hello Shu Lea recently reminded us that the purpose of mailinglists is not only to self promote. At the same time I think it is a valued service that there are all these announcements on spectre. However, i think in a supposedly open environemnt such as a list - a sort of closed openness, protected, but within that fence an open commons - there are still structures and hierarchies. there are professional posters who hit the lists hard with their MA courses with fancy names and epochal book publications, people who are public, in a way, because they post frequently, but sort of separated, as they never lower themselves to discuss anything with "us". then there are people who are lurkers, and according to ancient netiquette lurking is bad. however, quite a few silent lurkers make up a real "audience" in a best positive sense, a critical mind of people who actually do read the postings of others. somebody recently said that, I forgot who it was, that the lurker should be resurrected as an important figure. I would not maybe go that far but what I do see is that if I post something, like a couple of months I posted some texts on some lists, I got public feedback and got private mail and the PM far exceeded the public feedback. thus, the notion of a mailinglist constituting a public is very important and not all of the communication is visible to all.
now coming to the purpose of this email, there seems to be a hierarchy also regarding the posting of announcements. A couple of days ago Ilze Black sent an invitation of the Hive Networks UNlaunch to this list and she thinks it got stuck in the moderation queue. maybe she is right and moderators did not let it through. maybe the mail got stuck for some other reason. whatever. but the mere suggestion that there are weigthings or filtering mechanisms on announcements on a list whose main reason to e today is to allow people send annoucements I find totally astonishing. what are the criteria then for "good" announcements and "bad" announcements? what, possibly, could the moderators not have liked about the hive un-launch? I could only speculate on that and I dont want to. coming wednesday june 13 the crew of hivenetworks which includes artist/engineers and core hive developers alexei blinov and vladimir grafov who have been in media arts longer than anyone and have with their computer and electronic skills built the work of many so called artists will demonstrate the fruits of their labour at space studios in hackney london (full announcements below). the event is called an UN-launch because we liked the ambiguity. hive networks are not a product, there is nothing to be sold or bought. what it is, its a "suggestive practice" (I borrow this term from Alexei Blinov). Hive networks suggest that people get certain mass produced devices and replace the firmware with hive ware to turn them into tactical media devices. to make that a bit easier for people who nare not linux kernel hackers hivenetworks have gone through an 18 months development cycle and have created HIvewares. Now any sport of medium computer savvy artist should be able to use it. the idea of the un-launch is to have you as a critical audience around to ask questions and make suggestions which directions the project should take or to express what you would be doing with it. this is the second reason why 'unlaunch'. I look forward on having a good open and critical debate on the subject of hivenetworks with thoise of you who can make it this wednesday and that this announcement is not drowned out by McProfessors in their private university sponsored PhD sportscars Armin Hive Networks UNlaunched @ Space Triangle Hackney 129-131 Mare Street London E8 3RH Wednesday June 13, 2007 17:00 pm: a special reception and debate with the hive-mind 19:00 pm: speeches and hospitalities rsvp: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hive Networks is an Open Source project that has developed a DIY kit for ubiquitous computing. During an extensive R&D phase, we have created Hivewares - a range of software tools that transform industrially built, inexpensive, small consumer devices into the much smarter species of Hive device. With Hivewares we offer an easy to use media toolkit that creates networks that can see, hear, move and communicate using a suite of applications that enable a device to gather and disseminate digital content. Now we invite you to explore the current development phase of the project and hear about art projects past, present and future. We welcome media practitioners, curators, organisers and researchers to examine the project, give advice and come up with ideas for future developments. www.hivenetworks.net ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre