Zero One San Jose

ZeroOne San Jose

ZeroOne San Jose is a swirling constellation of events that included several self-styled summits, a variety of public art, performances, lectures, and exhibitions associated with the 13th biannual meeting of ISEA, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts. It began August 4 and ends August 13.

As an outsider I became involved in 2005 after talking with Joel Slayton, the Chair for ZeroOne and the ISEA2006 Symposium. He was planning one of the satellite events, the Pacific Rim New Media Summit, and I agreed to pull together a working group on "piracy in the Pacific" to look at trends, conflicts, and issues related to intellectual property (IP), piracy, sharing, and appropriation. (poster at left)

Gordon Knox, the director at Montalvo Arts Center convened a summit on intellectual property at the center a few miles from San Jose, and invited me to participate August 4th and 5th. Other participants included a film maker, an administrator from Arts Council England, several anthropologists, an industrial designer, two lawyers,  a journal editor and scientist, and a media researcher. The artists were busy preparing for ISEA and did not attend.  The discussions revolved around the best way for an artist to collaborate and work inside a research lab or high tech company environment for a limited period of time. Knox wanted to establish a 'safe place' in terms of IP where the artist would feel free to experiment. James Leach, an anthropologist from Cambridge felt strongly that existing IP regimes were based on narrow views of ownership and collaboration and that we should be looking at other kinds of relationships. The lawyers explained how the laws for IP had expanded, and many felt this inhibited activities and the spread of knowledge. On Monday the group met at Santa Clara University where the movie on piracy was shown, and there was a public forum.

This conflicted with the Pacific Rim New Media Summit which was held at King Library, the unique joint university-public library in downtown San Jose. Slayton's staff and students provided good logistical support before and during the meeting which occupied two full days of presentations and discussions. The summit was meant to encourage international cooperation and collaboration in a number of areas. The working groups included these topics:
-Distributed curatorial
-Education
-Urbanity and mobile media
-Place, ground, and practice
-Latin America-Pacific/Asia New Media Initiatives
-Residencies and symposia
-Piracy and the Pacific
-Invisible dynamics of the Pacific rim & bay area

Leading up to the summit there was an online forum which was never used by more than a few of the many members. Each working group was somewhat fluid, and the chair changed in a couple, and many members did not attend for different reasons: other commitments, lack of money, or visa problems. At ISEA Trebor Scholz whose institute focuses on "cooperation studies", gave a paper about social networks and why people take part online. Though he was part of a working group in our summit he did not attend. 

Danny Butt (Place, Ground, and practice) was the chair and only attendee from his group, and though he claimed he had failed, he presented a good summary of their activities leading up to the summit, including a significant and intimate gathering in New Zealand which could not be duplicated in this venue. (photo: Danny at the podium)

One chair thought he was coming to work together for two days mainly with his group, and like me, he met them for the first time shortly before they were due to present. My own group did not work that much together before, but they all helped me a great deal as I was preparing a short video "Piracy in the Pacific" for a DVD project Leonardo had hoped to publish. Once we met the afternoon before the presentation we were able to find some common disagreements to discuss during the summit.  Piracy and copyright is very, very contentious, and I assembled a CD-ROM of videos, rants, white papers, books, and proceedings that covered a spectrum of views from anarchist to Hollywood and law enforcement. We handed this out to everyone present (about 45).

The organizers suggested we might want to have statements to take to ISEA, or perhaps a manifesto, but this did not seem to happen. I think there were some good connections made, and some working groups planned to carry on with other projects. I  wondered what the summit would have been if it were the main focus in San Jose rather than the much larger ISEA meetings and exhibitions.

The always reclusive and secretive Raqs  Media Collective flew in  from an undisclosed location and arrived on the second day in order to comment and provoke us with interesting questions which needed a third day for discussion. They used metaphors of sea voyage, dead reckoning, and maritime language. A rare photo is at the left, but their faces are pixellated in order to protect their valued anonymity. They were last seen a couple of days later entering a black stretch limo outside the exhibit hall.

