nettime txt messaging meets political protest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 1, 2004 PROTESTORS AT DNC RELIED ON NEW TXT MESSAGING SERVICE; BIG PLANS FOR RNC IN AUGUST Protestors at last week's Democratic National Convention had a new tool in their arsenal - a text messaging service designed just for them. TXTMob, as the service is called, allows users to quickly and easily broadcast text messages to groups of cellphones. The system works much like an electronic b-board: users subscribe to various lists, and receive messages directly on their phones. During the DNC, protest organizers used TXTMob to provide activists with up-to-the minute information about police movements and direct actions. Medical and legal support groups also used TXTMob to dispatch personnel and resources as the situation demanded. According to TXTMob developer John Henry, over 200 protestors used the service during the DNC. Obviously, we would have loved to announce TXTMob before the convention began, but were concerned that the police might try to block our communications, said Henry. Frankly, it's a little ridiculous that we have to go to such lengths to help people exercise their first amendment rights , but I guess these are the times we live in. TXTMob was produced by the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA), an art and engineering collective that develops technologies for political dissent. The IAA worked closely with the Black Tea Society, an ad-hoc coalition that organized much of the protest activity during the DNC, to design the system. According to a Black Tea member who chose to remain anonymous, TXTMob was great! When the cops tried to arrest one of our people, we were able to get hundreds of folks to the scene within minutes. IAA spokespersons refused to comment directly on future plans for the service, saying only that they are now working with activists in preparation for the upcoming Republican National Convention in New York City. We're making several improvements based on our experience in Boston, said Henry. New York is going to be off the hook! The current implementation of TXTMob is available for public use at www.txtmob.com. Contacts: TXTMob: [EMAIL PROTECTED] IAA: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ### # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime The Art of Sweatshop
Andrew, Rana, I know nothing about this particular outfit other than its email advertisement, so calling it a 'sweatshop' was more an act of parody a la 'spam kr!it!k' rather one of analysis. The subject line 'business' seemed rather bland. Yet, it was also not random, as the message struck me for several reasons. First, paintings are treated like any other commodity whose costs can be lowered by outsourcing production into a low-wage country. So also for art, Southern China becomes the 'low cost manufacturing base.' Second, like many other low-end businesses, this proposition is spewed about randomly as spam. In fact, nettime got it several time (that's why I noticed it). Third, it contains some rather untrustworthy claims such as the painting being done by 'famous artists', though they remain unspecified. Most importantly, though, it introduces an extreme separation -- extreme in the context of Western art, more common in the textile industry -- between ordering and producing. While made-to-order art has never entirely gone out of fashion with the artist becoming an autonomous subject (so the story line) it has been transformed into an intimate process ( as in having your portrait painted). As such, it's based on a supposedly deep relationship between the person doing the ordering and the one doing the execution. Now, this email indicates that two things are happening. The made-to-order relationship is reappearing with all the loss of status that entails for the artists (a 'famous artist' yet anonymous, like the great medieval artists/artisans). Yet, at the same time, this relationship has been broken under the cost-imperative. This allows to enjoy the product which, like a brand, has a status value much higher than its use value, without any regard to the context of its production. While this is not a sufficient cause to assume sweatshop production conditions, it's a necessary step to establish them for the production of high-value objects. Felix On Sunday 01 August 2004 18:03, Andrew Ross wrote: Re: the subject line. Just a matter of interest, why do you assume this is a sweatshop operation? Simply because it is in China? Or is it impossible to imagine the condition of Chinese artisans as comparing favorably with their Western counterparts? ... -- +---+-+--- http://felix.openflows.org # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Publish. Write. Sing.
Some group styling itself Jibjab made a cutesy animation mocking the US presidential candidates -- set to the tune of Woody Guthrie's This land is your land. The company that holds the rights, Ludlow Music, isn't happy with this and sent Jobjab a cease-and-desist letter. Lyrics from This land is your land, a populist anthem, include: As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me! Guthrie's attitude toward copyright, in his own words scrawled at the bottom of one of his lyric sheets: This song is copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do. Jobjab's animation: http://www.jibjab.com/ MIT Tech Review summary of the situation: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1507trk=nl EFF, which notes that Guthrie took the tune for This Land from the Carter Family: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001779.php http://eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001782.php Cheers, T # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
