- preliminary program –

Geert Lovink
(University of Amsterdam) and

Trebor Scholz
(Department of Media Study, The State University of New York at Buffalo)

invite you to:

networks, art, & collaboration

a two-day Brechtian play

at the Department of Media Study,

The State University of New York at Buffalo

http://freecooperation.org

April 24 - 25, 2004

In a high-energy context this conference will bring together artists, designers, musicians, activists, art historians and engineers in formats such as workshops, open mic, parties, performances, interviews, and brain storming sessions — all aiming at ongoing collaborations, genuine dialogue, and the exchange of knowledge. The aim of the conference is to get a deeper understanding of the dynamics of collaboration, models of critical web-based art, and the role media technologies play in the making of social networks. Laugh, learn, argue, dance, discuss, eat, celebrate dissent, make new friends, and meet future collaborators.

A FreeCooperation theory paper will be launched during the conference.

Prologue: Ignite the Flames of Collaboration

THURSDAY April 22
8pm

Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center

2495 Main Street, Suite 425 Buffalo

event with Jenny Perlin (Sarah Lawrence College),

Laura McGough (Washington, DC),

Trebor Scholz, and Christoph Spehr (Bremen)

_____________________________________________

FRIDAY APRIL 23
7pm

LOCATION: DMS 286 and CFA balcony

House Warming with

Launch of FreeCooperation Publication

This will be an opportunity to introduce yourself.

_____________________________________________

SATURDAY APRIL 24

<Warning: Sessions could end later, or earlier, than announced in the

program depending on the debate.>

10- 10:15 am

LOCATION: NSC 205

HELLO WORLD

Uday P. Sukhatme, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences,
Geert Lovink & Trebor Scholz

Try1

10:20 am - 11:30am

LOCATION: NSC 205

The role of the network in the collaboration of women media practitioners.

Collaborating as a heterogeneous without goal?

The exclusivity of the women only approach.

FACES (Vali Djordjevic; Berlin, Germany)

Genderchangers (Kristina Clair; Philadelphia, Amsterdam)

GuerillaGirlsBroadband

J³ (Jane Crayton, Jessica Leber, Jennifer Peterson –

University of Colorado at Bolder)

_____________________________________________

Try 2

10:20- 11:30am

LOCATION: NSC 216

Open Content Initiatives, Reusability, Archives, & Shared Authority

By making our creative works available for reuse, we open our works to improvement, elaboration, and re-articulation by others. What role does attribution play in the creation of such reusable projects?

Benjamin Mako Hill (Free/Open Source Software developer, Seattle)

Blips Team (blips.tk)

blips.tk is a collaborative online open history project that seeks to archive and reflect critically on "creative dark matter."
(blips is Brian Holmes, Tom Leonardt, Trebor Scholz, Gregory Sholette, Orkan Telhan)

Alan Moore (art historian, creator of “collectivities” site, NYC)

working on the history of art collectives in NYC since the 1970s

Laura McGough (Washington, DC)

Collaborative archives: state of archives in the Us based on her work as a

program specialist at the National Endowment Arts Council, examination and

re-examination of structuring and distributing data

_____________________________________________

Try 3

10:20am - 11:30am

LOCATION: NSC 218

Tactical Media from the Masses

Can tactical media be used as an instrument of education?

How can a means of media empowerment for minorities (or silent majorities), for those who cannot express their own voice, become a form of practical and critical pedagogy?

Ricardo Rosas (Brazilian Tactical Media Lab)

_____________________________________________

Break 11:30 - 11:45am

_____________________________________________

Try 4

11:45am - 1:30pm

Location: Art 144

Self-Organized Educational Attempts, Free Universities, "Anti-Universities"

Moderator: Trebor Scholz

Dr. Alan O’Connor, Free Anarchist University Toronto

Stefan Roemer (New Media Department, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich)

Katherine Carl, Srdjan Normal (School of Missing Studies, NYC)
The knowledge that slips through traditional and singular disciplines seems to flow freely in an unbound space and networks, however it takes a collaborative and experimental practice to excavate it, sort of scout for it, rather than wait for it.

Saul Albert, janitorial duties, University of Openess: “No tuition fees! No objectivity! No success!”

Martin Lucas (Hunter College, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Paper Tiger TV)

Ricardo Rosas (Brazilian Tactical Media Lab)

_____________________________________________

Try 5

11:45am - 1:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 222

Streaming Game

Play the conference-wide, conference-long Streaming Game in the gaps

between sessions; seek out the Streaming Game and make it your weekend

obsession; then gather to hear the outcome of collaborative artistic play

in this culminating discussion group.

