What will you do with the bandwidth?
The European Cultural Backbone was founded as an initiative of 16 Trans-European Media Institutions. They baptize their baby with an extensive "We want Bandwidth" campaign, starting in a medium near you any minute. What to do with it and what to make with it?
"What will you do with the bandwidth?" - This question was uttered very
shortly after the first steps of the European Cultural Backbone had
been presented to the N5M audience, fresh from the oven as it was. The
founding ECB meeting only happened last weekend, from the 4th to 7th of
May in Vienna, Austria. The ECB sees itself as a steering group of
member institutions for a pan-European network. The aims of the ECB can
soon be found on the website (http://ecb.t0.or.at), as well as a list
of the first generation of actively involved institutions. Konrad
Becker from Vienna's Public Netbase t0 emphasises that the ECB was born
as a love child of many European media initiatives and institutions who
share the strong belief in the 'practice to policy' approach to media
and cultural policy development.
The European Cultural Backbone wants bandwidth. At least this is the
campaign which comes out of the consensus of the founding institutions.
Bandwidth in this sense refers to the technical infrastructure across
Europe which allows the distribution and exchange of (primarily
digital) information. Marleen Stikker from De Waag, Society for Old and
New Media makes it clear that "more bandwidth" not only relates to
fatter chunks of media in the pipelines, but also an expansion of the
existing low-tech infrastructure across the continent. Especially the
network applications which can successfully run on low-tech networks
(namely newsgroups, email, text-based internet services) have proven to
be extremely important for the networking activities of independent
media makers across the globe (those who are connected already).
"We want more bandwidth" could be seen as a consensus between the
Europe-wide initiatives and cultural institutions working in the field
of particpatory media. James Stevens from Backspace, London attempted
to answer the justified question "What to do with it?" by replying:
"redistribute it." That might seem paradoxical, instead of proactively
using it you just pass it on? But it sums up the approach of the ECB
initiative. ECB feels like a tactical network which is aware of its
lobbying potential to help establishing an infrastructure which will
eventually be of benefit to those initiatives who have little interest
or capabilities for such an initiative themselves.
Additionally it needs to be stressed that the "We want bandwidth"
campaign, a continuation of De Waag's 1997 campaign originated in the
Hybrid WorkSpace (Kassel documenta X) is the first active step of the
European Cultural Backbone. Many other fields of interest are lined out
in the initial paper of the initiative. Accordingly, the ECB is not a
membership based institution. Instead, every Institution and Individual
can commit themselves to one of the workgroups which are currently
formed and that way become an active partner of the ECB. Attempting to
keep the bureaucratic effort of the ECB low, this model based on active
partnership not only keeps the initiative functioning, but also follows
consequently the approach of 'practice to policy'.
on Friday, March 12, 1999