Bernhard Hummer, Therese Kaufmann, Raimund Minichbauer, Gerald Raunig (ed.): Republicart practices. documentation evaluation (2005)

A transnational multilingual platform and research project exploring and developing progressive practices in public art. The joint venture of artists, theoreticians and art institutions all over Europe has brought together (2002-2005) different styles of artistic production, contemporary art and political theory and cultural politics.

Republicart intensifies the political discourse of participatory, interventionist and activist art practices through 12 art projects and 12 discursive events. It has a multilingual web journal, a database, a mailing list, a pilot study on alternative histories of art, a book series and critiques.

Publisher: Wien – Linz, eipcp Europen Institut for Progressive Cultural Politicies 2005
ISBN-10: 3950176233
ISBN-13: 9783950176230

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Rob van Kranenburg: The Internet of Things. A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID (2008)

The Internet of Things is the second issue in the series of Network Notebooks. It’s a critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID by Rob van Kranenburg. Rob examines what impact RFID and other systems, will have on our cities and our wider society. He currently works at Waag Society as program leader for the Public Domain and wrote earlier an article about this topic in the Waag magazine and is the co-founder of the DIFR Network. The notebook features an introduction by journalist and writer Sean Dodson.

In Network Notebook #2, titled The Internet of Things, Rob van Kranenburg outlines his vision of the future. He tells of his early encounters with the kind of location-based technologies that will soon become commonplace, and what they may mean for us all. He explores the emergence of the “internet of things”, tracing us through its origins in the mundane back-end world of the international supply chain to the domestic applications that already exist in an embryonic stage. He also explains how the adoption of he technologies of the City Control is not inevitable, nor something that we must kindly accept nor sleepwalk into. In van Kranenburg’s account of the creation of the international network of Bricolabs, he also suggests how each of us can help contribute to building technologies of trust and empower ourselves in the age of mass surveillance and ambient technologies.

Table of Contents:
1. Forward: A tale of two cities Sean Dodson
2. Ambient Intelligence and its promises
3. Ambient Intelligence and its catches
4. Bricolabs
5. How to act

Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Copy editing: Sean Dodson. Design: Studio Léon&Loes, Rotterdam http://www.leon-loes.nl. Print: Telstar Media, Pijnacker. Publisher: Insitute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Supported by: Amsterdam School of Design and Communication, Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and Waag Society, Amsterdam.
Network Notebooks 02, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2008. ISBN: 978-90-78146-06-3.

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Rosalind Gill: Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web (2007)

Accounts of new media working conditions draw heavily on two polarised stereotypes, veering from techno-utopianism on the one hand, to a vision of webworkers as the new ‘precariat’, victims of neo-liberal economic policies on the other. Heralded from both perspectives as representing the brave new world of work, what is striking is the absence of research on new media workers’ own experiences, particularly in a European context. This INC commissioned research goes beyond contemporary myths to explore how people working in the field experience the pleasures, pressures and challenges of working on the web. Illustrated throughout with quotations from interviews, it examines the different career paths emerging for content-producers in web-based industries, questions the relevance of existing education and training, and highlights the different ways in which people manage and negotiate freelancing, job insecurity, and keeping up to date in a fast-moving field where both software and expectations change rapidly.

The research is based on 35 interviews carried out in Amsterdam in 2005, and contextually draws upon a further 60 interviews with web designers in London and Brighton. The interviews were conducted by Danielle van Diemen and Rosalind Gill.

Interviews: Rosalind Gill and Danielle van Diemen. Copy editing: Ned Rossiter. Design: Léon&Loes, Rotterdam. Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Printing: Cito Repro, Amsterdam. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
Network Notebooks 01, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007. ISBN: 978-90-78146-02-5.

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