McKenzie Wark (The New School)

Susan Laxton (Columbia University)

Rachel Stevens (Brown University)

_____________________________________________

Try 6

1:00pm - 5pm

LOCATION: DMS 238

THE ART OF COOPERATION

How do collaborations survive? How can collaborations manage the

egos of their constituent parts? What models of group interaction did you

find most successful? Are we moving towards a social model that is more collective/distributed or merely nodal? Would you consider the Borg from Star Trek, a collective or a hive mind? What sort of art would they create? How is this analogous to exquisite corpse groups online such as Sito.org?

4 hour Talkathron between Patrick Lichty (Intelligent Agent, Rtmark, YesMen) & Nathan Martin (Carnegie Mellon University, Carbon Defense League): 1 Room, 2 speakers, 8 spectators at a time

_____________________________________________

Try 7

11:45am - 1:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 218

Geert Lovink in dialogue with Christoph Spehr

_____________________________________________

Try 8

11:45am - 1:30pm (continues during break)

LOCATION: DMS 232

Rachel Stevens Workshop

_____________________________________________

Lunch Break

1:30- 2:30pm

LOCATION: DMS 286

_____________________________________________

Try 9

2:30pm - 3:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 205

GROOVE LISTENING
A monologue by Kurt Weibers (www.globalpointstrategies.com)

Nicolas Bourriaud’s “relational aesthetics” filtered through Kurt Weiber's

career as an organizational behaviorist, brand designer and

motivational speaker. Weibers interviewed hundreds of

workers, at corporations around the world, and finding, in the gaps of

what they are saying, a collaborative identity, a pattern of

transmission, a temporal formalism, a relational aesthetic.

_____________________________________________

Try 10

2:30pm - 5:00pm

LOCATION: DMS 232

Models for collaboration
How can trans-local student collaborations serve as wider model?

Jon Rubin (SUNY Purchase) http://rachel.ns.purchase.edu/~jrubin/

Stephanie Rothenberg (SUNY Buffalo)

Andrea Polli (Hunter College)

_____________________________________________

Try 11

2:30pm - 3:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 218

The Bonnie Parker Junior Show

Host: Stephanie Rothenberg as Bonnie Parker Junior

Guests:

Brian Holmes as utopian

Christoph Spehr as the sci-fi filmmaker

Critical Art Ensemble as scientists

Tony Conrad as Paul Shafer on the phonarmonica

Call-ins from :

Sara Diamond (The Banff Centre)
Los Cybrids

Page Sarlin (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Trevor Paglen (UC Berkley)

Lucia Sommer (University of Rochester)

Also starring:

Jörg Windszus aka Windy (Bremen)

Uche Nduka (poet and activist, Nigeria/ Germany)

Suse Lang (DASH, co-organizers of NEURO conference, Munich)

_____________________________________________

Break 3:30pm - 3:40 pm

_____________________________________________

Try 12

3:40pm - 5:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 216

Groups and Spaces

Access Community Space Buffalo (Loren Sonnenberg)

16BeaverGroup (Ayreen, Rene Gabri; NYC)

FACES

Gregory Sholette (PAD/D, REPOhistory)

Wolfgang Staehle (The Thing, NYC)

_____________________________________________

Try 13

3:40pm - 5:30pm

LOCATION: DMS 235

Social Network Architectures

What kinds of tools can we design or use to facilitate collaboration?

How does the creative process mirror the network? How can tools generate knowledge? What is missing in these tools? How we design these tools go beyond shatter?

Eric Goldhagen (Open Flows, Interactivist, ABC NoRio)

Amanda Hickman (www.lincproject.org)

Box of Tools for online Collaboration: from mailing lists, web servers,
blogs, voice over ip, SILC, wikis

J3

Jane Crayton, Jessica Leber, Jennifer Peterson (University of Colorado at Bolder)

John Duda (Johns Hopkins University)

syndicating content across the indymedia network, a look at using RSS to automate collaborative content sharing for activist media

_____________________________________________

Try 14

3:40pm - 5:30pm

Distributed Cocktail Focus Group

by Sarah Lewison (UCSD)

The down side of collaborating: subjectivities

and psychology, institutional memory, disappearance,

provenance. Is there an afterlife? What happens to

acknowledgement when bad art becomes good social

practice?

This experimentally structured session on economic support systems for collaborations, including plans for a network of aging artists retirement homes will be discussed while enjoying gin rickeys.

