The Hartware Guide to Irational.org (2006) [English/German]
Filed under catalogue | Tags: · art, copyright, intellectual property, internet, internet art, media art, net art
Published on the occasion of the exhibition “The Wonderful World of Irational.org. Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006” in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund from 30. 08. till 29. 10. 2006, curated by Inke Arns and Jacob Lillemose.
“Irational is a loose grouping of six international net and media artists who came together around the server irational.org, founded by the British net artist Heath Bunting in 1996, going on to make decisive contribution to early net art from the mid-1990s onward. With dry humor and minimal aesthetics, irational commented the Internet hype of the mid-to-late 1990s, competing with the commercialization-euphoria of the new market by developing its own pseudo-ventures. Net art was immediate during this period, neither needing nor enjoying the safety of a mediating space or instance. This is why irational often hit upon humorless trademark attorneys, who wanted to keep irational from using brand names such as 7-11, American Express, Sainsbury’s and Tesco. These encounters, which the exhibition documents extensively, were little more than a prelude to more recent developments in the field of copyright, intellectual property, and brand protection. Heath Bunting was the first net artist to retire in 1997, putting an end to his exclusive work on the net and turning back to more intensive work in public space, which the Internet has become such an important part of today. If the activities of irational during its “net phase” were dedicated to calling virtual boundaries into question, its members now experiment with interrogating and overcoming economic, political, and social boundaries in real space, producing a great deal of comic relief, among other things.” (from the press release for the exhibition)
With texts by Susanne Ackers, Inke Arns, Matthew Fuller, Francis Hunger, Jacob Lillemose, Darija Šimunović
Editors Susanne Ackers, Inke Arns, Francis Hunger, Jacob Lillemose
Publisher Revolver – Archiv fuer aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, October 2006
ISBN 3865882994, 978-3865882998
136 pages
PDF (6 MB, updated on 2023-3-10)
Comment (0)McKenzie Wark: A Hacker Manifesto (2004–) [EN, DE, FR, CR, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · commons, copyright, floss, free software, gift economy, hacker ethic, hacking, intellectual property
“A double is haunting the world–the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world–for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data.
A Hacker Manifesto deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called “intellectual property,” gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information–the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers–against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces.
Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.”
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2004
ISBN 0674015436, 9780674015432
208 pages
Interview with author: Melissa Gregg (LA Review of Books, 2014).
Reviews: Hua Hsu (Village Voice, 2004), Vince Carducci (PopMatters, 2005), Graham Meikle (Scan, 2005), Brent K. Jesiek (New Media & Society, 2006), A Hacker Manifesto at Twenty (e-flux special issue, 2024, PDF).
A Hacker Manifesto (English, 2004, updated on 2014-9-12)
Hacker-Manifest (German, trans. Dietmar Zimmer, 2005, added on 2018-7-13)
Un manifeste hacker (French, trans. Club Post-1984 Mary Shelley & Cie Hacker band, 2006, added on 2018-7-13)
Hakerski manifest (Croatian, trans. Tomislav Medak, 2006)
Un manifiesto hacker (Spanish, trans. Laura Manero, 2006, added on 2018-7-13)
Manifiesto hacker (Spanish, trans. of a shorter essay, undated, v4, added on 2014-3-6)
Cory Doctorow: Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · censorship, copyright, creativity, intellectual property, internet, politics, technology
One of the internet’s most celebrated hi-tech culture mavens returns with this second collection of essays and polemics. Discussing complex topics in an accessible manner, Cory Doctorow’s visions of a future where artists have full freedom of expression is tempered with his understanding that creators need to benefit from their own creations. From extolling the Etsy makerverse to excoriating Apple for dumbing-down technology while creating an information monopoly, each unique piece is brief, witty, and at the cutting edge of tech. Now a stay-at-home dad as well as an international activist, Doctorow writes as eloquently about creating internet, real-time theater with his daughter as he does in lambasting the corporations that want to limit and profit from inherent intellectual freedoms.
Foreword by Tim O’Reilly
Publisher Tachyon Books, October 2011
ISBN 978-1-61696-048-3
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license