I’m so happy to tell you that I have been invited as a guest contributor to the crumbweb mailing list for this month, April 2008.

This list is intended for those involved in curating, exhibiting, archiving or interpreting new media art (including net.art, interactive installations, digital video etc.) It’s for discussion of issues specifically related to new media art curating, because although there is much material concerning new media art, new media theory, and new media as ‘education’ in museums, there is little to help curators deal with the challenges of new media art.

It is the discussion list of the CRUMB web site (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss http://www.crumbweb.org). The site includes: CRUMB INTERVIEWS, SEMINARS and LINKS. Visit often … leave crumbs of knowledge.

The reason is that this month there will be a debate bout the theme “Open Source and Open Systems”.

Theme of the Month April 08
Open Source and Open Systems

The relationship between Open Source production methods, and other kinds of production methods, or social systems, is in hot debate. The debate is informed by politics, ethnomethodology, social systems as well as art, but as Felix Stalder points out, “The openness in open source is often misunderstood as egalitarian collaboration”.

In April 2006 the CRUMB list discussed art and activism in relation to systems, but can we further explore this in relation to practical experiences of art projects? What are the practical differences between Open Source systems and analogue social systems? What are the practical differences between interaction, participation and collaboration?

This month’s theme is hosted by Dominic Smith, doctoral researcher with CRUMB, and co-founder with Sneha Solanki of the Polytechnic organisation <http://ptechnic.org/>

Reference:
Stalder, Felix (2006) “On the difference between Open Source and Open Culture.” In: Marina Vishmidt with Mary Anne Francis, Jo Walsh, and Lewis Sykes (eds.) Media Mutandis: a NODE.London reader. Surveying art, technologies and politics. London: NODE/Mute. 194.

Invited respondents include:

Ele Carpenter has just completed her PhD with Crumb, and is currently facilitating the Html Patchwork, an Open Source Embroidery project to be exhibited at HTTP Gallery, Furtherfield, London in May 2008. http://www.elecarpenter.org.uk www.open-source-embroidery.org.uk

Ruth Catlow – Furtherfield, and NODELondon – http://wiki.nodel.org/index.php/Ruth’s_Script_and_Slides

Janet Hawtin. Trained in graphic design, Janet works in community volunteering and education focused roles. http://lucychili.net http://lucychili.blogspot.com

Katie Hargrave is an artist interested in the production of memory and place through the active writing of history and the participation of citizens to construct a distinct, if lopsided narrative. She never works alone and hopes to create discursive spaces between art, activism, anthropology, and history. http://www.katiehargrave.us

Hideous Beast is a collaborative effort between two artists, Josh Ippel and Charlie Roderick. Through organizing structured participatory events they attempt to encourage cultural activity outside the bounds of mainstream entertainment and fabricated desire. http://www.hideousbeast.com

Aymeric Mansoux http://goto10.org

Armin Medosch is a writer, artist and curator working in the field of media art and network culture. He is currently doing a practice based PhD at Goldmiths in Arts and Computing.

Massimo Menichinelli, designer, studies how design can enable communities and complex systems, learning from Open Source and Peer-to-Peer. http://www.openp2pdesign.org

Gabriel “salsaman” Finch is main developer of LiVES (http://lives.sourceforge.net), a Free Software tool for real time and non-realtime manipulation of video.

Sal Randolph is an artist who works with gift economies, social architectures and one-on-one interactions. She is the founder of Opsound ( http://opsound.org ), an open sound exchange of copyleft music. http://salrandolph.com

Sneha Solanki is an artist, media trainer / teacher. Solanki also co-manages open source projects for Polytechnic {ptechnic.org}. http://electronicartist.net/solanki

Felix Stalder teaches media economy at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Zurich (New Media Department) and works as an independent researcher/organizer with groups such as the Institute for New Cultural Technologies (t0) in Vienna. Co-moderator of nettime. http://felix.openflows.com

Marloes de Valk http://no.systmz.goto10.org

Simon Worthington http://www.metamute.org/

You’d better subscribe to this mailing list here because the first contents sent are very interesting!

…and more good news coming soon!