Next: ISEA 2006

   

  

ZeroOne San Jose

ZeroOne San Jose is a swirling constellation of events that included several self-styled summits, a variety of public art, performances, lectures, and exhibitions associated with the 13th biannual meeting of ISEA, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts. It began August 4 and ends August 13.

As an outsider I became involved in 2005 after talking with Joel Slayton, the Chair for ZeroOne and the ISEA2006 Symposium. He was planning one of the satellite events, the Pacific Rim New Media Summit, and I agreed to pull together a working group on "piracy in the Pacific" to look at trends, conflicts, and issues related to intellectual property (IP), piracy, sharing, and appropriation. (poster at left)

Gordon Knox, the director at Montalvo Arts Center convened a summit on intellectual property at the center a few miles from San Jose, and invited me to participate August 4th and 5th. Other participants included a film maker, an administrator from Arts Council England, several anthropologists, an industrial designer, two lawyers,  a journal editor and scientist, and a media researcher. The artists were busy preparing for ISEA and did not attend.  The discussions revolved around the best way for an artist to collaborate and work inside a research lab or high tech company environment for a limited period of time. Knox wanted to establish a 'safe place' in terms of IP where the artist would feel free to experiment. James Leach, an anthropologist from Cambridge felt strongly that existing IP regimes were based on narrow views of ownership and collaboration and that we should be looking at other kinds of relationships. The lawyers explained how the laws for IP had expanded, and many felt this inhibited activities and the spread of knowledge. On Monday the group met at Santa Clara University where the movie on piracy was shown, and there was a public forum.

This conflicted with the Pacific Rim New Media Summit which was held at King Library, the unique joint university-public library in downtown San Jose. Slayton's staff and students provided good logistical support before and during the meeting which occupied two full days of presentations and discussions. The summit was meant to encourage international cooperation and collaboration in a number of areas. The working groups included these topics:
-Distributed curatorial
-Education
-Urbanity and mobile media
-Place, ground, and practice
-Latin America-Pacific/Asia New Media Initiatives
-Residencies and symposia
-Piracy and the Pacific
-Invisible dynamics of the Pacific rim & bay area

Leading up to the summit there was an online forum which was never used by more than a few of the many members. Each working group was somewhat fluid, and the chair changed in a couple, and many members did not attend for different reasons: other commitments, lack of money, or visa problems. At ISEA Trebor Scholz whose institute focuses on "cooperation studies", gave a paper about social networks and why people take part online. Though he was part of a working group in our summit he did not attend. 

Danny Butt (Place, Ground, and practice) was the chair and only attendee from his group, and though he claimed he had failed, he presented a good summary of their activities leading up to the summit, including a significant and intimate gathering in New Zealand which could not be duplicated in this venue. (photo: Danny at the podium)

One chair thought he was coming to work together for two days mainly with his group, and like me, he met them for the first time shortly before they were due to present. My own group did not work that much together before, but they all helped me a great deal as I was preparing a short video "Piracy in the Pacific" for a DVD project Leonardo had hoped to publish. Once we met the afternoon before the presentation we were able to find some common disagreements to discuss during the summit.  Piracy and copyright is very, very contentious, and I assembled a CD-ROM of videos, rants, white papers, books, and proceedings that covered a spectrum of views from anarchist to Hollywood and law enforcement. We handed this out to everyone present (about 45).

The organizers suggested we might want to have statements to take to ISEA, or perhaps a manifesto, but this did not seem to happen. I think there were some good connections made, and some working groups planned to carry on with other projects. I  wondered what the summit would have been if it were the main focus in San Jose rather than the much larger ISEA meetings and exhibitions.

The always reclusive and secretive Raqs  Media Collective flew in  from an undisclosed location and arrived on the second day in order to comment and provoke us with interesting questions which needed a third day for discussion. They used metaphors of sea voyage, dead reckoning, and maritime language. A rare photo is at the left, but their faces are pixellated in order to protect their valued anonymity. They were last seen a couple of days later entering a black stretch limo outside the exhibit hall.

Next: ISEA 2006

Comments

[Steve Cisler]

Typepad is not allowing full images on this posting, but I'll fix this as soon as I can.