Try 15

LOCATION: DMS 232

Film Screening

8:00pm – 11:00pm

_____________________________________________

DANCE

-->2 PICKUP TIMES

7:15pm and 8:15pm

Yellow School Bus to SOUNDLAB:

in front of College of Arts

7.15pm to Soundlab

8.15pm to Soundlab

TURNTABILIST COLLABORATION @ SOUNDLAB:

Tim Jaeger & Jorge Nava (University of California San Diego)

7:45pm

This piece, as database cinema focuses on digital ethnography of San Diego to border regions around the world. Using custom patches max msp jitter this performance revolves around narratives of politically charged footage

with sound introduced into the dance floor environment of Soundlab.

Los Nukiis

9:00pm - 11:30pm

New York-based electronica duo Los Nukiis will explore

the sonic trans-border landscape with their own blend

of downtempo electro-cumbia.

àRETURN:

to hotel

11:00pm

last pickup-- 12:00pm

_____________________________________________

<Disclaimer: conference activities may include,

but are not limited to nudity>

SUNDAY APRIL 25^th

Swimming, Sauna, Steam Room

(bring swim suit and cape)

9:00am – 10:30am

Alumni Arena

Probe 1

11:00am – 1:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 205

Collaborative Authorship, Collective Writing, E.Poetics
Digital writing is wide-open in just about any way you want. Writing

transforms digital media, and is transformed by them. Everything’s up

for grabs, including reader, writer, code, text, reception, author,

and authority. Anyone can play.

Sandy Baldwin (West Virginia University)

Simon Biggs (Sheffield Hallam University/ University of Cambridge, UK)

Maria Damon (University of Minnesota)

Loss Pequeño Glazier (SUNY at Buffalo)

Alan Sondheim (Brooklyn)

_____________________________________________

Probe 2

11:00am – 1:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 216

Open Source / Free Software Sampling

for Situations of Learning

Demo session of open source software for PC and MAC for situations of learning moderatored by Paul Vanouse. The goal of this session is to demo open source/ free software and create an open access archive of ready to use software (Cygwin, GNU software for Windows, Blender, Gimp, Open office, bit torrent)

with Patrick Lichty, Shawn Rider, Nathan Martin, Chris Coleman, Tom Leonhardt, Saul Albert, Benjamin Macko Hill, Mike Bouquard, Don Jacobs (CATE), Sher Doruff, Arjen Keesmaat (DeWaag, Amsterdam), Alan Sondheim (Brooklyn)

_____________________________________________

Probe 3

11:00am - 1:30pm

LOCATION: NSC 218

Critical collaborative artistic practices in the networks

Horit Herman Peled (Oranim College; Tel Aviv, Israel)

collaboration - a problematic concept
(The Checkpoint Watch case)

Anna Harding (Chair, Creative curating program at Goldsmiths College; London, UK)

Marie-Christiane Mathieu (Montreal)

web stream: Jon Ippolito (Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum / Joline Blais (Professor of New Media at the University of Maine) – demo:

Pool

A project of the University of Maine's Still Water program, The Pool is a collaborative online environment for creating art, code, and texts. In place of the single-artist, single-artwork paradigm favored by the overwhelming majority of documentation systems, The Pool stimulates and documents collaboration in a variety of forms, including multi-author, asynchronous, and cross-medium projects. We are training revolutionaries--not by indoctrinating them with dogma but by exposing them to a process in which sharing is the norm rather than hoarding.

Barbara Lattanzi (www.wildernesspuppets.net)

The interrupting annotator: Demo of New Genre Software work-in-progress

Streaming video online

Michael Frisch (SUNY at Buffalo)

Activating the database: "Telling Lives"

public self-activated oral history recording

Sher Doruff, Arjen Keesmaat (DeWaag, Amsterdam)

global network streaming practices at DeWaag

_____________________________________________

Probe 4:

11:00am - 12:00pm
Art 144

PDPal Walkabouts
PdPAL encourage collaborative storytelling. We provide a tool and set of inspirations that groups of map maker/storytellers deploy. Each group member is assigned to lead a task for the group - guide, observer, recorder. The collaboration of guiding, seeing, and recording challenge in the most basic way our assumptions about how we navigate, perceive, and name the world around us. The goal of this workshop is to develop graphic as well as technical strategies for creating effective maps for the next iteration of PDPal which will utilize cell phones.

_____________________________________________

Probe 5

11:00am - 2:30pm

LOCATION: DMS 235

Experiments in Radio Topographies

by Neurotransmitter & Ricardo Miranda Zuniga

In 1932, Bertolt Brecht claimed that the "radio is one-sided when it should be

two-. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: Change the apparatus over from distribution to

communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication

apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes." Unfortunately, over the

seventy-four years since Brecht's treatise little has changed in radio usage,

quite the opposite, the radio waves have been hijacked by corporate entities,

largely with the aid of the Federal Communications Council (FCC), a

governmental group once intended to protect independent radio programming.

