Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2001 19:45:08 +1100
From: Ned Rossiter <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: politics of a digitial present: fibreculture debate and meeting

To: The Cyber-Society-Live mailing list is a moderated discussion list
for



Dear John

If this could be posted on cyber-society, it'd be much appreciated.

Thanks for your efforts and work on c-s.

regards
Ned

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[FINAL PROGRAM}

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::fibreculture:: politics of a digital present
6 - 8 December, 2001, Melbourne

Noting a vacuum in critical Australian net culture and research,
::fibreculture:: was founded as a mailing list in January 2001 by
David Teh and Geert Lovink.  The purpose of the list has been to
exchange articles, ideas and arguments on Australian IT policy and
practice in a broad context.

The inaugural ::fibreculture:: meeting considers four key areas of
net culture and research: theory, policy, education and the arts.
Co-organised by Cinemedia and the Australian Centre for the Moving
Image, a public debate on the evening of 6 December will precede the
meeting.  The debate seeks to address these issues in dialogue with a
wider audience.

A 2 day meeting follows the debate.  All are welcome.

Both events bring together a community of critical thinkers engaged
with new media/Internet theory and practice, with a view to
constructing a strategic program of how Australia might better
support innovation, R+D and the applications and culture of new
technology.

A reader has been prepared for publication prior to the
::fibreculture:: meeting.  It can be ordered from the
::fibreculture:: website (www.fibreculture.org).  Submissions of 1500
to 3000 word short essays, position papers, or manifestos were
invited that address at least one of the four key themes, and these
were posted to the ::fibreculture:: mailing list and subject to peer
review.

The aim of the ::fibreculture:: meeting is not to present formal
papers, but to circulate papers in advance which can operate as a
point of reference and basis for discussion during the meeting.

We aim to produce more readers, monographs, edited collections and
newspapers.  Proposals to the list are most welcome for future
publications.  We see this as one key intervention into the current
political economy of commercial academic publishing and the "command
economy" approach to academic production by DETYA.



Digital publics: a debate
Thursday 6 December, 7pm - 10pm
Organised together with Cinemedia's Australian Centre for the Moving
Image (ACMI)
Treasury Theatre, Lower Plaza
1 Macarthur Street, East Melbourne

Registration: at the door ($10 full/$7 concession)

7pm sharp
Introduction

Moderator: Geert Lovink

7.15pm - 7.50pm
Session 1 - Net Theory

Key Speaker: Mathew Allen, Associate Professor, School of Media and
Information, Curtin University of Technology; author of Smart
Thinking; and the Executive of the Association of Internet
Researchers (http://www.aoir.org).

Respondent: Esther Milne, writer and PhD candidate, Department of
English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne.

7.50pm - 8.25pm
Session 2 - Policy, Intellectual Property Rights, Commercial Practices

Key speaker: Victor Perton, Victorian Shadow Minister for Technology
& Innovation; Victorian Shadow Minister for Conservation &
Environment; former Chairman, Victorian Government Multimedia
Committee, Data Protection Advisory Council, Electronic Business
Framework Group.

Respondent: Tom Worthington, Visiting Fellow in the Department of
Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology,
Australian National University; electronic business consultant;
author of the book Net Traveller; information technology professional.

BREAK - 25 minutes plus launch of book, Politics of a Digital
Present: An Inventory on Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory
* light snacks and drinks available in foyer

8.50pm - 9.25pm
Session 3 - New Media Arts/Culture and the Arts

Key Speaker: Terry Cutler, currently a member of the Australian
Information Economy Advisory Council.  He is a member of the
International Advisory Panel of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor,
reflecting his strong interest in the role of, and opportunities for,
Asian countries in the new information era.  Terry Cutler is also
Chairman of the Australia Council, having previously chaired its New
Media Arts Board, and he is on the Council of the Victorian College
of the Arts. He has previously served as a director of Cinemedia and
Opera Australia.

Respondent: Amanda McDonald Crowley, currently Associate Director,
Adelaide Festival 2002. Cultural worker, researcher, facilitator,
curator working primarily in the new media/ electronic arts field.
Previous Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

9.25pm - 10pm
Session 4 - Education

Key speaker: Paul James, Senior Lecturer, Political and Social
Inquiry, Monash University; President of Association for the Public
University; author of Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract
Community; editor of The State in Question: Transformations of the
Australian State and Technocratic Dreaming: Of Very Fast Trains and
Japanese Designer Cities; editorial member of Arena publications.

