Generation Flash
Lev Manovich

The phenomenon of Flash graphics on the Web [...] attracted a lot of creative energy in the last few years. More than just a result of a particular software/hardware situation [...], Flash aesthetics exemplifies cultural sensibility of a new generation [who] does not care if their work is called art or design. This generation is no longer is interested in "media critique" which preoccupied media artists of the last two decades; instead it is engaged in software critique. This generation writes its own software code to create their own cultural systems, instead of using samples of commercial media. The result is the new modernism of data visualizations, vector nets, pixel-thin grids and arrows: Bauhaus design in the service of information design. Instead the Baroque assault of commercial media, Flash generation serves us the modernist aesthetics and rationality of software.

Teatro e multimedia
Antonio Pizzo

Nel caso sia della scrittura sia del teatro, la prospettiva non riguarda la morte dell'arte, bensì una ridefinizione dei compiti dell'autore, in un caso, e dell'attore, nell'altro. Sono problemi strettamente connessi all'individuazione del valore dell'opera d'arte stessa, a volte nei termini di una differente dialettica tra originale e copia, a volte nei termini di presenza e distanza nell'esperienza artistica contemporanea. Dunque i tentativi di contaminazione tra spettacolo teatrale e tecnologie digitali in questi ultimi decenni, lungi dal definire un "nuovo genere teatrale", sono parte di una più ampia e complessa sfida estetica del prossimo millennio, laddove una tecnologia si propone non come un nuovo mezzo di comunicazione ma piuttosto come uno strumento per riaggiornare i media esistenti alla luce di un nuovo luogo dell'evento artistico.

Why Art Should Be Free
Jon Ippolito

The solution I'd suggest to the digital liability of open licenses is as practical as it is radical: a "digital sanctuary." Digital objects are like rabbits - they reproduce easily. It is this promiscuity that creates practical problems for the commons approach. Let's say you take your pet rabbit for a walk in a public commons. If it gives birth, the offspring are still your property, and you can prosecute anyone who takes them from you. But if your promiscuous bunny's offspring happen to hop their way into a wildlife sanctuary, they could go from property to heritage - at which point your exclusive claim on them could vanish. [...] The digital sanctuary is not a wilderness, but a wildlife refuge - not beyond the law, but protected by it. Legal paradigms like the protection of privacy and the prohibition on dangerous speech, which protect the public rather than rights holders, may still apply.

For the Sake of Revolution
John Horvath

Cell phones are an intense source of high-frequency magnetic fields that is held very close to the brain. Studies have investigated various health hazards – reduced fertility, brain tumours, memory loss, behavioural changes, and damaging effects on a child's development. Naturally, this has raised concern and fear about the effect of cell phones on human health. [...] At this point in time, what is needed is a comprehensive precautionary approach to the use of cell phone technologies. This doesn't mean an absolute ban on the use of cell phones but, rather, requires government and industry officials to fully inform the general public as to the potential risks. But even more important than this, there is a desperate need to have continued independent research, one that is not influenced by economic or political considerations, but by scientific standards alone.

Flaneur Culture. A double generative psychogeographical session
Wilfried Hou Je Bek

To understand the socio-political implications of experimental strolls in the city, it is important to know how the public-domains functions as the place where individuals meet, so forming communities form & as a consequence society on the most fundamental level emerges out of the interaction of/between/inside crowds. This public domain is not an autonomous field, but the result of the interplay between public-space & urbanism: the dialectic between the physic objects in a city & the social/cultural use that is being made of it. Because the public domain emerges out of the interacting happening between these 2 different things, both with a complex set of parameters of their own, it can only be indirectly manipulated. This happens by town planning and structural architectural interventions in public space on the one hand & by formulating laws to ban or reward certain uses of urban space on the other.