholson (Australia) a free software hacker, new media activist and
part of the Engage Media
collective (http://engagemedia.org/) and Beatriz da Costa (USA) an
interdisciplinary artist and
researcher who works with open science
(http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/). Creative Commons
Australia will open the floor for discussion of Open Source Culture.

Open Source Culture is the growing global phenomenon of creative
practices of sharing content
for others to rework, reuse and redistribute. It has created a
digital collective media culture and
cult like following where everyone from teenagers to grannies are
getting involved. It has moved
from the programming sphere into the general and business community;
the purchase of YouTube
for $1.65 billion and MySpace for $580 million by News Corp. and
Google highlight just how much
value they can have.

Open Source Culture aims to empower the user and challenge the power
of the media giants.
Currently a conflict is occurring between the owners of online "user
generated" infrastructures and
those who use them. User submitted and generated content often is
moderated by the site or
organization it is uploaded to, giving absolute control to the powers
that be to do as they wish with
the content submitted. By its nature Open Source Culture brings up
many opinions and questions
including; how open is Open Source Culture? Is it user friendly or
financially beneficial to the big
players? How might artists make use this cultural movement? And
[insert your own question here]
will be part of the discussion in the still/open forum.

The forums are presented as part of ANAT's emerging technology labs,
which are responsible for
the hugely successful reSkin program.

For media information and availability of the facilitators for
interviews please contact Amanda
Matulick on 8231 9037 or [email protected] or for more
information on the forums and
still/open please visit www.anat.org.au/stillopen/blog/forums/.

–

Alessandro Ludovico
Neural Magazine - English (http://neural.it/) Italian
(http://www.neural.it/neural_it/)
Latest Printed Issue - http://www.neural.it/art/2007/01/neural_26.phtml
Subscribe - http://www.neural.it/subscribe.phtml