Respondent: Anna Munster, Lecturer in Digital Media Theory, School of
Art History and Theory, College of Fine Arts, UNSW.  She is also a
media artist whose work ranges across new media, time-based and
photomedia (see her online work: http://wundernet.cofa.unsw.edu.au).
Anna has written for ctheory, m/c, Photofile and Artlink among others
and is currently researching biotechnical art and ethics.

Closing Panel


::fibreculture:: inaugural meeting, 7 - 8 December,
Organised together with the Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of
the Arts (VCA)
234 St Kilda Road
Southbank, Melbourne VIC 3006

Registration: $50/$30 full; $30/$20 single day (payable at the door -
NOTE cash or cheques only).  Registration includes lunch, tea, coffee
and copy of the book, Politics of a Digital Present: An Inventory of
Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory.

Venue: a PDF map of the room locations can be downloaded from
www.vca.unimelb.edu.au - go to the link "Where is the VCA".

Program

Friday 7 December
Venue: Room 216 in the Music School (entry from St Kilda Road)

10.00am - 10.30am
Introduction of ::fibreculture:: facilitators and organisers

10.30am - 12.30pm
Mapping Australian FibreCulture
Round with introductions and 3 minute presentations
* Researchers, critics, theorists, writers, programmers, designers,
developers, consultants: WHERE are you and WHAT are you up to?

12.30pm - 1.30pm - Lunch break

1.30pm - 3.30pm
Session 1: Network Theory/Philosophy

Topics:
* Debating neo-empirical approaches and the return of objective
social science after the exhaustion of post-structuralism
* Crisis of the offline (AI/VR) body centred Deleuzian notions
* Hegemony of digital Darwinism and biologism within new media arts
and IT industry
* Importance of media archaeology, mapping pre-histories of new media
* Global governance debate
* Public Domain vs. the Corporate State
* Problematic relation to Cultural Studies
* Network theories for the future-present

3.30pm - 4pm - Tea/coffee break

4pm - 6pm
Session 2: Policy

Topics:
* Telstra, broadband, right of access, bandwidth
* Australia and the censorship tendency (political, pornography,
gambling, etc.)
* Alternative plan for IT Centre of Excellence
* Mapping the policy players
* How to fight the consumerist ethos in IT policy - "access" as cyber
literacy and skill, not high bandwidth data-gluttony
* How can ::fibreculture:: be heard and operate on the policy level?
* Policy futures

6pm onwards - drinks/dinner party (location to be decided)

Saturday 8 December
Venue: Federation Hall (entry from Grant Street, Southbank)

11.00am - 1pm
Session 3: Culture and the arts

Topics:
* Cult of representation, proximity to political power
* Patronage system (cultural state apparatus)
* Primacy of aesthetics
* Lack of game/net.art and e-literature funding
* Deliriating over an (absent) synergy of arts and science
* Generationalism in new media arts

1pm - 2pm - Lunch break
* screening of The Code - a Linux documentary from Finland

2pm - 4pm
Session 4: Education

Topics:
* Current approaches/paradigms: teaching new media/internet studies
and e-learning
* Corporatisation and the Virtual University - profit obsessions,
confused IT sovereignty, limited teaching and research outcomes
* What constitutes the mode of production?
* Relationship between curricula development and university funding and
policy
* Both government and opposition share limited horizons. How can we
explode these?

4.15pm - 6pm
Closing session ::fibreculture meeting::

* Directions of ::fibreculture::
* Discussion about the list
* Legal structures for ::fibreculture:: as formal organisation
* Futures: the place of ::fibreculture:: within policy making,
research funding and practice


Convenors:

Hugh Brown (Brisbane) [log in to unmask]
Geert Lovink (Sydney) [log in to unmask]
Helen Merrick (Perth) [log in to unmask]
Esther Milne (Melbourne) [log in to unmask]
Ned Rossiter (Melbourne) [log in to unmask]
David Teh (Sydney) [log in to unmask]
Michele Willson (Perth) [log in to unmask]


With special thanks to:

John Arnold, Head of School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash
University
<[log in to unmask]>

Alessio Cavallaro, Producer/Curator New Media Projects
Cinemedia's Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
<[log in to unmask]>

Nikos Papastergiadis, writer and Head of the Centre for Ideas,
Victorian College of the Arts (VCA),
<[log in to unmask]>
Louise Adler, Deputy Director of VCA

Arena Printing and Publications Pty Ltd., http://www.arena.org.au


Sponsors:

Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts
Cinemedia's Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Humanities Division, Curtin University of Technology
Monash Publications Grants Committee
School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
The Power Institute, University of Sydney

http://www.fibreculture.org

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