However, the history of radio is global, diverse and contentious. Radio presents a history of corporate power, civil intervention, revolutionary resistance, community advocacy. It is these various histories that will be addressed by the participants of "Experiments in Radio Topographies," in which participants will be asked to investigate and then discuss these histories in a dispersed format, rather than a centralized panel and audience discussion. The panel action will be transmitted live on the free103point9 net radio station: http://www.screwmusicforever.com/free103/freemenu.html

_____________________________________________

Break 12:00pm - 12:10pm

_____________________________________________

Probe 6

12:10pm - 1:30pm

Art 144

Dreaming in the Hammock of Resistance

The Imaginaries of Free Cooperation

Dialogue: a collaborative Presentation by Brian Holmes and Trebor Scholz

_____________________________________________

Probe 7

12:10pm - 1:30pm

Art 136

Technical Run Through: Data-Programming for Community

with Holly Johnson & Paul Visco

Do you know how to write html but now want learn how to use open source tools for databases (php, mysql) for your collaborative projects? Holly Johnson will address the creation of data models in the use of data-base driven tools for collaboration. How do you streamline data for collaboration?

Paul Visco will demonstrate the use of these tools in his online local

community initiative elmwoodstrip.com

This introduction will be followed by a basic two-hour workshop:

creating forms that speak to databases. Holly and Paul will answer

particularly technical questions about structuring databases in this context.

_____________________________________________

Probe 8

12:10pm – 1:00pm

LOCATION: NSC 222

VENDETTA THE ACADEMIC SUPERMODEL PART II

Performance by Katrien Jacobs (Emerson College), Eugene Tan (Emerson

College) and Maurice Methot (Emerson College)

Vendetta will collect audio clips and reflect upon your live conference presentations.

_____________________________________________

Probe 9

12:10pm - 1:30pm

LOCATION: DMS 244

Expression of Women Through Pixels

J³ Jane Crayton, Jessica Leber, Jennifer Peterson (University of Colorado at Bolder)

*Keyworkx Jam

Keyworkx jam as a virtual collaborative web-based art presentation.

_____________________________________________

Probe 10

12:10pm – 1:30pm

Location: DMS 232

The Elastic Test Project (workshop)

Rozalinda Borcila (Cluj-Napoca, Romania)

The Elastic Test Project is an on-going series of performances developed collaboratively as interventions into the normative cultural definitions of "citizen" and "foreigner", by critically re-interpreting immigration and naturalization in various locations.

This workshop outlines, and set into practice, some of the methods employed, considering the process of developing the intervention, as well as the ways in which each individual participant negotiated their roles in the game structure.

_____________________________________________

Lunch Break

1:30pm - 2:30pm
LOCATION: DMS 286

_____________________________________________

Probe 11

2:30pm - 3:50pm

LOCATION: NSC 205

Collaborations between Artists and Scientists

Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration

What does it mean to successfully collaborate in an

art/sci context (ie. experimental bio-info-edu-tainment)?

Critical Art Ensemble

Paul Vanouse (SUNY At Buffalo)

_____________________________________________

Probe 12

2:30pm - 3:50pm

LOCATION: DMS 235

Who says artists can't organize?

Simon Sheikh (Nordic Institute For Contemporary Art; Helsinki, Finland)

Who is afraid of artists?

ARTIST UNIONS.

Georg Schoelhammer (editor, Springerin Magazine for Contemporary Art,

Vienna (Austria)/ magnet magazine network)

Janis Demkiw (Fuse Magazine, Toronto)

_____________________________________________

Probe 13

2:30pm - 3:50pm

LOCATION: NSC 216

DreamYourCooperation
The ABC's of Collaboration. Collaborate or Die?

Robinson Crusoe, the Lonely Island, the beauty of consensus,

new emergent identities, mutual benefit, peer pleasure, variable durations, scale. What about individual gain?

Setting:

a room full of people are given questions-

What are flexible if/else statements or flow charts of collaboration?

What are key points of collaboration? Focus versus specificity in the

creation of collaboration, how to involve people, scale in

collaboration, working conditions, division of labor, credit economy

Within two hours a 15 minute video piece is created by all participants in the workshop. Alternatively groups could create drawings, flow charts or puppet plays. These results are given to the conference organizers for addition to DVD or archive.

Mike Steventon (Mike Steventon (former chairman of the board; Interaccess, Toronto/ and DespiteTV (London, UK), SENSBUS collaborative installation using micro processors, coordinator/ co-creator of Art Interface Device (AID), an open source collaborative tool for artists.

