Chris Joseph

‘Writers can learn a lot from the Hollywood strike. We deserve a better deal from digital publishing’

Writers of the world arise! It’s time to throw off the shackles of traditional publishing contracts and face a brand new digital future with a brand new set of priorities. Let’s copy or, should I say, learn from our brothers and sisters in Hollywood: don’t let the industry take our digital rights away! Give us our digital dues! In the shift from print to digital, writers are in danger of losing out big time.

Click here to see this post on the Guardian today by Kate Pullinger.

http://www.phoenix.org.uk/detail.asp?ID=3264

The Programme and Operations Directors of Phoenix will present a public discussion on how the company will adapt and change with the coming of the new DMC in 2009.

30 years ago we witnessed the dawn of the home computer age. 15 years ago people began to communicate between these machines via email and the web. Now we live in a world where nearly every part of our lives is influenced by digital technology whether at home, at work, or at play.

But how has, and how will, this revolution affect art? Has technology enabled us all to become artists by making easy and cheap what was once neither? Will it allow a new kind of work that was until recently impossible?

By virtue of their duplicatable digital nature, will visual artworks become a tradable commodity available to us all, like music and film? Or will the potential for online distribution render it effectively free, making the life of the professional artist unsustainable?

As a prelude to the commencement of the Phoenix’s Digital Programme join us to discuss these questions at Cafe Culturel on Tuesday March 4th at 6.30pm at the LCB Depot, 31 Rutland Street, Leicester, LE1 1RE.

Cafe Culturel is a free event occurring on the first Tuesday of every month.

On Tuesday April 1st we’ll be discussing April Fools Day and other superstitions and traditions that have survived both religion and
secularism.

http://www.cafeculturel.org.uk/2008/03/digital_art.html

The Futures of Digital Media Arts and Culture - Issue 11 of the Fibreculture Journal
edited by Andrew Hutchison  and Ingrid Richardson
http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/index.html

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The Future is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage - Axel Bruns

The Aesthetics of the Ambient Video Experience - Jim Bizzocchi

Technology transfer present and futures in the electronic arts - Brian Degger

Cultural Roots for Computing: The Case of African Diasporic Orature and
Computational Narrative in the GRIOT System - D. Fox Harrell

A Game of One’s Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Digital Space - Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, Celia Pearce

Continuous Materiality Through a Hierarchy of Computational Codes - Kenneth J. Knoespel and Jichen Zhu

Art and (Second) Life: Over the hills and far away? - Caroline McCaw

Experience and abstraction: the arts and the logic of machines - Simon Penny

Dada Redux: Elements of Dadaist Practice in Contemporary Electronic Literature - Scott Rettberg

The Past as the Future? Nostalgia and Retrogaming in Digital Culture  - Jaakko Suominen

Art against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice - Mitchell Whitelaw

www.ioctsalon.com

Toni Sant: A Second Life for Online Performance History

Doors open at 5.30pm for drinks. This event is free and open to the public, however places are limited - visit the cultural eXchanges website to reserve a seat.

Download the flyer for this event (PDF)

Toni Sant is exploring the 3-D online virtual environment called Second Life as a venue for performance by looking at examples of theatre groups performing online within Second Life. In addition to activities presented as theatre he is also observing broader performance activities within this online space. Additionally, this project involves an attempt to use Second Life as a pedagogical tool for generating an archive of work related to a history of performance on the Internet by relating it to previous work on other online virtual environments, such as IRC, MUDs, MOOs, and 2-D graphic chat networks like The Palace. Presently, the work revolves around a planned Second Life production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in one of three simulations of The Globe in this popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

This event takes place as part of cultural eXchanges, an annual event hosted by the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University. The week long programme includes lectures, performances, debates, presentations and readings from a diverse body of artists, academics, practioners and those working in the cultural industries. Previous guests have included Janet Street-Porter, Alastair Campbell, Andrew Davies, Corin Redgrave, Matthew Sweeney, Jenny Colgan, Sue Mcgregor, Roy Hattersley, Tony Hawks, Germaine Greer, Jackie Kay and Colin Dexter.

About Toni:

Dr Toni Sant is Lecturer in Performance and Creative Technologies at the University of Hull’s School of Arts and New Media on the Scarborough Campus. Since 1998 he has served as executive editor for the Applied and Interactive Theatre Guide. His writing has appeared in TDR: The Drama Review, Leonardo, the Encyclopedia of Politics, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and other scholarly publications, as well as in the popular press in New York and Malta.

He is currently writing a book called A History of the Future: Franklin Furnace & the Spirit of the Avant-Garde. His blog and weekly podcast are available at www.tonisant.com and he can be found on Second Life as Not Merlin.

Links:

Toni Sant - www.tonisant.com

Second Life - www.secondlife.com

cultural eXchanges - www.dmu.ac.uk/culturalexchanges/

The IOCT Salon (www.ioctsalon.com) is held at and staged by De Montfort University and The Institute of Creative Technologies, and is supported by Arts Council England and the Literature Development Network. It is managed by Chris Joseph, Digital Writer in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University. This residency is funded by Arts Council England: East Midlands. For further information about the IOCT Salon please email Chris: info [at] ioctsalon.com.