Hi Jemima and all,

Yes- I agree- NODE.London is 'grass roots'. And your definition clearly 
defines the difference in that the project was put in place 'not by an 
institution' but by a group of individuals - simple really. And not only 
that, it distributed power amongst various nodes around London as well 
the people willing to be part of the project at them, out these nodes 
many people offered their time as volunteers. Even though we have 
partners in crime such as the ICA, the Tate, the Science Museum on board 
- who also have a say at the meetings, it was as equal nodes/volunteers 
and it was run by using a consensus model of working together.

I think that Luci put well here actually...
"At an organisational level the project is uncurated and non-selective  
and based on an open system where people can opt-in and get involved.  
Obviously this didn't start from a position of complete neutrality,  it 
started with a group and spiraled outwards and then when there was  
enough momentum and focus there was a conscious decision to try to  look 
beyond the obvious network and extend it in different directions  and 
plug some gaps. NODE.London's system developed in a way which was 
intentionally flexible enough to try to incorporate this messy hybrid  
of activity which sought to include and mobilise existing, emergent,  
grass roots, DIY, HE, and institutional projects so that whilst it  will 
never be comprehensive it would attempt to map the span of media  arts 
activity across London in a meaningful way; and enable  interconnections 
to emerge. Some of this activity is little known  beyond its insider 
audiences and participants and it was important  for the NODE.London 
framework to be able to include transient, and  community based projects 
alongside the more readily visible venues  and organisations who 
consistently work on media arts programming."

I for one will not claim any singular knowledge of all the 
parts/segments of how NODE.London came about for that road leads to 
pretence, although I do remember a meeting a while back after DMZ, when 
and Ruth and myself were invited to the Arts Council along with some 
others (they can declare themselves if they wish to) to discuss how to 
create such a project for London. I am not sure whether there were any 
other meetings about it, but reading your text informs me that there 
probably were. At the end of that day, we left the Arts Council buolding 
thinking oh, what was all that about then we heard nothing at all about 
it for a while. Then suddenly, SMAL (Season of Media Arts in London) 
appeared, and then we got excited, then it turned into NODE.London after 
a while....

At first, it was centralized in the traditional sense and not for long- 
it soon changed with the setting up of sub-groups, volunteers (VO's), 
Node groups, and getting on board a very capable administrator called 
Tim Jones, who was and is paid and worth the cash. Also there were just 
so many meetings, we have all been constantly exhausted from it all - 
with subscriber meetings, VO meetings, sub-group meetings. Each 
sub-group had their own responsibilities such as 'web-tools', 'PR', 
there is so much more, and I know that I am missing out plenty - this is 
a web page of a lot of the meetings, if anyone wishes to browse 
-http://smal.omweb.org/modules/wakka/SmalMeetings - with minutes and 
everything on what was discussed, an interesting read if you are sad 
like myself, probably not.

This is the site that represents NODE.London as it is now 
http://nodel.org/ which equally shows much of the history and what is 
currently happening...

marc


 Hi all and node.london is a grassroots from my perspective, in so much
as it has been co-ordinated by individuals rather than institutions.  

I've attended several cross-disciplinary meetings of London based
institutions, keen to see a media arts event in London, but incapable of
agreeing on what it should look like, or how best to achieve it. So,
node.london should be congratulated for managing, where others have
failed, to fill a well recognised gap.

As a prelude to the events in March, I'd like to draw your attention to
the first of three new net art works at Tate Online, co-commissioned
with the Whitney's artport.  The Dumpster, by Golan Levin with Kamal
Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg, launched today at both sites:
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/ &  http://artport.whitney.org/.

The Dumpster is an information visualisation using data from web logs to
plot the romantic lives of teenagers in 2005. Accompanying the work
you'll also find a text on 'Social Data Browsing' by Lev Manovich
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/bvs/manovich.htm, and an new overarching
essay to the net art section at Tate Online by Charlie Gere on 'Network
Art and the Networked Gallery':
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/networkgallery.htm.

All contribute topical points about the role of the gallery or
institution 21st century, as well as the nature of curation and artistic
practice today. Two more Tate / Whitney co-commissions will follow in
March, to coincide directly with node.london, along with an online panel
discussion to debate all these issues still further.

If data be the food of love, play on,

Jemima