_____________________________________________

Probe 14

2:30pm - 3:50pm

LOCATION: DMS 232

Collaborative Story-Telling Workshop

by Jessica Hammer (game developer, NYC) and Elizabeth Knipe:

Creation and reflection about the writing of a story guided by several

different sets of rules of distribution of authority.

_____________________________________________

Probe 15

2:30pm - 3:50pm

LOCATION: DMS 244

Collaborative project under construction

Carbon Defense League (Pittsburgh)

END THE BOREDOM! DEVIANCE IN ART.

MapHub

_____________________________________________

Break 3:50pm - 4:00pm

_____________________________________________

4:15pm – 5:00pm

Forum

moderatored: Geert Lovink / Trebor Scholz

All participants attend, sessions report, summary

_____________________________________________

SQUEAKY WHEEL

7pm

175 Elmwood Avenue

Buffalo, NY

(716) 884-7172

Screening followed by discussion of works by Termite TV at Squeaky Wheel collective working philosophy, self- and group promotion, sustainability, consensus and aesthetic integrity

The five members/directors Termite TV Collective (www.termite.org) was founded in 1991. How is the working styles and evolving collaborative philosophy reflected in the changing aesthetic of the collective's video work?

_____________________________________________

MONDAY APRIL 26

7pm

EPILOGUE-- Post-conference Event

THE THING

601 West 26th Street

New York, New York 10001

Tel: 212-937 0443

Email: info@thing.net

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

Friday night, and all day Saturday and Sunday:

$40 (for food - paid by participants in cash)

Tee Shirts et more at central office desk of the provisional organizing committee

Performance Caroline Koebel

Baby Hours:

LOCATION: DMS 248

Saturday 1:30pm – 2:30pm, 5-6pm

Sunday 10am - 11am, 1:30pm – 2:30pm
-----------------------------------------------------------
Josephine Anstey/ Dave Pape Lab
LOCATION: DMS 266
VR, Networking and Collaboration

Saturday and Sunday

Info and sign up:

http://www.ccr.buffalo.edu/anstey/VSTUDIO/nac

April 24 & 25

11:00 - 12:00 Experiments in VR

Whose Streets - Chris Outlaw, Richard Wetzel (UB)

The Trail The Trail - Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape, Stuart Shapiro, Vikranth Rao, Orkan Telhan, Trupti Devdas Nayak, Paul Visco (UB)

1:00 - 3:30

MetaSpace - Chris Galbraith, Ivan Itchkawich, Adrian Levesque(UB)

Aural Map - Dan Neveu (UB)

4:00 - 5:30 Networked VR

(VR networked between Buffalo, Indiana and Chicago)

PAAPAB - Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape, Dan Neveu (UB)

Beat Box - Margaret Dolinsky, Edward J. Dambik, Mitja Hmeljak, Nicolas Bradley (Indiana University)

Looking for Water - Dan Sandin, Laurie Spiegel (EVL)

Rutopia - Daria Tsoupikova, Alex Hill, Julieta Aguilera,

Helen-Nicole Kostis, Tina Shah (EVL)

Julieta Aguilera, Seung Kang, Helen-Nicole Kostis, Tina Shah, Geoffrey Allan Baum, Damin Keenan, Alex Hill (EVL)

-----------------------------------------------------------

CEED - Exhibition exploring the process of exchange between designers and community.
Location: DMS lounge area

-----------------------------------------------------------

Video Screening Loop: “Studio on The Street”
by Tony Conrad
Location: DMS 239a

This research initiative was made possible by the support of:

Center for Applied Technologies in Education,

The Office Of The Vice President For Research (UB),

Springerin (Hefte für Gegenwartskunst), c magazine, Edward H. Butler Chair in the Department of English and Neural Magazine (Italy), The Department of Media Study, the College of Fine Arts and Sciences.

_____________________________________________

image report and FC_logs will follow

_____________________________________________

contact:

geert@xs4all.nl

treborscholz@earthlink.net

_____________________________________________

Description of Groups / Biographies of Participants

(as received at time of printing)

16 Beaver Group

www.16beavergroup.org

16 Beaver Group is located in downtown Manhattan

and has established itself as a place for artists, activists, curators,

critics and others who are interested in initiating and maintaining an

ongoing space and time for the practice and discussion of contemporary

art, theory, and politics. The topics discussed come directly out of

the interests or projects of the participants.

Josephine Anstey
jranstey@buffalo.edu
Josephine Anstey is a Virtual Reality artist, with a background in video