Sean Cubitt, Paul Thomas (eds.): Re:live: Media Art Histories 2009 (2010)

Proceedings from the Third International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology held in December 2009 in Melbourne, Australia. The event followed the success of the two previous Media Art History conferences, re:fresh (Banff 2005) and re:place (Berlin 2007).

Publisher, University of Melbourne & Victorian College of the Arts and Music, 2009
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia license
ISBN 9780980718638

PDF, PDF

FlossManuals.net: Circumvention Tools. How to Bypass Internet Censorship (2009/2011)

A book describes circumvention tools and explains why you might want to use them, and honestly describes the risks you must consider before circumventing blockers or monitors. Blockers and monitors restrict access to areas of the Internet, and this book describes simple techniques for bypassing those restrictions.

The growth of the Internet has been paralleled by attempts to control how people use it, motivated by a desire to protect children, businesses, personal information, the capacity of networks, or moral interests, for example. Some of these concerns involve allowing people to control their own experience of the Internet (for instance, letting people use spam-filtering tools to prevent spam from being delivered to their own e-mail accounts), but others involve restricting how other people can use the Internet and what those other people can and can’t access. The latter case causes significant conflicts and disagreements when the people whose access is restricted don’t agree that the blocking is appropriate or in their interest. Problems also arise when blocking mechanisms and filters reduce access to useful business, health, educational, and other information.

Because of concerns about the effect of internet blocking mechanisms, and the implications of censorship, many individuals and groups are working hard to ensure that the Internet, and the information on it, are freely available to everyone who wants it. There is a vast amount of energy, from commercial, non-profit and volunteer groups, devoted to creating tools and techniques to bypass Internet censorship. Some techniques require no special software, just a knowledge of where to look for the same information. Programmers have developed a variety of more capable tools, which address different types of filtering and blocking. These tools, often called “circumvention tools” help Internet users access information that they might not otherwise be able to see. This book documents simple circumvention techniques such as a cached file or web proxy, and also describes more complex methods using Tor, which stands for The Onion Router, involving a sophisticated network of proxy servers.

This manual has content that was largely written at a Book Sprint. The Book Sprint was held in the beautiful hills of Upper New York State in the US. Eight people worked together over an intensive five-day period to produce the book. It is a living document of course and is available online for free, where you can also edit it and improve it.

Published FlossManuals.net, 2011-03-10
240 pages
GNU General Public License version 2

project website (added on 28-5-2011)
FlossManuals page (updated on 28-5-2011)

PDF (updated on 28-5-2011)
PDF (lightweight Quickstart PDF, 8 pages; added on 28-5-2011)

Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, Sabine Niederer (eds.): Urban Screens Reader (2009)

“The Urban Screens Reader is the first book to focus entirely on the topic of urban screens. In assembling contributions from a range of leading theorists, in conjunction with a series of case studies dealing with artists’ projects and screen operators’ and curators’ experiences, the reader offers a rich resource for those interested in the intersections between digital media, cultural practices and urban space.

Urban Screens have emerged as a key site in contemporary struggles over public culture and public space. They form a strategic junction in debates over the relation between technological innovation, the digital economy, and the formation of new cultural practices in contemporary cities. How should we conceptualize public participation in relation to urban screens? Are ‘the public’ citizens, consumers, producers, or something else? Where is the public located? When a screen is erected in public space, who has access to it and control over it? What are the appropriate forms of urban planning, design and governance? How do urban screens affect cultural experiences?”

Contributors: Simone Arcagni, Alice Arnold, Giselle Beiguelman, Liliana Bounegru, Kate Brennan, Andreas Broeckmann, Uta Caspary, Sean Cubitt, Annet Dekker, Jason Eppink, Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Mike Gibbons, M. Hank Haeusler, Bart Hoeve, Erkki Huhtamo, Karen Lancel, Hermen Maat, Meredith Martin, Scott McQuire, Julia Nevárez, Sabine Niederer, Shirley Niemans, Nikos Papastergiadis, Soh Yeong Roh, Saskia Sassen, Leon van Schaik, Jan Schuijren, Audrey Yue.

Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2009
ISBN 9789078146100
287 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2018-8-10)