My interest in ŒFree Cooperation©ˆ centers around cultural production,
particularly of electronic media. I was an active member of Paper Tiger TV,
especially during the Gulf War. Since then I have worked with a variety of
media arts organizations including the Downtown Community Television Center
and the Educational Video Center in New York, where high school students are
given video access as a tool for analyzing, understanding, and challanging
the context of their own lives a la Paolo Freire.

Currently I work at Manhattan Neighborhood Network, the city public access
station, planning for the future of alternative media, at least in
Manhattan, and evaluating cultural technology for its utility in promoting
community. At MNN we are looking closely at fiber optic capacity [dark
fiber under NYC] as well as wifi video streaming, to give examples. MNN just
collaborated on live coverage of the New Hampshire primaries using
satellite, fiber and chat spaces to link to a national audience.

A key issue for me is what used to be called the Œdemystification©ˆ of
technology, asking what is needed to put soft and hardware in people©ˆs hands
with the training and resources to make it useful, seeing not only people as
networks but technology as sets of systems.

At Hunter College CUNY I am developing a course in collective media
production in the new Integrated Media Arts grad program. Here my interest
is in collaborative models, in understanding the strengths of collective
production, in re-examining useful models, in taking a look at curricula
developed by others, particularly ones that bring together different types
of media production.