Cartography of Excess 

Utopian ideas - like "Spaceship Earth" - are round, multidimensional, interrelated: their archetypal map is the Milky Way, the infinite constellations. But rational thinking is instrumental, linear, it distorts: and that's exactly the problem with the Mercator map, the most common world projection. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, created a "Dymaxion map" to undo those distortions. First the earth becomes a geometric figure, an isocahedron: its 20 triangles are then disjointed and laid flat, so the land masses radiate from a nexus in the north, without splitting continents or enlarging the polar regions.

• art,
• cartography,
• infopolitics,
• theory,
• info-activism

Fix the World Challenge - Frequently Asked Questions 

How do I get started?
How does this work?
How can I become an excellent actor?
Can I get in trouble for this stuff?
Can I at lest be fined?
How do I videotape?
How can I go to a conference?
How can I speak at a conference?
How can I make a fake newspaper?
How can I hijack a Twitter backchannel?

• The Yesmen,
• identity correction,
• culture jamming

We Demand The Impossible: 

An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon

Furtherfield interview with Gavin Grindon and John Jordan from the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination about the User's Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible. Published by Minor Compositions.

• art,
• participatory media,
• austerity

Wikileaks and Freedom, Autonomy and Sovereignty in the cloud 

"We have to be very attentive and united at a state level to fight against what is a threat to democratic authority and sovereignty,"
- French government spokesman Francois Baroin speaking out against wikileaks releasing US diplomatic cables.

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
- A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow

• infopolitics,
• info-activism,
• wikileaks,
• surveillance

"V for Vendetta": The Other Face of Egypt's Youth Movement 

"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea [?] and ideas are bulletproof."
- From the film V for Vendetta

• middle east,
• anonymous

Corporate Counter Campaigns - Introduction 

Introducing the panel on Counter-strategies of Corporations against Campaigns Featuring: What are the modern-times strategies of present day companies? And: How can we respond to these?

This part of the introduction includes a short outline of the themes to be discussed at the forum. Being used are examples from the work of the panelists and cases they have been working on. Also included are exerpts from recent articles on the corporate world's reaction to social and environmental cam-paigns, illuminating the main themes from different points of view. References are included below, if you would like to receive four further texts on this subject, please let me know: evel@xs4all.nl

• campaign

A Pirate Utopia for Tactical Television 

In recent years Amsterdam has become known for its free-net the Digital City. Less well known but in some ways equally remarkable has been the emergence of Amsterdam's radical movement for public access television. This text is just a beginning, a highly selective historical snap shot.

• tactical media,
• community media,
• network cultures,
• next 5 minutes,
• amsterdam,
• tactical television

Talking about a Revolution: An Interview with Camille Otrakji 

"If you've been following events in Syria, you'd know that the English-language press is mostly deeply critical of the Assad regime (while the Arabic press displays a slightly wider range of views). I thought it would be worth trying to present a minority report on the situation from a Syrian friend of mine, although, as you will see, he argues precisely that his position is actually held by a very significant majority (albeit a rather quiet and frustrated majority) of Syrians.

Camille Otrakji is a Syrian political blogger based in Montreal. Although he tends to keep a low profile, Otrakji has been, for the past several years, at the forefront of many of the most interesting and influential online initiatives relating to Syrian politics. He is one of the authors and moderators at Joshua Landis's Syria Comment, and the founder of Creative Syria, a constellation of websites including Mideast Image (a vast collection of original old photographs of Middle Eastern subjects) and Syrian Think Tank (an online debate site hosting many of Syria's top analysts). Last year, Otrakji courted controversy with a new initiative devoted to the subject of Syrian-Israeli peace, entitled OneMideast.org. He agreed to speak with me about the latest events in Syria, and I'm sure that his views will generate plenty of discussion."

• media criticism,
• middle east,
• blogosphere,
• Al Jazeera

Contestational Robotics 

Keywords: robots / contestation / public space / expression management

• contestational robotics,
• public space,
• expression management

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller, 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'. Published worldwide in September 2007, The Shock Doctrine is being translated in over 25 languages. In 2009 it won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Literature. The six minute companion film, created by Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, was an Official Selection of the 2007 Venice Biennale and Toronto International Film Festivals.

• culture jamming

Post-media operators: "sovereign & vague" 

No one recognises these powers as their own

(Why Theory?) We have to dispense with the idea that theorising occurs after the creative event; that a poem or a track or a text is made and then, as part of its process of dissemination, there follows the theorising of the piece. Such a theorising is normally attributed to those known variously as critics, reviewers and essayists.

• media theory,
• media criticism

The Concept of Tactical Media 

Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This "new media" activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.

• tactical media,
• theory,
• media theory,
• tactical education,
• tactical research

Parasitic Media 

By Nathan M Martin for The Carbon Defense League, September 2002
A parasite is defined as ?an organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.? The tactics of appropriation have been co-opted. Illegal action has become advertisement. Protest has become cliché. Revolt has become passé. These disputes have reached the definition of rhetoric. They are the usual suspects. Having accepted these failures to some degree, we can now attempt to define a parasitic tactical response. We need a practice that allows invisible subversion. We need to feed and grow inside existing communication systems while contributing nothing to their survival; we need to become parasites. We need to create an anthem for the bottom feeders and leeches. We need to echo our voice through all the wires we can tap but cloak our identity in the world of non-evidence, and the hidden.

Subject: txt-tracks 1-5 from techNet, uk 

gruesse von ELEKTRO
From: Pit Schultz
Status: RO
Techno: Psycho-Social Tumult

Shahidul Alam

Shahidul Alam is a photographer, internet pioneer and activist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also the founder and director of the Drik picture library and media-centre in Dhaka.

• majority world,
• photography

Unlike Us #3 - Social Media: Design or Decline 

On March 22nd and 23rd 2013 the Institute of NetworkCultures will organize the event Unlike Us #3. The aim of Unlike Us is to establish a research network of artists, designers, scholars, activists and programmers who work on 'alternatives in social media'. Unlike Us was founded in July 2011. Through workshops, conferences, online dialogues and publications, Unlike Us intends to both analyze the economic and cultural aspects of dominant social media platforms and to propagate the further development and proliferation of alternative, decentralized social media software.

• art,
• network cultures,
• activism,
• net.activism,
• design,
• theory,
• social sculpture,
• participatory media

The wind of the South - UniCommon march to Tunisi [7-12 April] 

We are students, precarious, unemployed, a young generation that is too much skilled for a job... We are the 'generation without future' of a Europe in crisis that we don't like and we want to change. We are students of Rome and London who have taken the streets to reclaim a better future.

• activism,
• precarity,
• tactical education

NEURO networking Europe 

From February 27th to 29th young artists, filmmak- ers, musicians, theorists and activists from all over Europe and many other parts of the world meet at the Muffathalle in Munich for NEURO; a number of events, speeches, discussions, presentations, performances, concerts and actions reflecting the pulse of the age. About two years after the first make-world festival, NEURO will again interface with current debates around migration and mobility, racism and nationalism, civil society and global mobilisation, networking and new technologies, informatisation and precarious labour, education and control society, common organising, and digital culture.

• network cultures,
• infopolitics,
• net.activism,
• net criticism

World-Information Brussels 

The Vienna Institute for New Culture Technologies / t0 was invited by the organizers of the European City of Culture Brussels 2000 to stage the lead project of the new media program.

• infopolitics,
• world-information

The Californian Ideology 

"Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will"
- Naum Gabo [1]