About Monoskop

Monoskop is a collaborative wiki research on social history of media art.

Admin: db at societyofalgorithm dot org

About Monoskop

(Note: variation of this text was presented at New Media programs in the Czech Republic debate in Prague in February 2006 and appeared in the e-mail interview for Mag.Net publication in March 2006. Written by User:Dusan)

Social context

Two years ago we started BURUNDI media lab in Bratislava with the main focus on new media. Among other things we have been taking part in organization of Multiplace festival anually. There was a number of people who were confused about what we do and actually we sort of based our activities on confusion about the term 'new media'. In summer 2004 we set up a wiki in order to store the information connected to what we understand as media art and we do it since then.

Form

The structure of Monoskop is not really complex. On the frontpage there is a list of cities. Currently most evolved ones are three of them: Bratislava, Prague, and Brno. Under each city there are listed the current and past initiatives, festivals, events, conferences, symposiums, ateliers or academic programs, media, and individuals. If you go further, these nodes consist of description of what it is, when it started or takes place and where. Then there is a summary of organizers, program, and links to articles and homepage. Everything is linked to other nodes. You can edit each node easily.

Highlites

Although Burundi dissolved last year, we keep using this site. My approach to Monoskop is to make notes from the personal contacts or from internet research. For instance, with the help of others and based also on the field research i compiled the wide overview of history of media art in Slovakia (see the node Media art in Slovakia). There are also other uses besides the database or a notepad one. Friend of mine, audiovisual artist Guy van Belle is creating here together with Barbara Huber text-based media piece Kurt vonnegut suite. Then there are people who prefer sort of freeform rather than portfolio- or CV-based homepage, these kind of information you can easily store here, and also save money on design and programming. This advantage took up the artist Michal Murin who continuously edits also other items in Monoskop.

Links

http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/
http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Media_art_in_Slovakia
http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Kurt_vonnegut_suite
http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Michal_Murin

Another presentation of Monoskop

(Note: presented at Glocals and Outsiders conference in Prague in June 2007 by User:Dusan)

I will give very short introduction into a collaborative project i've been involved in and maybe if you have any points or topics to discuss, we can focus on these.

Basically the question behind Monoskop was: what has actually happened in art and technology field before we arrived here? It was 3 years ago and i was a member of Burundi media lab in Bratislava. Educational structures in Slovakia don't really offer very much from the history of this field, and there is neither a lot of literature covering eastern and central european region.

So the wiki was set up and started to be filled with information from oral histories, internet research and personal experiences. I have to say that from the beginning the focus was put especially on social history of media art, including groups, collectives, communities, events, and institutions. So far there has not been put much effort to cover theoretical discourse, neither technical or technological issues. The backbone of the structure is therefore list of cities.

From the start it was a project with open participation, so far circa 40-50 people edited it - from SK, CZ, BG, NL, BE and other places. It offers a resource for educational purposes and research, and also serves as a contact list.

When talking about globalisation, and media art memory we should not forget the story, the media cultures that give birth to art. We should not forget the production situations, contexts, networks, strategic alliances, platforms forming dicussions, access, creative space and production facilities where art is created. Artists very rarely work outside social and institutional networks.